Santa Cruz highlight
University of California, Santa Cruz
Founded in 1965, UC Santa Cruz is California's Central Coast research university with 19,173 students and a distinctive residential college system within redwood forests.
The University of California, Santa Cruz was established in 1965, beginning with its first students living in trailers on what is now the East Field athletic area. The campus grew on land purchased from the Cowell Family ranch in 1961, occupying 2,000 acres of coastal redwood forest above the city of Santa Cruz. Today it serves 19,173 students—17,312 undergraduates and 1,861 graduate students—across 74 undergraduate majors and 67 graduate programs.
UCSC is known for its distinctive residential college system that creates small learning communities within the larger research university, combining the resources of a major institution with the personal attention of a liberal arts college. The university emphasizes high-impact research and teaching, with 93 percent of undergraduates being California residents. As the largest employer in Santa Cruz with 9,105 employees, UCSC shaped the region's economy and political landscape, transforming Santa Cruz County from a historically Republican area into a strongly Democratic one following the university's arrival in the 1960s.
Thousands of UCSC students and staff call Santa Cruz home each year, and many return to settle in the region after graduation. Whether a recent graduate's first apartment, a faculty member's family home, or a retiree's return to a place where they lived decades earlier, people move in and out of different life stages. Recognizing those transitions—renter to homeowner, single to partnered to parent to empty nester—and revisiting insurance coverage at each stage keeps protection matched to need rather than left to chance.