 Although some of the original founders had already outlined plans for an institution like UCSC as early as the 1930s , the opportunity to realize their vision did not present itself until the City of Santa Cruz made a bid to the University of California Regents in the mid @-@ 1950s to build a campus just outside town , in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains . The Santa Cruz site was selected over a competing proposal to build the campus closer to the population center of San Jose . Santa Cruz was selected for the beauty , rather than the practicality , of its location , however , and its remoteness led to the decision to develop a residential college system that would house most of the students on @-@ campus . The formal design process of the Santa Cruz campus began in the late 1950s , culminating in the Long Range Development Plan of 1963 . Construction had started by 1964 , and the university was able to accommodate its first students ( albeit living in trailers on what is now the East Field athletic area ) in 1965 . The campus was intended to be a showcase for contemporary architecture , progressive teaching methods , and undergraduate research . According to founding chancellor Dean McHenry , the purpose of the distributed college system was to combine the benefits of a major research university with the intimacy of a smaller college . UC President Clark Kerr shared a passion with former Stanford roommate McHenry to build a university modeled as " several <unk> " ( i.e. , small liberal arts colleges ) in close proximity to each other . Roads on campus were named after UC Regents who voted in favor of building the campus . 
