2025-2026: Cowell College Records

2025-2026 CART Fellow Anna Ijiri Oehlkers is currently processing the records of UCSC's Cowell College.

“The Pursuit of Truth in the Company of Friends”

-- Cowell College motto

Cowell College was the first residential college established at UC Santa Cruz in 1965. Its founding provost, Page Smith, was integral in shaping the college and UCSC's entire system of colleges during his time at Santa Cruz. The College was named after landowner Henry Cowell, whose family owned the land known as Cowell Ranch in the 19th and 20th centuries, where the UC Santa Cruz campus now sits. Just as the campus is celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2025, so is Cowell College!

Cowell College is also home to the Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery, named after the artist and wife of Page Smith; the Cowell Press, where students have been learning about letterpress printing and book arts since 1969; and the Page Smith Library. Cowell’s other affiliated programs include the Center for Public Philosophy, Miriam Ellis International Playhouse, and the Smith Society.
 

To learn more about Cowell College and its history, read the oral history of Page Smith, Cowell’s founding provost; Seeds of Something Different: An Oral History of the University of California, Santa Cruz; and visit Cowell College’s website.

The collection of the Cowell College Records spans over 75 boxes and shows the core functions, administration, and daily life of students over the last 60 years. It includes welcome letters for the first students from Page Smith, planning documents, early course files, journals from the Cowell Poetry and Fiction Workshops, many photographs and scrapbooks, posters from student events, documentation from advisory committees and assemblies, and some audiovisual recordings. The records show the more formal governance and organization of the college as well as the day-to-day life of students over the decades. Many of Cowell’s affiliated programs, publications, and projects are also documented in the collection.

To view photographs from other collections in Special Collections & Archives about life at Cowell College over the years, visit our Digital Collections site.

CART Summer Archives Workshop

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In September 2025, CART hosted its first intensive week-long archives workshop, welcoming five graduate students to get hands-on training in archival theory and practice in Special Collections & Archives. After reviewing over 40 applications from across all five academic divisions, CART Archivist Alix Norton and former CART Fellow Meleia Simon-Reynolds (PhD, History) selected 5 graduate students for the inaugural workshop: Stefania Cotei (History of Consciousness), Alaura Hopper (Anthropology), Kim Kölle Valentine (Film and Digital Media), Melissa Mack (Literature), and Jacob Sirhan (Visual Studies).

Alix and Meleia designed and co-led a week of discussions, readings, hands-on time with special collections materials, staff presentations, and training in arrangement, description, and preservation of archival collections. Before the cohort arrived in the library, they read articles introducing them to archives studies and wrote reflections on how the readings tied in with their own experiences, as well as any questions that arose that they’d like to explore further. The week provided that chance for exploration, as the cohort learned about the principles of archival processing and then put those principles into practice with hands-on processing experience. The arrangement and description work they completed made two collections available for research: the Ruth Solomon Papers and the Vajrapani Institute for Wisdom Culture Records.

At the end of the week, the cohort brainstormed ideas for activating the archival collections they worked on with various user communities, including UCSC students. Each cohort member created collages that were compiled into a creative zine, reflecting the cohort’s experience engaging with archival theory, the collections they processed, and one another.

View the CART 2025 Workshop zine!

CART Alternative Spring Break 2025: Huerta Center Graduate Scholars

In March 2025, the University Library’s Center for Archival Research and Training (CART) and the Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas hosted three graduate scholars in an alternative spring break processing the Dolores Huerta personal papers and Dolores Huerta Foundation records in Bakersfield, California.

In 2024, UC Santa Cruz received a $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to help establish new public archives documenting the legacy of social justice activist Dolores Huerta. As part of this grant, a professional archivist, postdoctoral scholars, and graduate student scholars will be hired and work together to preserve the legacy of Dolores Huerta and the work she has done through the Dolores Huerta Foundation, and create new research and education materials. The grant forms a partnership between the Dolores Huerta Center for the Americas, the Latin American and Latino Studies Department, Special Collections & Archives, and the Dolores Huerta Foundation. Learn more about the Dolores Huerta Foundation archives partnership with UC Santa Cruz.

The three Huerta Center Graduate Scholars worked alongside professional archivists at the Dolores Huerta Foundation to help organize and describe the Dolores Huerta Papers and Foundation Records. Working with the CART Archivist and other staff at the University Library Special Collections & Archives, the Huerta Scholars were trained in archival theory and practice before traveling to the Dolores Huerta Foundation in Bakersfield. Travel funding and accommodations in Bakersfield were provided thanks to the generous sponsorship of The Humanities Institute of UC Santa Cruz.

While in Bakersfield, the Scholars had the opportunity to meet Dolores Huerta, work alongside and learn from Dolores Huerta Foundation Archives Director Lori de Leon, and visit the Cesar Chavez National Monument at La Paz. Learn more about the students' experience on the Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas blog.

Past CART Fellows & Projects