Events

Free Coffee, Snacks, & Conversation
2026-03-10 09:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Merrill College Office, 641 Merrill Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Enjoy a cup of coffee, cocoa, or tea, and a breakfast snack with Merrill Provost McGuinness. Stay and chat with him and Poppy the Merrill Chihuahua, or take it go.
See you outside of the Merrill College office, across from the Merrill Mailroom.

Statistics Seminar: Evaluating Predictive Algorithms Under Missing Data
2026-03-09 16:00 - 17:00, 2026-03-09 08:00 - 17:00 | CA
Presenter: Amanda Coston, Assistant Professor, University of California Berkeley
Description: Performance evaluation plays a central role in decisions about whether and how predictive algorithms should be deployed in high-stakes settings. Yet, in many real-world domains, evaluation is fundamentally difficult: the data available for assessment are often biased, incomplete, or noisy, and the act of deploying a model can itself alter which outcomes are observed. As a result, standard evaluation practices may substantially misrepresent both overall model performance and disparities across groups. In this talk, we examine several common threats to valid evaluation—including measurement error, selection bias, and distribution shift—and present principled evaluation methods that enable valid performance assessment under these challenges when appropriate conditions are met.
Bio: From UC Berkeley website: Amanda Coston is an assistant professor of statistics at UC Berkeley. Her research addresses real-world data problems that challenge the validity, reliability, and equity of algorithmic decision support systems and data-driven policy-making. Her work draws on techniques from causal inference, machine learning, and nonparametric statistics. She earned her PhD in machine learning and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University and subsequently completed a postdoc at Microsoft Research on the Machine Learning and Statistics Team. She also holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Princeton in computer science and a certificate in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.
Hosted by: Statistics Department

AM Seminar: Solution Discovery in Fluids with High Precision Using Neural Networks
2026-03-09 16:00 - 17:00 | CA
Presenter: Ching-Yao Lai, Assistant Professor, Stanford University
Description: I will discuss examples utilizing neural networks (NNs) to find solutions to partial differential equations (PDEs) that facilitate new discoveries. Despite being deemed universal function approximators, neural networks, in practice, struggle to fit functions with sufficient accuracy for rigorous analysis. Here, we developed multi-stage neural networks (Wang and Lai, J. Comput. Phys. 2024) that can reduce the prediction error to nearly the machine precision of double-precision floating points within a finite number of iterations. We use accurate NNs to tackle the challenge of searching for singularities in fluid equations (Wang-Lai-Gómez-Serrano-Buckmaster, Phys. Rev. Lett. 2023). Unstable singularities, especially in dimensions greater than one, are exceptionally elusive. With NNs we demonstrate the first discovery of smooth unstable self-similar singularities to unforced incompressible fluid equations (Wang et al., arXiv:2509.14185). The example illustrates how deep learning can be used to discover new and highly accurate numerical solutions to PDEs.
Bio: Ching-Yao Lai (Yao) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geophysics and an Affiliated Faculty of the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering (ICME) at Stanford. Before joining Stanford, she was an Assistant Professor at Princeton University. She received an undergraduate degree (2013) in Physics from National Taiwan University and a PhD (2018) in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University. She completed her postdoctoral research at Columbia University where she received the Lamont Postdoctoral Fellowship. Her current research focuses on enhancing the representation of machine-learning models to tackle multiscale problems. She was the recipient of the 2023 Google Research Scholar Award, the 2024 Sloan Research Fellowship, and the 2025 NSF CAREER Award.
Hosted by: Applied Mathematics

Harrison, D. (CS) - Multi-Level Control in Neural Dialogue Generation: Style, Semantics, and Selection through Over-Generation and Ranking
2026-03-09 14:00 - 16:00 | CA
End-to-end neural generation models have largely displaced the modular architectures that once gave dialogue system designers explicit control over what is said and how it is said. While these models produce fluent text, they collapse content planning, sentence planning, and surface realization into a single undifferentiated decoding step, sacrificing the controllable structure that earlier systems provided. This dissertation investigates how that structure can be recovered through the over-generate-and-rank (OGR) paradigm: generating multiple candidate outputs and selecting among them using learned or prompt-based ranking functions that jointly optimize semantic fidelity, stylistic appropriateness, and conversational coherence. We instantiate OGR at three levels of natural language generation for dialogue: utterance-level stylistic control, cross-domain semantic evaluation, and dialogue-level response selection.
First, we show that explicit conditioning mechanisms, specifically decoder-level side constraints for personality variation and discourse contrast, re-introduce stylistic control into neural sequence-to-sequence models without compromising semantic accuracy. Second, we demonstrate that prompt-based learning with structured linguistic profiles achieves near-perfect personality accuracy and effectively zero slot error rate when combined with ranking, establishing that LLM prompting with explicit pragmatic specifications can match or exceed fine-tuning for personality-conditioned generation. Third, we develop a cross-domain semantic error rate evaluation framework that frames slot error computation as an extraction task, using a LoRA-adapted language model to extract meaning representations from generated text and a trained ranker to select among candidate extractions, achieving reliable evaluation across 23 topic domains without domain-specific rules. Fourth, we build and evaluate a speaker-aware transformer response ranker for Athena, our Alexa Prize socialbot, demonstrating that learned ranking over heterogeneous generator pools produces significantly longer conversations and higher user ratings than heuristic rule-based selection in a live A/B study with over 6,000 conversations.
A unifying finding emerges across all four contributions: the pragmatic features that control personality style in generation—acknowledgements, engagement questions, hedges, exclamations—are the same features that distinguish high-quality from mediocre responses in open-domain dialogue. This parallel reveals that stylistic control and response ranking are complementary mechanisms for achieving the same goal: making dialogue systems sound more natural and engaging. Together, these results support the dissertation’s central hypothesis that over-generate-and-rank provides a general, extensible mechanism for controllable neural language generation, restoring explicit decision points where competing communicative objectives can be weighed. The ranking function serves a role analogous to the sentence planner in classical NLG architectures, but operates on the outputs of modern neural and LLM-based generators.

Event Host: Davan Harrison, Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science
Advisor: Marilyn Walker

Radical Craft’s Works-in-Progress Exhibition
2026-03-09 13:30 - 15:00 | Social Sciences 1, Social Sciences 1, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064

Wellness in Action: Managing Stress in Times of Uncertainty
2026-03-09 13:00 - 13:30 | CA
Monday, February 23, 1:00 PM – 1:30 PM
Location: Register for the Zoom link
Periods of uncertainty can increase stress, reduce focus, and affect overall well-being. Participants will learn practical strategies to pause, regain perspective, and respond to stress with greater clarity. These sustainable skills build resiliency, help maintain calm, and create balance during challenging times.
The Wellness in Action series is designed to help you improve your health in a short session with simple tips you can try in your own life. In the follow-up session on Monday, March 9 from 1:00 PM – 1:30 PM, you will have the opportunity to share your experience and learn from others in the group.
Register for the Zoom link. The workshop will be recorded, and a link to the recording will be sent out after the first session. The follow up session will not be recorded.
To learn more about our events and workshops, visit the Upcoming Wellness Events page.
For questions, please contact Health and Well-being Specialist, Ashley Parker, at aseparke@ucsc.edu.

Tax Workshops for International Students & Scholars
2026-03-09 12:30 - 14:00 | Graduate Student Commons, 420 Hagar Drive, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
International Student Services and Programming (ISSP) will be hosting two tax-related sessions for international students and scholars in the coming months, including a hands-on workshop for anyone who wants support while working through the filing process. We understand that filing taxes can be daunting, so our office is here to provide resources to make this process easier.
GLACIER tax prep staff from and graduate peer mentors will be available to help you one-on-one as you complete your tax filing steps.

Hands-on Tax Workshop #1
Date: Monday, March 9
Time: 12:30 – 14:00
Location: Graduate Student Commons (entrance next to Cafe Iveta)

Workshop #2 will take place on Monday, April 6, at the same time and location

Have any tax questions or topics you’d like us to address at the beginning of each workshop? Submit your questions here, and we’ll highlight them with the group. Even if you can’t make it to either session, feel free to still ask us your general questions, and we’ll update everyone with common themes we’re noticing.
Please note that ISSP staff are not tax experts and are legally prohibited from giving you tax advice. It is your responsibility to determine how to file your taxes and/or find a tax preparation service.

Ecology of Presence: Pathways to the Natural World
2026-03-09 12:00 - 17:00, 2026-03-08 12:00 - 17:00, 2026-03-07 12:00 - 17:00 | Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery, 11 Cowell Service Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Norris Center Art + Science Graduate Fellowship Exhibition
Ecology of Presence: Pathways to the Natural World brings together the work of ten graduate students supported by the Kenneth S. Norris Center for Natural History Art + Science Fellowship, a program dedicated to creative research connecting art with the natural world. Across media – including sound, moving image, music, performance, installation, comics, social practice, photography, and storytelling – the artists in Ecology of Presence emphasize relationality and careful attention to place as essential to building relationships with environs. As accelerating environmental change and technological dependency threaten ways of belonging, the works in this exhibition maintain a steadfast commitment to interdisciplinary approaches that propose kinship with the natural world. By coming together, Art + Science Fellows artworks and social practices suggest ways of imagining human life in relation to the more-than-human world.

Digital Accessibility: Document Accessibility with Grackle
2026-03-09 12:00 - 13:00 | https://ucsc.zoom.us/meeting/register/bpqXOZJRSDaaRmT6KRK8xg
Learn how to use a new Google document accessibility checker tool: Grackle.
Grackle is a Google Workspace add-on that can be used to check the accessibility of Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Sheets.
Topics will include: how to access Grackle, how to run a report, and how to read your accessibility report to take action.

ECE 290 Seminar: Dynamical Signatures: Harnessing the Hidden Language of In-Space Electric Propulsion
2026-03-09 10:40 - 11:45 | Engineering 2, Engineering 2 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Presenter: Dr. Christine Greve, Research Engineer, Edwards AFB
Description: Low-thrust space electric propulsion systems offer long propulsion system lifetimes for satellite maintenance maneuvers. These thrusters operate by generating and accelerating plasmas, making the thrusters throttleable, propellant-efficient, and scalable from low-to-high power operations. This talk will focus on efforts to leverage the underlying time-dependent dynamics of plasma to investigate and influence thruster research and development. Prior years of study have developed techniques to uniquely represent the dynamics of such systems that have since been used to open a new way to test and operate plasma systems. Additional work has investigated the correlations between time-dependent measurements of these dynamics to develop digital twins, automate test processes with machine learning, inform design of experiments, and develop on-orbit system diagnostics. The talk will conclude with a look to the future as these tools are further applied both within the lab and potentially transitioned to on-orbit applications.
Bio: Dr. Christine Greve is a research engineer for the Air Force Research Laboratory at Edwards AFB. She received her Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Texas A&M University under an NDSEG fellowship for her work in data-driven modeling of plasma-based systems. She now serves as the Electric Propulsion group lead with interests in high-power electric propulsion, machine learning, data-driven modeling, and novel plasma diagnostic techniques.
Hosted by: Professor Soumya Bose, ECE Department
Zoom: https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/97975378707?pwd=[REDACTED]

Robbins, A. (ECE) - How to train your organoid: goal-directed learning in biological neural networks
2026-03-09 10:00 - 11:00
Artificial neural networks can now learn to play games, control robots, generate language, and solve complicated reasoning tasks, yet we still lack a clear understanding of how to directly guide learning in biological neural networks. We show that brain organoids can learn to solve a fundamental control task, balancing an inverted pendulum, through closed-loop electrophysiology. Cortical organoids interfaced with high-density microelectrode arrays received sensory input about the pole’s angle and produced motor output through their neural activity. Training signals selected by a reinforcement learning algorithm significantly outperformed random stimulation and no-stimulation controls. Blocking glutamatergic transmission abolished the learning and washout restored it, confirming the adaptation depends on synaptic plasticity. To support this work and future experiments, we developed BrainDance, an open-source framework for running reproducible biological learning experiments, and contributed to RT-Sort, a real-time spike sorting algorithm. This dissertation presents the tools, experiments, and findings from pursuing goal-directed learning in biological neural networks. BrainDance makes these experiments easy-to-create, reproducible and shareable, letting any lab with compatible hardware start training their own organoids.
Event Host: Ash Robbins, Ph.D. Candidate, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Advisor: Mircea Teodorescu
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/95839863615?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode- 069118

Hendawy, M. (CM) - Autonoming Child Online Safety in the Age of AI: From Control to Digital Co-Agency Across Cultures
2026-03-09 07:00 - 08:00
Children’s lives are now inextricably linked with AI-driven digital systems that shape learning, social interaction, and development. This has elevated child online safety to a central concern for families, policymakers, and educators. This makes Child online safety a wicked socio-technical problem, emerging from the complex interplay of social norms, platform incentives, cultural expectations, and rapidly evolving technologies. Dominant control-based paradigms—monitoring, blocking, and surveillance—undermine children’s developmental capacity, erode family trust, and foreclose the iterative cycles of self regulated learning necessary for digital resilience. This proposal advances digital co-agency as a new paradigm for child online safety. It reframes safety from an outcome of unilateral control to a shared, relational practice distributed across children, caregivers, technologies, and governance structures. To be effective, digital co-agency must be grounded in a clear normative standard. I define this standard as ethical safety: protection is legitimate only when it is rights-respecting and developmentally supportive. Within this boundary, the dissertation proposes autonoming as a design stance for AI-mediated safety systems. Autonoming systems act as developmental mentors that support children’s judgment over time through explanation, negotiation, and graduated support that can fade as competence grows. Autonoming is grounded in Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) as the developmental mechanism for durable safety capacity. SRL models learning as cyclical forethought (planning), performance (in-the-moment regulation), and reflection (evaluating outcomes). The dissertation adopts a socio-technical interpretivist stance and a Design Science Research orientation to produce actionable artifacts that are theoretically grounded and evaluable.. Its core methodological contribution is localization-first comparative design across Cairo and Berlin. This comparative structure helps distinguish between: localized variables (culturally specific norms regarding authority, privacy, risk, norms, expectations, and legitimacy conditions that must be adapted to) from ethical invariants (accountability, contestability, proportionality that should hold across contexts).
Event Host: Mennatullah Hendawy, Ph.D. Student, Computational Media
Advisor: Magy Seif El-Nasr
Zoom- https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/93831600031?pwd=[REDACTED]
Passcode-459844

"The Cigarette Surfboard" screening with filmmaker Ben Judkins (Kresge '17)
2026-03-08 17:00 - 21:00 | CA
Join Banana Slug alumni filmmaker Ben Judkins (Kresge ’17, film and digital media) and “ciggy board” creator Taylor Lane for a screening of their award-winning documentary, The Cigarette Surfboard (presented by the California Coastal Commission‘s Whale Tail Grant).
5:00-6:00 PM | alumni meet & greet with light refreshments
6:00-7:35 PM | film screening
7:35-8:30 PM | filmmaker discussion
8:30-9:00 PM | mingle
REGISTER
ABOUT THE FILM
After a young designer realizes that a surfboard – which he crafted from thousands of littered cigarette butts picked up off California beaches – could captivate the eyes of millions across the globe, he decides to use it as the impetus to do something more. The Cigarette Surfboards become a platform to spark ocean stewardship and the symbol of a campaign to hold Big Tobacco accountable for their toxic, plastic waste. Surfing is the medium, but the message is universal.
Small decisions and actions, like littering a cigarette butt, cumulatively can have a large impact, for better or for worse. This immersive documentary provides viewers an up close experience of the ocean through surfers’ eyes, to amplify a message of urgency and possibility regarding the ocean’s wellbeing. As our ocean faces mounting threats, and surfing continues to grow, we as surfers have a responsibility to protect it.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKER
Raised in Northern California, at age eight, Ben Judkins found an old camcorder and discovered the medium to explore and create. After years of videotaping friends skateboarding and surfing, Ben landed at the University of California, Santa Cruz, majoring in Film & Digital Media. His senior film “Marshall” earned the Dean’s Award, and also won “Best Locally-Produced Work” at the 2017 Santa Cruz Film Festival. Ben is an avid surfer who believes in the power of visual storytelling to move people to action. The Cigarette Surfboard documentary is an opportunity to inspire a generation of surfers to be stewards of the sea.

The Trial of Spock—An Opera Workshop
2026-03-08 16:00 - 18:00 | Music Center Recital Hall, 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
The creators of The Trial of Spock—An Opera In Three Acts present concert performances of five scenes from an opera-in-progress at the UC Santa Cruz Music Center Recital Hall.
Captain Christopher Pike is gravely injured. Lieutenant Spock is behaving strangely. Charged with protecting Pike in his state of extreme need,Vulcan Commodore T’or suspects that Lieutenant Spock—once Captain Pike’s science officer—is up to no good. Spock’s Captain, James T. Kirk, doesn’t see the trouble until far too late, and soon Spock holds all of them prisoner aboard a ship destined for the “forbidden planet” Talos IV. He refuses to say a word about their fate—not until his superiors agree to give him his trial. Under oath, and with strange evidence, Spock tells the story of Captain Pike’s first visit to Talos IV, where illusion and artificial experiences plunge Pike and fellow captive Vina into uncharted dimensions of their memories, and their concepts of self.
Join sopranos Nicole Koh, Sheila Willey, and Emily Sinclair; tenors Alex Boyer and Nicolas Vasquez-Gerst, baritones Joseph Calzada and Michael Kuo, and the Del Sol Quartet, as they distort the myth of Orpheus, in order to re-think our presumed relationships to freedom and reality, and its augmentations.
Music by Ben Leeds Carson; libretto by Perre DiCarlo & Ben Leeds Carson and Lincoln & Lee Taiz; with contributions from John de Lancie, based on teleplays by Gene Roddenberry.
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ADMISSION
– FREE and open to the public
– Tickets required and available online through Eventbrite
– Follow the Music Dept on Eventbrite for notices and updates.
– Doors are scheduled to open 30 minutes prior to event start time.
– Ticket holders not seated at least 5 minutes before the advertised start time may forfeit their ticket/seat and no refund will be issued.
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PARKING
– Parking by permit, ParkMobile, or $11 cash/credit via the on-site parking attendant
– Arts Lot #126 is the closest parking lot to the event
– Visitors with DMV placards or plates may park for free in DMV spaces, Medical spaces, or ParkMobile spaces without additional payment, or in timed zones for longer than the posted time.
– UCSC affiliates must purchase their permits before arriving at the event in order to receive their discounted UCSC rate. Attendants will only sell the non-affiliate-priced permits.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS)
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FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Fri, March 8, 4:00 p.m., UC Santa Cruz Music Center Recital Hall
The Trial of Spock—An Opera Workshop
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Fri, March 13, 7:00 p.m., Kuumbwa Jazz Center
How to Live Long and Prosper—Lessons from a Star Trek Opera
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Barnstorm Presents--"Gloria," by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
2026-03-08 14:00 - 16:00, 2026-03-07 14:00 - 16:00, 2026-03-06 19:30 - 21:00 | Theater Arts B100 Studio Theater, 453 Kerr Rd, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064, United States
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ Gloria is a razor-sharp comic drama about ambition, office warfare and hierarchies, where the only thing that matters is selling out to the highest bidder. This funny, trenchant and powerful play follows an ambitious group of editorial assistants at a notorious Manhattan magazine, each of whom hopes for a starry life of letters and a book deal before they turn thirty. But when an ordinary workday becomes anything but, the stakes for who will get to tell their own story become higher than ever.
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ABOUT BARNSTORM
UC Santa Cruz students experiment with and create their own innovative theater and gain a sense of operating and creating art in the Barnstorm Theater Company, a student-run theater arts production company established in 2004.
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ADVISORIES
– Ticket holders not seated at least 10 minutes before the advertised start time may forfeit their ticket/seat and no refund will be issued.
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FULL SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Fri. March 6: 7:30 p.m.
Sat. March 7: 2:00 p.m. matinee
Sat. March 7: 7:30 p.m.
Sun. March 8: 2:00 p.m. matinee
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ADMISSION
– Tickets issued here through Eventbrite; Follow the Dept. of Performance, Play & Design and Barnstorm on Eventbrite for notifications and updates.
– Free for UCSC undergraduate students (ticket required).
– General admission “Pay What You Like” options $5–20.
– A limited number of tickets/seats may be available at the door, even after online ticket sales end or reach full capacity.
– Doors are scheduled to open 30 minutes prior to event start time.
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PARKING
– Parking by permit, ParkMobile, or $11 cash/credit via the on-site parking attendant when present (no attendant will be present for the Sat. March 7 matinee).
– Additional parking by permit or ParkMobile.
– Arts Lot #126 is the closest parking lot to the event.
– Visitors with DMV placards or plates may park for free in DMV spaces, Medical spaces, or ParkMobile spaces without additional payment, or in timed zones for longer than the posted time.
– UCSC affiliates must purchase their permits before arriving at the event in order to receive their discounted UCSC rate. Attendants will only sell the non-affiliate-priced permits.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS).
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Random With A Purpose (RWAP) XXXlV—The Experiment
2026-03-08 14:00 - 16:00, 2026-03-07 19:30 - 21:00, 2026-03-06 19:30 - 21:00 | Second Stage, Second Stage, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Random With A Purpose is a popular annual student-directed and -choreographed dance showcase.
Per directors Lydia Wallman and Brennah Lyons, this year’s production, The Experiment, “serves as a platform for collaborators to develop work that does not yet exist in the physical world and to investigate elements of community and features a cast that reflects UC Santa Cruz’s diverse student population through a wide range of dance styles and perspectives.”
Admission

General admission $5–$20 “Pay What You Like”
FREE for UCSC undergrads (ticket required).
Tickets available on Eventbrite.
Doors open 30 minutes prior to the event start time.
Ticket holders not seated at least 5 minutes before the advertised start time may forfeit their ticket/seat and no refund will be issued.

Advisories
This performance is approximately 90 minutes with a 15-minute intermission and includes: flashing lights and mature language.
Event dates

Fri. Feb. 27: 7:30 p.m.
Sat. Feb. 28: 7:30 p.m.
Sun. Mar. 1: 2:00 p.m.
Thu. Mar. 5: 7:30 p.m.
Fri. Mar. 6: 7:30 p.m.
Sat. Mar. 7: 7:30 p.m.
Sun. Mar. 8: 2:00 p.m.

Parking

Parking by permit, ParkMobile, or $11.00 cash/credit card via the on-site parking attendant
Arts parking lot #126 is the closest parking lot to the event
Visitors with DMV placards or plates may park for free in DMV spaces, Medical spaces, or ParkMobile spaces without additional payment, or in timed zones for longer than the posted time.
Refer to Transportation & Parking Services for more information.

This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Jewels in the garden: A Darwinian natural history of humming birds with UCSC Professor Emeritus Bruce Lyon
2026-03-08 13:00 - 14:30 | Arboretum, 122 Arboretum Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
This presentation promises to be a super fun exploration of hummingbird natural history, evolution, and social behavior, full of fascinating scientific information and colorful images of local and exotic hummingbirds from here and abroad. Though now officially a Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UC Santa Cruz, we are lucky that Dr. Bruce Lyon has little inclination to stop studying bird ecology and evolution in ‘retirement’! During his rich career teaching and conducting research, Bruce’s work continues to include the Lyon Lab’s 18+ year-long project studying golden-crowned sparrows at the Arboretum.
Bruce will give his entertaining presentation and slideshow in the Arboretum’s Hort 2 Meeting Hall and then take interested folks outside to one of the Arboretum’s “hummingbird hotspots” for an informal (humming)-birdwatching session and Q&A.

Family-friendly and Bilingual Bird Walk at the UCSC Arboretum
2026-03-08 10:00 - 12:00 | Arboretum, 122 Arboretum Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Beginner Bird Walk / Paseando con los Pájaritos
Join the Bird School Project as they help kick-off the celebrations for Hummingbird Month in the beautiful gardens of the UCSC Arboretum & Botanic Garden. This bird walk is beginner and family-friendly. Bring binoculars if you have them, if not, binoculars or a monocular will be provided for you during the walk. The group will meet up at the entrance of the Australianum Garden right next to the large cypress tree in the middle of the parking lot. A Bird School Instructor will be leading the walk and will alternate speaking English and Spanish as needed. We encourage you to arrive at least 15 minutes early if you need to borrow binoculars.
Únase a la Escuela de Aves para celebrar el Mes del Colibrí. Este paseo de aves es para principiantes y apto para familias. Traiga binoculares si los tiene, si no, se le proporcionarán binoculares o un monocular durante la caminata. El grupo se reunirá en la entrada del Jardín Australia, justo al lado del gran ciprés en el medio del estacionamiento. Un instructor de la Escuela de Aves liderará la caminata y alternará hablando en inglés y español según sea necesario. Le recomendamos que llegue al menos 15 minutos antes si necesita pedir prestados binoculares.
Event is free with paid admission. Adults $10, Seniors $8, Youth 4-17 $5
Beginner and family-friendly bird walk at the UCSC Arboretum by the Santa Cruz Bird School Project in English and Spanish.

After Hours: MIKE Live at the Quarry (Student-Only Concert)
2026-03-07 19:00 - 22:00 | Upper Quarry Amphitheater, 15 McLaughlin Drive, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
MIKE headlines an exclusive hip hop concert for UC Santa Cruz students on Saturday, March 7 at the Quarry Amphitheater. Presented by the Division of Student Affairs and Success (DSAS) Leadership and Involvement Team, this event is part of the new After Hours series, created to expand opportunities for student connection, creativity, and engagement beyond traditional campus hours.
Special guest Lil Kayla opens the show.
Doors: 7 p.m. | Show: 8 p.m.
Tickets: $10 (UCSC students only, while supplies last)
Location: Quarry Amphitheater
Follow @ucsc.dsas on Instagram for updates.
Questions: involved@ucsc.edu

You Belong Here: The programs and services described here are open to all, consistent with state and federal law, as well as the University of California’s nondiscrimination policies. Every initiative—whether a student service, faculty program, or community event—is designed to be accessible, inclusive, and respectful of all identities.
To learn more, please visit UC Nondiscrimination Statement or Nondiscrimination Policy for UC Publications.

UCSC Grad Slam Final - March 7th
2026-03-07 18:30 - 21:00 | Kuumbwa Jazz Center, 320-2 Cedar St, Santa Cruz, 95060, United States
What is Grad Slam?

Three Minutes. One Slide. Thousands of Dollars in Prizes!
Grad Slam is a communication contest hosted by the UC Santa Cruz Graduate Division that highlights graduate student research. Participants have a maximum of three minutes to explain their graduate research or artistic endeavor to a general audience.
First Place, Grad Slam Champion: $3000
Second Place: $1500
People’s Choice*: $750
*decided by text message voting, one vote per audience member, both those in person and watching the live stream
Come join the fun and vote for your favorite presentation.
Saturday, March 7th at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center. Doors open at 6:30, talks begin at 7PM
All ten UC Grad Slam champions, 1 from each campus, compete in the UC Office of the President’s Grad Slam. The UC system-wide Grad Slam will take place on Wednesday, April 22, at the UC Center Sacramento.

First Saturday Tour at the Arboretum
2026-03-07 11:00 - 12:00 | Arboretum, 122 Arboretum Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
First Saturday Tours are a wonderful way to introduce yourself to the Arboretum or to deepen your knowledge of the Arboretum’s plant collections. Each tour is a little different depending on the time of year, the interests of the tour guide, and the people who join in. For example, you might learn about the birds and mammals that make this land their home or about the amazing physical adaptations that plants have evolved to better deal with our extreme weather and climate conditions. Tours are free with paid admission.

CANCELLED—UCSC Wind Ensemble—Spirits and Legends
2026-03-06 19:30 - 21:30 | Music Center Recital Hall, 400 McHenry Road, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Event update: this event is cancelled as of 6:30PM on Friday, March 6. Ticket holders will receive refunds automatically via Eventbrite. Please contact artsevents@ucsc.edu with questions or concerns.
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UCSC Wind Ensemble presents Spirits and Legends; a concert featuring music for Wind Ensemble on themes of past or present legends or spirit journeys. Featuring music from “Spirited Away” by Joe Hisaishi, “The Dream of Angus” by Rolf Rudin, “Sound and Smoke” by Viet Cuong, and music by Carlos Chavez, Julie Giroux, and Richard Wagner.
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ADMISSION
– General admission.
– Free for UCSC students (ticket required).
– Tickets available online through Eventbrite only HERE.
– Follow the Music Dept on Eventbrite for notices and updates.
– Doors are scheduled to open 30 minutes prior to event start time.
– Ticket holders not seated at least 5 minutes before the advertised start time may forfeit their ticket/seat and no refund will be issued.
—
PARKING
– Parking by permit, ParkMobile, or $11 cash/credit via the on-site parking attendant
– Arts Lot #126 is the closest parking lot to the event
– Visitors with DMV placards or plates may park for free in DMV spaces, Medical spaces, or ParkMobile spaces without additional payment, or in timed zones for longer than the posted time.
– UCSC affiliates must purchase their permits before arriving at the event in order to receive their discounted UCSC rate. Attendants will only sell the non-affiliate-priced permits.
– More information provided by UCSC Transportation & Parking Services (TAPS)
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This program is open to all members of the public consistent with state and federal law.

Lila Downs in Quarry Amphitheatre (March 6th)
2026-03-06 19:00 - 22:00 | Upper Quarry Amphitheater, 15 McLaughlin Drive, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064
Tickets are on sale at quarryamphitheater.com, starting at $67.50 for general admission, and $118.26 VIP seating.

Born in 1968, Lila Downs is one of Latin America’s most influential voices, an artist with a singular sound and magnetic stage presence. Rooted in Oaxaca and shaped between Mexico and the United States, she weaves Mexican tradition with jazz, cumbia, folk, and contemporary rhythms. Her music is both celebration and conscience; she’ll turn the redwood backdrop into a gathering—intimate, fearless, and deeply human—where culture is honored, stories are reclaimed, and audiences are invited to feel, dance, and remember.
