Lower-Division

Teaches foundational concepts for intellectual and personal development in an academic community: analysis, critical thinking, metacognition, engagement with others across difference, and self-efficacy. Focuses on the power of education and learning to imagine the world otherwise and to effect justice and social change. Texts address generational trajectories to college; the history of UCSC and the local region; family traditions of knowledge; and social movements that can inspire us. Students learn to read in different genres and formats and reflect on their reading practices.

KRSG 1A explores opportunities, expectations, and responsibilities in university life. Topics include: academic planning; general education requirements; majors and minors; campus policy; and preparation for Kresge's core course: Power & Representation. Students gain familiarity with resources for health, well-being, time management, academic success, cultivating just communities, sexual harassment and violence prevention, reflection on UCSC's principles of community, and an introduction to the living and learning tradition of KRSG College. This course can be taken for Pass/No Pass grading only.

Orientation to and exploration of principles of liberal arts, and learning at research universities. Topics include: academic planning for upper-division coursework; enrollment processes at UCSC; understanding pathways to degree completion (and the major and general-education coursework required in those pathways). Students also learn about UCSC's principles of community, and engage in preliminary reflection on reading and critical thinking. This course is for entering transfer students. This course can be taken for Pass/No Pass grading only.

Introduction to media representations through film and their consequences for individuals and communities. Addresses how today's films represent struggles for justice and agency—especially relative to race, gender, citizenship/documentation, and communities of diaspora—in terms of filmmaking frameworks and the dialogues they foment. Each week class screens and discusses a collection of films, television, news programming, and video games to analyze and critique the ways in which power operates. Students also use such analyses and criticism to inform us as we create our own filmmaking projects. (Formerly offered as Power and Representation in Media.)

Develop practical skills and knowledge in naturalist observation. Acquire an overview of the field of natural history, particularly applied to the UCSC campus. Document an evolving and multidimensional personal experience of natural spaces, including, but not limited to, wilderness. (Formerly KRSG 18.)

Provides community college transfers, during their first year at UC Santa Cruz, with an understanding of the workings of a research university with emphasis on advanced academic expectations, creating and meeting purposeful education and career goals, building relationships and community, and navigating opportunities and challenges.

Students work collaboratively on City on a Hill Press, the student-run, campus newspaper of record, gaining practice in news production. Students engage in analysis and critical reflection regarding both the form and content of news, and its critical relationship to a healthy democracy. Course outcomes include the development of media literacy, and experience addressing issues such as intent, fairness, accuracy, and impact. Areas of focus include, but are not limited to, graphic design, illustration, photojournalism, visual composition, copy editing, fact-checking, and media literacy. Prerequisite(s): satisfaction of the Entry Level Writing and Composition requirements. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor in consultation with City on a Hill Press co-editors-in-chief.

Students work collaboratively on City on a Hill Press, the student-run, campus newspaper of record, gaining practice in investigative journalism and news editing. Students engage in analysis and critical reflection regarding both the form and content of news, and its critical relationship to a healthy democracy. Course outcomes include the development of media literacy, and experience addressing issues such as intent, fairness, accuracy, and impact. Areas of focus include, but are not limited to, story production, story assignment and management, and staff editorial composition. Prerequisite(s): satisfaction of the Entry Level Writing and Composition requirements. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor, in consultation with City on a Hill Press co-editors-in-chief.

Analyzes systems of incarceration in the U.S. and explores movements to abolish those systems and to envision alternative modes of justice. Themes include, but are not limited to, the role that mass incarceration plays in contemporary society, histories of resistance, political prisoners, racial justice, and the intellectual, creative, and political interventions of incarcerated people. Students engage in collaborative projects throughout the class, and learn effective strategies for group work and interpersonal communication. (Formerly offered as Prison Narratives.)

Students attend weekly creative writing readings by fiction writers and poets, read excerpts from the writers' works, participate in question and answer sessions, and write short, creative and/or analytical responses to the readings and writings.

Hands-on practice with basic ecological horticulture skills through work at the Kresge Garden, including soil cultivation. Enrollment by instructor approval through application (available in the Kresge College office). Enrollment limited to college members.

A course of guidance and exercises to assist in developing independent writing projects, and a group setting for critique and feedback. Students do in-class and out-of-class writing assignments; read and discuss texts; and work to develop a final project.

Examines the principles and processes of restorative justice juxtaposed to current practices in the judicial and educational systems of contemporary society. Students study leading restorative justice practices and their implication for individual and community transformation. Students learn to facilitate the restorative justice process restorative circles, and have the opportunity to practice them in real time. Enrollment is by instructor consent and is restricted to frosh, sophomores, and juniors.

History of social documentary photography with its practice. Includes analysis of historical and contemporary images from social documentary work; camera, darkroom, and digital skill development; an individual student documentary project; and collective project discussion.

The climate crisis challenges and frustrates common assumptions about individual and collective agency, nature and the process of history, the organization of human and non-human activity, and of politics itself. This seminar examines current debates and representations in various media, working collaboratively to understand the political dimensions of what we designate in simple terms as “climate change”, but which really encompasses a broad range of interrelated natural and social phenomena. Students develop critical interdisciplinary research projects within thematic groups that explore more specific topics—e.g., strategic failures of cosmopolitanism, eco-fascism and climate migration, biodiversity and land enclosure, the Green New Deal vs. degrowth, or the ethics of sabotage. (Formerly offered as Critical Writing Practicum: Subject and System.)

A program of directed study arranged between a student and a Kresge faculty member. Student must submit petition to sponsoring agency. Student must confirm Graded or P/NP with instructor in petition before enrolling.

A program of directed study arranged between a student and a Kresge faculty member. Student must submit petition to sponsoring agency. Student must confirm Graded or P/NP with instructor in petition before enrolling.

A program of directed study arranged between a student and a Kresge faculty member. Student must submit petition to sponsoring agency. Student must confirm Graded or P/NP with instructor in petition before enrolling.