By M.R.C. Greenwood

This summer marks the end of my fifth year as chancellor of UC Santa Cruz, and I will soon begin my sixth. This milestone has caused me to take a few moments to compare what I knew about UCSC at the time of my arrival and what I know about the campus now. At the time of my selection as chancellor, I called UCSC a "jewel in the finest teaching and research university in the world." When I made that statement, I had already been impressed by some of the campus's most distinctive features: its commitment to undergraduate education; its reputation for excellence in a number of fields. But I was still discovering the best part of the UCSC story: the people behind those programs--our creative and curious students, our talented and dedicated faculty and staff, our loyal and successful alumni, our supportive and generous donors and volunteers. Evidence of the quality of these people is explicit throughout this Review. The issue features the likes of graduate student Jim Kent, who, working long hours, designed a computer program that he and other members of a UCSC team used to assemble the draft sequence of the human genome; Karen Holl, one of our faculty members, whose fieldwork is greatly advancing our knowledge of the best ways to restore the world's tropical forests; and Gillian Welch, one of our graduates, whose musical creations are featured on a popular movie soundtrack.	Photo: Don Harris	The cover story details the work of Lisa Sloan, one of a number of distinguished UCSC Earth scientists. With the help of her students, Professor Sloan has developed a regional climate model that forecasts the potentially devastating effects that rising levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere will have on California. This issue also features the work of two of our social scientists: sociologist Marcia Millman and economist Lori Kletzer. Professor Millman has authored a stimulating new book that explores the connections between real-life love and cinema, and Professor Kletzer has coauthored a thought-provoking "wage insurance" proposal for displaced American workers. Let me also call your attention to a Q&A with the campus's new dean of humanities. Describing a half-century of forces that have reduced the investment our country's universities make in humanities scholarship, Wlad Godzich outlines what his division is doing to reverse that slide – and why. Because of all these people and many more like them, I can say with great confidence that our "jewel" shines more brightly than ever.   M.R.C. Greenwood Chancellor
	At the time of my selection as chancellor, I called UC Santa Cruz a "jewel in the finest teaching and research university in the world." But I was still discovering the best part of the UCSC story.