Bren Hall

The College of Engineering (CoE) is one of the three undergraduate colleges at the University of California, Santa Barbara. As of 2021, there were approximately 150 faculty, 1,650 undergraduate students, and 750 graduate students. According to the Leiden Ranking, engineering and physical sciences at UCSB is ranked #1 among public universities for top 10% research citation impact. According to the National Research Council rankings, the UCSB engineering graduate research program in Materials was ranked #1 and Chemical Engineering ranked #5 in the nation among public universities.

The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) is a research institute of the University of California, Santa Barbara. KITP is one of the most renowned institutes for theoretical physics in the world, and brings theorists in physics and related fields together to work on topics at the forefront of theoretical science. The National Science Foundation has been the principal supporter of the institute since it was founded as the Institute for Theoretical Physics in 1979. In a 2007 article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, KITP was given the highest impact index in a comparison of nonbiomedical research organizations across the U.S.

Center for Evolutionary Psychology (CEP) is a research center co-founded and co-directed by John Tooby and Leda Cosmides and is affiliated with the University of California, Santa Barbara. The center is meant to provide research support and comprehensive training in the field of evolutionary psychology. The goals of the center are to facilitate the discovery of the adaptations that characterize the species-wide architecture of the human mind and brain and to explore how socio-cultural phenomena can be explained with reference to these adaptations. The extramural board of the center are made up of Irven DeVore, Paul Ekman, Michael Gazzaniga, Steven Pinker and Roger Shepard.

The University of California, Santa Barbara Library is the university library system of the University of California, Santa Barbara in Santa Barbara, California. The Library includes four facilities: Two libraries (the Main Library (Davidson Library) and the Music Library) and two annexes (Annex I and Annex II). The library has some three million print volumes, 30,000 electronic journals, 34,450 e-books, 900,055 digitized items, five million cartographic items (including some 467,000 maps and 3.2 million satellite and aerial images), more than 3.7 million pieces of microform, 167,500 sound recordings, and 4,100 manuscripts. The Library states that it holds 3.2 miles (5.1 km) of manuscript and archival collections.The library serves UC Santa Barbara's students, faculty, and staff. The Library is also open to the public, but to borrow materials, non-University affiliated individuals must purchase a UCSB Library Card for $100 for one year. However, members of UCSB affiliates may join for a reduced fee, and students and faculty at other University of California campuses, public school teachers, and faculty from reciprocating libraries may also obtain borrowing privileges with no charge, subject to verification. Members of the UC Alumni Association may obtain a courtesy library card, which provides borrowing access, but not access to licensed databases or interlibrary loan, or the ability to check-out journals.The Main Library has eight floors, with the Pacific View Room on the eighth floor offering a view of the Pacific Ocean.Kristin Antelman was named University Librarian in 2018.

The College of Creative Studies (CCS) is the smallest of the three undergraduate colleges at the University of California, Santa Barbara, unique within the University of California system in terms of structure and philosophy. Its small size, student privileges, and grading system are designed to encourage self-motivated students with strong interests in a field to accomplish original work as undergraduates. A former student has called it a “graduate school for undergraduates”. The college has roughly 350 students in nine majors and approximately 60 professors and lecturers. There is an additional application process to the standard UC Santa Barbara admission for prospective CCS students, and CCS accepts applications for admissions throughout the year. The college only offers 9 majors: Art, Biology, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Computing, Marine Science, Mathematics, Music Composition, Physics, and Writing and Literature.

The AlloSphere is a research facility in a theatre-like pavilion in a spherical shape, of opaque material, used to project computer-generated imagery and sounds. Included are GIS, scientific, artistic, and other information. Located at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) the AlloSphere grew out of the schools of electrical engineering and computer science, and the Media Arts & Technology program at UCSB.The AlloSphere is housed at UCSB California NanoSystems Institute building, "CNSI," or Elings Hall, a 62,000-square-foot (5,800 m2) facility that opened in 2007. The AlloSphere is intended to integrate technology and media.The AlloSphere includes a three-story cube that has been insulated extensively with sound-absorbing material, making it one of the largest echo-less chambers in the world. Within the chamber are two hemispheres of 5 meter radii, made of perforated aluminum. These are opaque and acoustically transparent.There are 26 video projectors, to create as much of a field of vision as possible.The loudspeaker real-time sound synthesis cluster (140 individual speaker elements plus sub-woofers) is suspended behind the aluminum screen resulting in 3-D audio. Computation clusters include simulation, sensor-array processing, real-time video processing for motion-capture and visual computing, render-farm/real-time ray-tracing and radiosity cluster, and content and prototyping environments.The AlloSphere was developed by a team of scientists, led primarily by Professor JoAnn Kuchera-Morin, a professor in the field of Composition, of the Media Arts & Technology Program of UCSB.

The Associated Students of the University of California, Santa Barbara (ASUCSB) is the undergraduate students' union of the University of California, Santa Barbara. It is one of two students' unions at UCSB, the other being the Graduate Student Association. It purports to be both a non-profit organization and an official department of UCSB. It is classified as an "unincorporated association" by the California Attorney General's Registry of Charitable Trusts. Its goals are to "voice student concerns and express student opinion" and "enrich student life and give students services and opportunities not offered by the [university] administration." ASUCSB derives its authority from section 61.10-15 of the "Policies Applying to Campus Activities, Organizations and Students" of the University of California.

The Center for Spatial Studies and Data Science (@spatial) is a research center at the University of California, Santa Barbara built on a rich legacy of providing visionary and interdisciplinary leadership in geographic data science. Formerly named the Center for Spatial Studies, @spatial was founded in 2008 by Michael Goodchild, and focuses on spatial thinking across domains, spatial intelligence, geoinformatics, geographic information science, and geographic information systems. Founded on values of excellence and inclusion, the mission of the Center for Spatial Studies and Data Science is to serve the UC Santa Barbara campus, the local community, and society by accelerating scientific discovery, education, and access to actionable solutions. The Center hosts speakers, workshops, and visiting researchers as well as the annual Specialist Meeting that brings global experts together on emerging topics in spatial data science to fuel discussion and set research agendas. The Center consists of core researchers engaged in center management and initiatives, affiliate researchers across UC Santa Barbara interested in participating in Center activities, a Trainee Network of post-docs, graduate students, and undergraduate students, support staff, and valued external partners. Community engagement and outreach is a priority of the Center, with efforts including the Earth + Humans podcast about the challenges brought on by human’s interactions with the environment and the Community GIS Initiative, which aims to increase access to GIS solutions by creating a pathway to those who have GIS skills.

Goleta Beach is a region of coastline located near Goleta, California, just east of the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) campus. A portion of the shore of Goleta Bay is managed by the County of Santa Barbara, as the Goleta Beach County Park (GBCP). The beach itself is partly man-made as sand was spread onto an existing sandspit in 1945. The beach is a seasonal habitat for migrating shorebirds, including the snowy plover, an endangered species, and is occasionally closed due to nourishment efforts.

The Daily Nexus is a campus newspaper at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Daily Nexus lineage can be traced to the Santa Barbara State College student newspaper, The Eagle, of the 1930s. After the college became part of the UC system in 1944, The Eagle evolved under different names — The Roadrunner, El Gaucho, The University Post and The Daily Gaucho. The modern Daily Nexus emerged from the activism and civil protests of the 1960s-1970s. The newspaper's editors changed the publication's name in 1970 to the Daily Nexus to "keep with the changing nature of the university" after protesters burned down the Bank of America building in Isla Vista, a UCSB community neighboring the campus. The 1970-71 editorial board drew inspiration from a quote by Robert Maynard Hutchins: "A free press is the nexus of any democracy". Since then, the Daily Nexus has covered campus-related and county-wide news, sports and arts. Students run the editorial side of the paper, independent of faculty or administration input or guidance. The editor in chief hires editorial staff and has the final word on what goes to print. Editors train and supervise staff writers and reporters. UCSB students work on the advertising and business side, as well. The Daily Nexus office is situated in the Storke Communications Plaza, beneath Storke Tower and next to the offices of KCSB-FM, the campus radio station. The Daily Nexus receives about two thirds of its funds from advertising revenue. The other one third is derived from a quarterly lock-in fee of $3.85 per student during the regular school year and $1.00 per student during the summer session. The lock-in fee is voted upon by students every two years.

KCSB-FM (91.9 FM) is a non-commercial, educational radio station located on the UC Santa Barbara campus. KCSB is designed to be educational for both programmers and listeners. UCSB students and other programmers are provided an opportunity to learn the fundamentals of radio broadcasting, both technically and in terms of broadcast content, and to explore more advanced aspects of broadcasting and the audio medium. The station has a range that reaches as far south as Los Angeles County and as far north as San Luis Obispo, California.

The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB), is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara, California, United States. It is part of the University of California university system. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an independent teachers' college, UCSB joined the ancestor of the California State University system in 1909 and then moved over to the University of California system in 1944. It is the third-oldest undergraduate campus in the system, after UC Berkeley and UCLA. Total student enrollment for 2022 was 23,460 undergraduate and 2,961 graduate students.UCSB's campus sits on the oceanfront site of a converted WWII-era Marine Corps air station. UCSB is organized into three undergraduate colleges (Letters and Science, Engineering, Creative Studies) and two graduate schools (Education and Environmental Science & Management), offering more than 200 degrees and programs. UCSB is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity" and is regarded as a Public Ivy. The university has 10 national research centers, including the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics. According to the National Science Foundation, UC Santa Barbara spent $235 million on research and development in fiscal year 2018, ranking it 100th in the nation. UCSB was the No. 3 host on the ARPAnet and was elected to the Association of American Universities in 1995. Current UCSB faculty includes 6 Nobel Prize laureates, 1 Fields Medalist, 39 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 27 members of the National Academy of Engineering, and 34 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The faculty also includes two Academy and Emmy Award winners and recipients of a Millennium Technology Prize, an IEEE Medal of Honor, a National Medal of Technology and Innovation and a Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.