Merrill College

Merrill College is one of ten residential colleges that make up one of the defining experiences for students at UC Santa Cruz: the residential college system. It is part of the Crown-Merrill neighborhood on campus. Merrill was founded in 1968 as the fourth college at UCSC. The college takes its name from Charles E. Merrill Jr., former Headmaster of the Commonwealth School in Boston.

PARKING INFORMATION
Visitors to UCSC may purchase a daily permit at the Main Entrance Kiosk (M-7) or the TAPS Sales Office (L-7). They may also utilize ParkMobile in designated hourly/daily parking spaces. The closest parking lots to this location are Merrill College (119) or Stevenson College (109).

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View of a building with a bridge at Merrill
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🏠 Housing & The Residential Colleges

One of the defining experiences for students at UC Santa Cruz is our residential college system. Year-after-year, our alumni identify their residential college experience and student group involvement as central to their core identities and connection to campus. The people you will live with in these communities, the shared experiences, your growth academically and personally, are all fostered by the close-knit, home-away-from-home structure our residential colleges provide.

These ten communities, each with their own academic themes, architecture, activities, location, and support resources, provide a neighborhood for your lived campus experience. By design, our residential colleges are not connected to any specific major. This provides a wonderful opportunity to interact, live, and learn alongside fellow banana slugs from different backgrounds, countries, and experiences.

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🌎 Merrill College

Merrill's theme, Cultural Identities and Global Consciousness, helps students to understand the nature of cultural identity by examining the relationships between societies of the world and their struggles to preserve their cultures. Merrill's central goals are to promote respect for all world cultures, and for the individual cultural heritage of each Merrill student in particular. Every Merrill student has the opportunity to leave their mark, literally, on the Merrill Moat - an interactive community art project that is a celebration of the ideas, cultures, voices, and values of the Merrill community. It's a visual representation of their diversity and creativity.

Merrill has themed housing including trans-inclusive housing and a floor for LGBTQIA+ identifying students and allies, transfer, substance-free, academic intensive, science learning, arts floor, outdoor interest, world culture, Asian and Pacific Islander, and Chicano/Latino floors. It also contains a Pottery Co-op, the campus' oldest student run co-op providing education and practice in the art of pottery making. Merrill is also home to the Research Center for the Americas, the popular Santa Cruz radio station KZSC, and the Cantú Queer Center, and Allan Chadwick Garden.

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