Featured Alumni

For Matthew Kim, Family is the Main Inspiration for His Art

Originally, Matthew Kim intended on attending UC Santa Cruz to continue his volleyball career while also enjoying the sunny surf that Santa Cruz has to offer.  But injuries changed his best laid plans and his priorities took a steep turn along the way.

Art Student Becky Diaz Creates “The Four Dreamers” for CASA

Becky Diaz is a transfer student from Los Angeles County and moved to UC Santa Cruz to pursue her B.A. in Art.

Film and Digital Media Student Looks Through a Wide Lens

Ever since middle school Jackson T. Collins has had a passion for filmmaking that continued through high school when he was especially inspired by the advisor in his video class who encouraged him to always to his best.

Irwin Scholar, Mari Mafnas, Reveals Her Heart in Her Work

After visiting the Mary Porter Sesnon Art Gallery in 2018 on the UC Santa Cruz campus, Marian (Mari) Mafnas knew that UCSC was the place for her.

Facing Death Makes Aja Bond Feel Much More Alive

Loss and grief have turned out to be uncanny inspirations for artist and student Aja Bond, who is currently in her junior year, working towards earning a B.A. in art at UC Santa Cruz.

SocDoc Student Janet Chen Puts Touching Immigrant Stories Into Focus

Immigrating from Taiwan to the United States with her family when she was just nine years old, filmmaker Janet Chen learned to speak English by watching American television shows and movies.

UC Santa Cruz Arts Division Students Part of NASA NeMO-Net Game Development Team

Last month, NASA released NeMO-Net, an innovative iPad game where players help NASA classify coral reefs by painting 3D and 2D images of coral.

Music Department Student Accomplishments

Congratulations to the following Music Department students for their outstanding accomplishments!

Nelsen Hutchison
Ph.D Ethnomusicology Student

Jon Myers’ UCSC SoundMap Builds Surround-Sound Environments of the UCSC Campus

Jon Myers, a DMA candidate in composition at UC Santa Cruz, creates music for a variety of settings, from fully notated acoustic pieces to live electronic feedback music. He works on soundscapes and sonic maps of places.

Composer Andrew C. Smith Creates a Symbiotic Relationship Between Music and Language

UC Santa Cruz DMA candidate in composition, Andrew C. Smith, composes music that involves intonation tunings, repetition, and language at the threshold of making sense, often connected to computational processes throughout the composition.

PhD Candidate in Cross-Cultural Musicology Focuses His Work on Queer Open Mics

Ryan Lambe is a sixth-year PhD candidate and teaching fellow at UC Santa Cruz studying cross-cultural musicology. His dissertation is an ethnographic study of performance and emotional labor in US queer open mics examined through queer and critical race lenses. 

Careers of Distinction

The recipients of this year’s UC Santa Cruz Distinguished Graduate Student Alumni awards are out in the world inspiring change and advancing science. 

Francesca Romeo Considers the Intersection of Digital Media and Political Violence

Francesca Romeo received her BA in English Literature from UC Berkeley, and a dual Master’s degree from Pratt Institute in Photography and Art History.

SocDoc Filmmaker Takes a Fresh Look at Food Identity Politics

Melanie Ho is a queer Vietnamese American filmmaker and writer who currently works as the Graduate Student Coordinator at UC Santa Cruz’s Women’s Center. She’s in her second year, pursuing an MFA in the Social Documentation program (SocDoc).

Congratulations to the 2019 Arts Division Deans’ and Chancellor’s Award winners!

The UC Santa Cruz Arts Division was very proud to present the following, very talented students with this year’s awards. Congratulations to all of our awardees!

Arts Dean’s Award Winners:

PhD Candidate’s Queer Film and Media Research is Rich with Possibilities

Film and Digital Media PhD graduate student Marc Francis seemed destined to be a storyteller. As a child he put his wild imagination to work, dreaming up fanciful stories and movie plots, and even back then thought of becoming a film director and screenwriter.

Ian Alan Paul’s Fictional Museum Tackles Real Issues

Dividing his time between such divergent places as Barcelona, Cairo and Oakland, transdisciplinary artist-theorist Ian Alan Paul is currently a PhD candidate in UC Santa Cruz’s Film and Digital Media program, and has recently received acclaim for his virtual exhibit, The Guantanamo Bay Museum of…more

Terre Lee’s Exceptional Talents Combine to Teach Low-Income Children How to Thrive with Music

It’s been quite a journey for Terre Lee, now in her final quarter at UC Santa Cruz, as she contemplates graduating in June and thinking about what lies ahead in her future.

Three Film and Digital Media Department Students Honored

On Monday, January 11, 2016, the inaugural Blum Scholar Award presentations took place and honored six outstanding UC Santa Cruz graduate students.

Musical Intern Shane Liliedahl

Music major Shane Liliedahl had himself one busy senior year.

Film Editor Spencer Koobatian

Feasting on films since childhood, Film & Digital Media senior Spencer Koobatian quickly realized that his central cinematic passion was film editing.  As a student at the Idyllwild Arts Academy’s Moving Pictures Department, Koobatian was soon immersed in…more

Last modified: May 10, 2024