TITLE: The UCSC Center for Monster Studies

 

Submitted by: 

Michael M. Chemers, Performance, Play & Design (Arts)

Elizabeth Swensen, Performance, Play & Design (Arts)

Renée Fox, Literature (Humanities)

Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Computational Media (Engineering)

Sponsored by:

James Gunderson 

Approved:2/4/2023

 

Project: 

THE UCSC CENTER FOR MONSTER STUDIES 

 

Goals:

This BOF proposal requests $40,000 in funding,

 

Among the major outcomes of fully funded student access: 

The Center for Monster Studies’ first stage of growth—the expansion of the 2023 Festival of Monsters—will result in a number of measurable outcomes:

 

1. The October 2023 MAH exhibition on women comics artists, curated collaboratively by Center for Monster Studies faculty members and UCSC undergraduates. Student success on this project will be measured by the quality of work they produce for the exhibition and their own self-reflections on the value and professional utility of this work. The success of the exhibition itself will be measured through visitor numbers as well as through attendance at Festival of Monsters events focused on the exhibition materials. We expect this endeavor to result in a longer-term collaboration with the MAH that will enable the Center–its faculty and students–to produce new exhibitions in conjunction with future Festivals of Monsters.
2. A gathering of scholars from across the US to present their cutting-edge Monster Studies While past festivals have hosted one or two non-UCSC scholars, the 2023 Festival will include a more expansive scholarly program that aims both to better introduce the field of Monster Studies to the UCSC/Santa Cruz communities and to begin consolidating the Center for Monster Studies’ standing as this field’s premier research hub. We will measure this

 

outcome primarily through the number of high-profile scholars we can include in our program and the number of attendees at their presentations.

3. Talks, demonstrations, and performances by monster-making artists and industry professionals. Again, while past festivals have brought one or two creative makers to campus, the 2023 Festival aims to put the Center for Monster Studies on the radar of VIP professionals working in comics, film, tv, and fiction-writing while also drawing a larger campus and community audience to the Center’s programming. We hope to host 3-5 VIP makers in 2023, and the final success of this outcome will be measured by the willingness of these participants to share their networks and help us grow a base of supporters in creative industries.
4. A student- and community-centered Festival. While we will rely on our invited speakers to help us grow our national scholarly and industry network/profile, the 2023 Festival also aims to draw the UCSC and Santa Cruz communities into the orbit of the Center. A monster story writing competition for students will be judged by local horror writers, the program will include poster sessions, workshops, and readings to highlight undergraduate scholarly and creative Monster Studies work, many events will be held off campus to be more inviting to the local community, and the scholarly panels will be designed to be accessible to interested non- academic audiences. We plan to strengthen our marketing/publicity campaign this year across the Santa Cruz community, and we’ll measure our success in this respect by in-person registration/attendance numbers.
5. Wider participation through online For the first time, this year’s Festival will include options for participating in talks and other sessions online, which will extend accessibility to the Festival far beyond the local community. With the help of our invited scholars, VIPs, and our own contacts, we aim to publicize the Festival—and by extension the Center for Monster Studies—both nationally and internationally, and expect to attract substantial new participation through the Festival’s online availability. Virtual participation is easy to track so we will be able to clearly measure the success of this outreach through our online registration numbers.
6. A larger fundraising/donor network. As the ultimate aim of the expanded Festival is to lay the ground for the UCSC Center for Monster Studies to grow its undergraduate programming and curriculum, its scholarly/creative output, its network of scholars and industry professionals, its ability to host public-facing events throughout the year, and its reputation as the world’s leading organization for the dissemination of Monster Studies work, we need the Festival to help us significantly increase our fundraising base. Every registration for the Festival, both in-person and online, will be an addition to our fundraising mailing list. The industry professionals we invite will be important partners in creating new networks of potential donors, and student- and community-centered programming will enable us to apply for grants that support this work. While this outcome might be difficult to measure in the short term, the Festival will provide the basis for its success by furnishing us with a much longer mailing list, commitments from participants to allow us to tap into their networks, and information about targeted grant opportunities.

Amount funded:

$ 20,000

Key UCSC faculty and staff:

 Celine Shimizu, Dean of the Arts

 

 

 

DATE:       29 November 2022                                

 

PROJECT TITLE:         THE UCSC CENTER FOR MONSTER STUDIES                               

 

NAME OF BOF COMMITTEE SPONSOR (leave blank if one hasn’t been identified):  James Gunderson_

 

CAMPUS APPLICANT(S):        Michael M. Chemers, Performance, Play & Design (Arts)        

        Elizabeth Swensen, Performance, Play & Design (Arts)          

        Renée Fox, Literature (Humanities)                                       

        Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Computational Media (Engineering)          

 

DIVISION/AREA:        ARTS, HUMANITIES, ENGINEERING                                                 

 

CONTACT NAME:      Michael M. Chemers                                                                          

 

TITLE: _Professor, Director of the Center for Monster Studies                                                

 

TELEPHONE:   412-913-5782                                                                                            

 

EMAIL: _chemers@ucsc.edu                                                                                                

 

 

Please confirm that the Dean, College Provost, or Vice Chancellor has reviewed and supports this request:

 

DEAN/COLLEGE PROVOST/VICE CHANCELLOR:

 

  Celine Shimizu, Dean of the Arts                                                                       11/29/22            

 

(name)                                                               (date)

 

 

I agree to the above terms:

 

 

APPLICANT:

 

      Michael Chemers                    

 

       11/29/22          

 

 

(name)                                                            (date)

 

November 29, 2022

 

To:      Board Opportunity Fund Committee

UC Santa Cruz Foundation, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064

 

Re:      UCSC Center for Monster Studies Application for Expansion of its Festival

 

Dear Colleagues,

 

Some of you were at the October 7 Interdisciplinary Research Symposium (or watched it remotely, as I did) where Center for Monster Studies’ founder and director, Michael Chemers, explained the Center’s purpose, activities and ambition. Several Board members approached Michael afterwards to express their enthusiasm, and suggested he apply for a BOF grant. Richard followed up to explain how BOF grants work, and Michael saw the opportunity for a step change towards the Center’s major goals, ultimately making establishment of a research journal possible.

 

This first step would substantially strengthen the Center’s capabilities in several respects, including socially relevant undergraduate program-building; leveraging Library Special Collections, the Digital Scholarship Commons and other unique campus assets; scholarly engagement and collaboration among our students and faculty on campus as well as with scholars globally; engaging with collaborators in the Santa Cruz community, the campus’ alumni and support network, and in the arts and entertainment worlds; and raising awareness and visibility of the products of those collaborations. Doing so will strengthen the Center’s ability to raise the funds to sustain these initiatives and progress to next steps.

 

The Center convenes its conference, engages scholars and collaborators in the arts and entertainment worlds, and raises awareness of its work, through its Festival of Monsters. An expanded Festival, linked to undergraduate programing and collaboration with community partners, will drive this next step.

 

This proposal has a number of aspects I think worth highlighting:

 

• It engages students in serious scholarship in ways that are fun, and examines culture through media that most students enjoy, and many students are intensely interested in, including games and comic books, as well as literature, film and Motivating students this way can promote retention and student success.
• It expands student opportunities to showcase their work in pubic (e.g. the MAH exhibition) and in front of artists and entertainment industry notables participating in the festival, which inspires confidence and promotes success.
• It showcases interdisciplinary collaboration focused on socially important issues the campus is passionate about, including exposing and countering sources of prejudice and oppression

 

I plan to contribute $25,000 to the expanded festival and exhibition, publish a free monster-focused Slug comic book for the festival, and am funding an associated course.

 

James Gunderson

 

PROJECT DETAILS:

 

1. Major project activities

 

 

This proposal supports the expansion of the UCSC Center for Monster Studies (monsterstudies.ucsc.edu), a new collaborative interdisciplinary research hub that brings students, scholars, creative makers, industry professionals, and the general public together to examine the role monsters play in representing the most challenging problems facing our world, including matters of race and religion, social justice, and environmental threats. The only institution of its kind in the world, the Center for Monster Studies is poised to become one of UCSC’s most high profile and innovative arts and humanities initiatives, drawing students from across the divisions, faculty from across the country, and leading artists from an array of media industries.

 

Since its founding in 2019, the primary activity of the Center for Monster Studies has been the annual UCSC Festival of Monsters, a three-day public conference that brings leading monster studies scholars into conversation with widely acclaimed producers of monster-focused works for the stage, comic books, literature, games, and film, as well as with UCSC’s own faculty and students. Past festivals have showcased cross-divisional scholarly collaborations and creative work, in addition to hosting film screenings, performances, horror writing competitions, and a Monster’s Ball costume party open to all participants. These festivals have examined how culturally constructed ideas of monstrosity are used as dangerous tools of social marginalization, ostracization, and persecution, and have challenged these injustices through scholarly and creative re-imaginings of the monsters that are pervasive in our culture.

 

Hampered in its first few years by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Center for Monster Studies is ready to embark on a two-stage expansion, beginning in 2023. The first stage is an enlargement of the Festival of Monsters in 2023 to engage a wider set of campus and Santa Cruz community partners, to create a public forum for trailblazing undergraduate research, and to more closely entwine UCSC’s scholarly work with the work of monster-creators beyond the academy. The second stage emerges from the first: the broader purview of the 2023 Festival will lay the foundations for undergraduate program-building, greater community outreach and opportunities for participation in public scholarship, closer ties to monster-making industries that can be leveraged for student internships, and a growing roster of scholars and creators with whom the Center can produce events, master classes, and seminars throughout the year.

 

Before describing these stages in more detail, we want to explain why studying monsters matters, especially right now. We live in a time of accelerating dehumanization, othering, oppression, and injustice. We see it globally in the rise of political parties dedicated to anti-immigrant discrimination. We see it in the murders of indigenous defenders of the Amazon. We see it in the disregard for Black lives and women's lives in U.S. institutions of "justice" — from local police forces to the Supreme Court.

 

One powerful way the arts and humanities can respond to these injustices is to embrace and subvert tropes of monstrosity — the very tropes so often used as tools of dehumanization. This approach unites the fine arts, the humanities, and popular media. It stretches centuries into the past and at the same time speaks directly to our contemporary moment. It is a focus of current UCSC faculty research in the arts, humanities, social sciences, and engineering, and is also an ever-expanding passion of undergraduates.

 

While monsters have long fascinated anthropologists, social psychologists, folklorists, and cultural historians, since the 1990s Monster Studies itself has become an increasingly influential interdisciplinary field. Monster Studies scholars and practitioners explore monsters and monstrosity from an array of methodological, theoretical, and historical perspectives, and have homes across the arts, humanities, and sciences at academic institutions around the world.

 

But none of these institutions have a Center for Monster Studies like UCSC does. This highly collaborative and interdisciplinary Center thrives on the research and teaching strengths at UCSC. The field of Monster Studies closely aligns with campus values both in its focus on the cultural underpinnings of social injustice and in its deep commitment to fostering a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive world. And UCSC students have a great enthusiasm for the cultural material in which monsters are so often found: humanities and arts courses taught by UCSC Center for Monster Studies faculty members regularly enroll 400 students. No other institution is doing this combination of socially relevant research, highly motivating teaching, and public events in the field of Monster Studies. By growing the Center for Monster Studies, UCSC has a unique opportunity to establish itself as the nucleus of research and community engagement for this rich and growing interdisciplinary field.

 

We are applying to the Board Opportunity Foundation specifically to support the first stage of our growth plan—the expansion of the 2023 Festival of Monsters—with the expectation that this expansion will provide a basis for future fundraising to support the second stage of our plan. We see the 2023 Festival as an opportunity to strategically cultivate a number of partnerships both in and beyond Santa Cruz. First, we are working on a collaboration with the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (MAH) and UCSC Special Collections to mount an exhibition at the MAH of comic book monsters made by women artists, which we hope to launch during the 2023 Festival of Monsters. We see this 2023 collaboration as a pilot program: in conjunction with the MAH exhibition, Center for Monster Studies faculty have developed an undergraduate seminar designed to involve students in building the exhibition, and with funding to make the seminar and exhibition successful we believe we will be able to forge an ongoing MAH partnership that will widen the Center’s public reach, provide a forum to host new artists and scholars, and create exciting opportunities for undergraduates to engage in original and public-facing scholarly work.

 

Next, with the help of Center supporters who have extensive connections with monster-creators in the media, we are developing contacts in creative industries: writers like YA novelist Kiersten White (The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein), British horror novelist Mike Carey (The Girl with all the Gifts), indigenous horror writer Stephen Graham Jones (Mongrels), and television horror writer Jen Haley (Hemlock Grove); film and television actors/effects creators like Kirk Thatcher (Werewolf by Night) and Bradford DeCaussin (Pacific Rim); and comic book creators like Iván Brandon (Drifter) and Natalie Andrewson (Thought Drinker). We hope to invite several of these artists to speak at the Festival, and are particularly interested in partnering with the Santa Cruz Film Festival to have our Festival screen a series of these artists’ monster films in conjunction with their presentations. Each of these artists brings significant credibility to the work of the Center — we are not huddled in an ivory tower but are actively engaged with real-world monster makers—as well as a substantial network of other industry makers that we hope to draw on for future Center activities, as well as into the classroom for Monster Studies courses.

 

Finally, we intend to widen the audience that the Festival can engage by increasing its accessibility on digital platforms. We would like to stream the conference on sites like Twitch or YouTube, as well as expand our social media presence (a challenge in this time of social media upheaval) to attract an audience beyond Santa Cruz to the work of the Center. To fully realize this expansion

 

into the digital realm, we will need access to a number of new communication tools and staff expertise.

 

While these endeavors all require considerable seed investments, we see them as a path to monetizing the value of the Center’s work. Once established, we hope to support these activities sustainably with Festival registration/entrance fees, as well as to create a fundraising base from the greatly expanded network of participants that this larger Festival will draw to the Center. With increased fundraising, we plan to extend the Center for Monster Studies’ reach in several ways: a monthly podcast in which Center faculty talk monsters with well-known scholars and industry professionals, an undergraduate certificate program called Public Monsters (in which students work across Monster Studies and the Public Humanities), virtual and in-person events throughout the year, and satellite events in monster-laden cities like Los Angeles and New York to which we can draw UCSC alumni as well as scholars and creators. To make this growth possible, our future fundraising priorities will include hiring a Center for Monster Studies administrative staff member, as well as fundraising for these specific activities and for student support to gain professional experience working with the Center and its industry network.

 

To initiate the first stage of this growth, we request BOF funds of $40,000 as part of a larger 2023 Festival budget of $62,000. Because we don’t yet have a Center staff member, a significant portion of these funds ($32,000) will be allocated to finance two quarters of a graduate student researcher (GSR) to provide administrative support for the 2023 Festival. In 2022 we could only fund one quarter of a GSR, and expanding the Festival will only be possible if we have a second quarter of GSR support. In addition to helping to coordinate the 2023 Festival’s various events, the GSR will also play an important role in fundraising for 2024 and beyond, when we embark upon the second stage of our expansion.

 

In addition, previously we had limited access to a program manager to handle purchasing and our publicity was undertaken by an overburdened volunteer. We are requesting $6000 to pay these two staffers (a program manager and a social-media-savvy publicist), and $2000 as a budget for the publicist to purchase new communication tools and improve existing ones (including creating a Webinar for the conference).

 

 

2. Outcome(s), measurements

 

The Center for Monster Studies’ first stage of growth—the expansion of the 2023 Festival of Monsters—will result in a number of measurable outcomes:

 

1. The October 2023 MAH exhibition on women comics artists, curated collaboratively by Center for Monster Studies faculty members and UCSC undergraduates. Student success on this project will be measured by the quality of work they produce for the exhibition and their own self-reflections on the value and professional utility of this work. The success of the exhibition itself will be measured through visitor numbers as well as through attendance at Festival of Monsters events focused on the exhibition materials. We expect this endeavor to result in a longer-term collaboration with the MAH that will enable the Center–its faculty and students–to produce new exhibitions in conjunction with future Festivals of Monsters.
2. A gathering of scholars from across the US to present their cutting-edge Monster Studies While past festivals have hosted one or two non-UCSC scholars, the 2023 Festival will include a more expansive scholarly program that aims both to better introduce the field of Monster Studies to the UCSC/Santa Cruz communities and to begin consolidating the Center for Monster Studies’ standing as this field’s premier research hub. We will measure this

 

outcome primarily through the number of high-profile scholars we can include in our program and the number of attendees at their presentations.

3. Talks, demonstrations, and performances by monster-making artists and industry professionals. Again, while past festivals have brought one or two creative makers to campus, the 2023 Festival aims to put the Center for Monster Studies on the radar of VIP professionals working in comics, film, tv, and fiction-writing while also drawing a larger campus and community audience to the Center’s programming. We hope to host 3-5 VIP makers in 2023, and the final success of this outcome will be measured by the willingness of these participants to share their networks and help us grow a base of supporters in creative industries.
4. A student- and community-centered Festival. While we will rely on our invited speakers to help us grow our national scholarly and industry network/profile, the 2023 Festival also aims to draw the UCSC and Santa Cruz communities into the orbit of the Center. A monster story writing competition for students will be judged by local horror writers, the program will include poster sessions, workshops, and readings to highlight undergraduate scholarly and creative Monster Studies work, many events will be held off campus to be more inviting to the local community, and the scholarly panels will be designed to be accessible to interested non- academic audiences. We plan to strengthen our marketing/publicity campaign this year across the Santa Cruz community, and we’ll measure our success in this respect by in-person registration/attendance numbers.
5. Wider participation through online For the first time, this year’s Festival will include options for participating in talks and other sessions online, which will extend accessibility to the Festival far beyond the local community. With the help of our invited scholars, VIPs, and our own contacts, we aim to publicize the Festival—and by extension the Center for Monster Studies—both nationally and internationally, and expect to attract substantial new participation through the Festival’s online availability. Virtual participation is easy to track so we will be able to clearly measure the success of this outreach through our online registration numbers.
6. A larger fundraising/donor network. As the ultimate aim of the expanded Festival is to lay the ground for the UCSC Center for Monster Studies to grow its undergraduate programming and curriculum, its scholarly/creative output, its network of scholars and industry professionals, its ability to host public-facing events throughout the year, and its reputation as the world’s leading organization for the dissemination of Monster Studies work, we need the Festival to help us significantly increase our fundraising base. Every registration for the Festival, both in-person and online, will be an addition to our fundraising mailing list. The industry professionals we invite will be important partners in creating new networks of potential donors, and student- and community-centered programming will enable us to apply for grants that support this work. While this outcome might be difficult to measure in the short term, the Festival will provide the basis for its success by furnishing us with a much longer mailing list, commitments from participants to allow us to tap into their networks, and information about targeted grant opportunities.

 

 

3. Student involvement

 

The Festival will include dedicated sessions at which undergraduates can present their monster- focused scholarly and creative work. One of these sessions will specifically feature the students who are working on the MAH exhibition and will offer them a unique opportunity to share their research with visiting scholars and artists, as well as with UCSC students and faculty. For at least one other session, we will solicit proposals from undergraduates and develop formats that best showcase the work they’re doing: small exhibits, poster sessions, paper presentations, and readings

 

of creative work are all possibilities. A monster story writing competition will draw participation from both undergraduate and graduate students, and we hope to publish a journal of the winning submissions as well as use the competition as a way to interest students in a Festival writing workshop led by a visiting fiction writer. Finally, we plan to involve undergraduates and graduate students in the administrative work of the Festival by hiring them as student researchers, which will assist us while also providing them with professional experience, mentorship, and a chance to interact more closely with our visiting guests. Our hope is that student involvement in the Festival will lead both to research opportunities and to future professional internships organized by the Center for Monster Studies.

 

 

4. Timeline

 

2022

Fall Qtr                         Exhibiting Monsters course taught (LIT 167J)

Oct-Dec                       Fundraising and initial Festival and CFP planning

 

2023

Winter Qtr                    VIPs scheduled; Exhibiting Monsters students continue refine their exhibition work across winter and spring quarters

Jan                               CFP released

Mar                              Deadline for Paper Submissions for Panels

 

Spring Qtr                    Call for Submissions for Horror-Writing Contest

VIP’s confirmed

All Venues/performers/vendors confirmed Poster and merchandise designed Marketing and Press support planning Venue, Vendor deposits paid

GSR Recruitment

 

Summer Qtr                  Technical needs for Festival and Exhibit addressed

Press & Marketing confirmed Poster and Merchandise ordered Transportation/Lodging purchased GSR Joins Team

 

Fall Qtr                         All phases of festival locked down Festival opens

GSR Continues on Team (fundraising, next year planning)

 

 

5. Partners, key organizations, individuals SPONSORING PARTNERS

James Gunderson Peter Coha Porter College

The Humanities Institute

 

Board Opportunity Fund Application: Center for Monster Studies:     7

 

43

 

The Arts Research Institute Oakes College

Department of Performance, Play & Design Department of Literature

 

PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS

Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (MAH)

 

KEY INDIVIDUALS

Michael M. Chemers, Director of Center for Monster Studies

Elizabeth Swensen, Assistant Professor of Performance, Play & Design Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Professor of Computational Media

Renée Fox, Assistant Professor of Literature

 

 

6. Target community

 

We have four primary target communities for the in-person Festival of Monsters: scholars of monster studies, creative industry professionals, the Santa Cruz and Bay Area general public, and UCSC faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates. If we can support virtual attendance at the Festival we can extend our targeted communities to include much wider national and international participation. One of the aims of the Festival–and the Center for Monster Studies more largely–is to discover ways to communicate and produce new knowledge across a diverse set of academic and non-academic participants, and we believe that the future of Monster Studies necessitates conversations between people with different kinds of professional experience, academic expertise, and enthusiasm. By drawing scholars from the Monster Studies Working Group at the American Society for Theatre Research, the Gothic Studies Association, the Digital Games Research Association, the Comics Studies Association, and other scholarly societies, as well as novelists and creative makers in film, television, and comics, we hope the 2023 Festival will draw a large and eclectic local and UCSC audience and will provide a foundation for the Center to develop a robust student-centered and community-engaged program.

 

 

7. Plans for promoting, publicizing, and/or disseminating the project

As a means to build visibility and support for the Board Opportunity Fund, we require that Foundation support be noted in any public materials, communication or publicity about the project.

 

The Center for Monster Studies produces a website (monsterstudies.ucsc.edu), maintains a presence on Twitter (@ucscmonsters), and hosts a Facebook page (ucscmonsters). All of these will be fully utilized for promotional purposes for the Festival. We will also be issuing invitations and releasing a Call for Papers to scholarly societies around the world to solicit academic participants for the Festival, which will introduce the work of the Center to scholarly communities who are not yet familiar with it. At UCSC, the monster-story writing contest is an important part of the Center’s outreach efforts to undergraduate and graduate students at UCSC: it will be publicized across divisions and by word of mouth among the thousand students in courses taught by Center for Monster Studies faculty this year. The work by students in the Exhibiting Monsters course will also be a key outreach tool for us this year, as students in this class are excited about sharing their work with their own networks of friends and colleagues. Finally, we plan take out ads in local periodicals and give interviews for feature stories, such as this one from Lookout Santa Cruz by Wallace Baine, (https://lookout.co/santacruz/city-life/story/2022-05-08/grendel-golems-and-godzilla-and-more-for- one-weekend-uc-santa-cruz-becomes-monsters-u); or this one in the Santa Cruz Sentinel:

 

Board Opportunity Fund Application: Center for Monster Studies:     8

 

44

 

(https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2022/05/11/ucscs-festival-of-monsters-features-theater- readings-film-screenings-monsters-masquerade-ball/). We will also reach out to the Good Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Jose Mercury News.

 

In addition, as he has done in connection with three prior UCSC comics-related events, James Gunderson has commissioned and is financing a comic book in conjunction with the October 2023 MAH exhibition, which looks at monsters in comics drawn by women over the last hundred years. Like the prior comics, this new book features work of acclaimed comics creators alongside work of UCSC students, and advertises the Center, the Festival and the MAH Exhibition. Prior comics have been widely disseminated in comics fandom (thousands of copies physically, many more digitally), including at major fan events (by the Heinlein Society at World Science Fiction Conventions, at the Black Comic Book Festival in Harlem, at comics conferences at the Smithsonian and universities). Similar plans are being developed for this monster comic and we expect it to be an important publicity tool to reach communities beyond our local one.

 

 

8. Plans for documenting, evaluating and disseminating the projects results

 

Our primary modes of evaluating success will be tracking registrations for the Festival, visitors to the MAH exhibition, and donations by participants/attendees to support future Center for Monster Studies work. This year we will also ask participants to fill out an evaluation form after the Festival to gather data about its most successful aspects and where we need to improve future Center programming. We plan to record each Festival session and (with the permission of our speakers) begin to build a Center for Monster Studies YouTube channel that may in the future be another source of revenue for the Center. Winning submissions to the monster story writing competition will be available both on the Center website and in a hard-copy journal that participants in the Festival can take with them; publication of these winners will also serve as a marketing tool for the Center. We document the Festival itself by taking photographs which are archived on the Center for Monster Studies website at: (https://www.monsterstudies.ucsc.edu/2022-fest-gallery). We’ll also use these photos to populate our social media accounts, which provide a trackable record of our outreach and online responses and garner followers who will support future Center endeavors.

 

 

 

9. Evidence of impacts on research, participants or community

 

 

Beginning in 2023, the Center for Monster Studies will be collecting information about all publications and projects produced in relation to participation in the Festival and other Center events. These include publications/art/performances/exhibitions by UCSC faculty and students as well as work by visiting scholars and artists that emerges from talks, presentations, workshops, and exhibitions organized by the Center for Monster Studies. The 2019 Festival of Monsters resulted in the publication of one of its scholarly sessions as the journal article “The Problem Is Not Monsters,” by Michael Chemers, published in the Journal of Science and Engineering Ethics, 27, 62 (2021) (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-021-00339-0) and we anticipate future Festivals and Center programming will result in increased professional and creative output.

 

The impact of past Festivals is already evident in early interest from the press about our upcoming Festival, commitments to future participation in the Center for Monster Studies from past festival

 

participants like Dr. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (the founder of the field of Monster Studies and Dean of Humanities at Arizona State University) and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (the founding scholar of disability studies), and ongoing enthusiasm from UCSC students and faculty in participating in Center for Monster Studies activities. We will continue to measure our impact through increasing participation in the Festival and the Center from across our four target communities, and we will also begin maintaining an alumni list of undergraduate and graduate students who participate in the Center so that we can keep records of the ways in which Center activities have contributed to their professional lives beyond UCSC.

 

 

10. Have you ever submitted a proposal to the UC Santa Cruz Foundation for this or a similar project? If yes, was it funded? Did you submit a final report? If yes, please provide the date.

 

No.

 

 

11. What additional support are you able to take advantage of as a result of this funding and what is your planned timeline for soliciting additional funding?

 

As noted above, we will be expanding the Festival as a way to advance the long-term goals of the Center for Monster Studies, in large part by building the Center’s fundraising network and donor list. We aim to do this not only by compiling a mailing list of participants in the Festival but also by strategically utilizing our growing VIP community to host events in other cities that will attract

non-local UCSC alumni into our network. In addition to soliciting this kind of private fundraising support, we also plan to leverage the Festival’s community-engaged activities to apply for public humanities grants administered by the University of California Humanities Research Institute, California Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Humanities that will allow us to continue building the Center’s programming.

 

On campus, the Center has attracted attention from the Deans of the Arts and Humanities, the Humanities Research Institute, and the Arts Research Institute, all of whom have expressed interest in augmenting cross-divisional support for the Festival and the Center if we can fund the initial expansion described in this application. We are also currently soliciting support from Porter College, whose investments in promoting the arts and humanities on campus align clearly with the Center’s mission. Beyond campus, James Gunderson has indicated serious interest in increasing his support for the upcoming festival by $20,000 if the Center is able to embark on this expansion with BOF funding, and Peter Coha has similarly promised an additional $10,000.

 

 

BUDGET:

 

1. Amount requested 40K

 

2. Date funds are needed Spring 2023

 

3. Budget (attach spreadsheet)

 

FULL BUDGET

 

Requested from BOF:

VIP hosting (including honoraria, travel, lodging,           $25,000 transportation, events, and expenses)

Marketing and Publicity (including outreach,

staffing, and technology)                                   $10,000 Student support (including costs associated

with student-focused sessions, student participation in events, and support

for student workers)                                          $5,000

 

TOTAL REQUESTED FROM BOF: $40,000

Requested from other sources:

Administrative Support (including but not limited to compensation for staff, GSRs, and faculty)         $24,000

Festival Activities (including sessions, workshops/competitions, film

screenings, and venue rentals)                           $10,000 MAH exhibition   $20,000

 

TOTAL REQUESTED FROM OTHER SOURCES: $54,000

 

TOTAL BUDGET: $94,000

 

(Current Committed Funds: $20,500) (Total Remaining to Fund: $73,500)

 

 

 

 

4. Campus administrative office contact (Dean, College Provost, or Vice Chancellor) - name, phone number, email)

 

Celene Shimizu

Dean of the Arts 831-459-4940 artsdean@ucsc.edu

 

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TITLE

Submitted by:

Sponsored by:

Approved: DATE

Project:

Goals:


Amount funded: $1

Key UCSC faculty and staff:

BOARD OPPORTUNITY FUND APPLICATION

 

 

The UC Santa Cruz Foundation awards seed funds to initiate or support short-term campus projects through the Board Opportunity Fund (BOF) established in January 2008. The Foundation accepts proposals that allow university faculty, staff, and students to take advantage of unique opportunities to support a strategic project aligned with the campus’ academic priorities.

 

 

TERMS:

• All BOF proposals must demonstrate how an award would incentive further fundraising or serve as a vehicle for raising awareness and visibility for UC Santa Cruz.

 

• All applications must have a Foundation Trustee Sponsor and be approved by academic senior leadership to be considered. If you already have a Foundation Trustee Sponsor for a project, please coordinate with him/her to submit the application. If you do not have a Foundation Trustee sponsor, complete your application and contact the Foundation for further assistance.

 

• BOF proposals with travel and/or symposium focus will be reviewed specifically for how a BOF award would lead to further fundraising success and/or to strategically raise awareness and visibility for UC Santa Cruz.

 

• If the proposal is conditional and contingent on an external event or action, BOF funds will not be transferred to the campus division until contingencies have been met.

 

• Due to the uncertainty of the COVID-19 virus, the Foundation will waive the timeline for grant use upon notification of a BOF award.

 

• BOF funds are to be used within one calendar year of receipt.

 

• BOF funded applications will be required to submit a final written report with an expense summary within 12 months of funds showing how the grant was used, and all unused funds will be returned to the Foundation.

 

 

CHECKLIST AND INSTRUCTIONS:

™  Completed BOF application. Once the initial proposal idea is approved, complete the BOF application. Please indicate when something is not applicable, and provide information as appropriate for your project. The estimated review and approval time of a completed application may take up to 8 weeks for a decision.

™  Budget. Attach a budget statement including the information requested below.

™  Signatures.

 

 

For further assistance, please contact the UC Santa Cruz Foundation office, at 831-459-4339 or email foundation@ucsc.edu.

 

BOARD OPPORTUNITY FUND APPLICATION

Please refer to the above application guidelines.

 

 

DATE: May 18, 2021

 

PROJECT TITLE: UCSC STUDENT ACCESS, ENGAGEMENT & MEDIA LITERACY INITIATIVE________________________________________­____________

 

NAME OF TRUSTEE SPONSOR: __Steve Bruce ___________________________________________

 

CAMPUS APPLICANT: ____Elizabeth Abrams, Merrill Provost, and Alan Christy, Cowell Provost__________________________________________­_________

 

DIVISION/AREA: _Residential colleges______________________ _______________________­______________

 

CONTACT NAME: Elizabeth Abrams_________________________________________­_____________

 

TITLE: _Provost, Merrill College_, Council of Provosts Chair____________________________________________­_______________________

 

TELEPHONE: _ 831-459-2246

_____________________________________________­_________________

 

EMAIL: __ esabrams@ucsc.edu ____________________________________________­_______________________

 

 

Please confirm that the Divisional principal dean/provost has reviewed and supports this request:

 

 

 

PRINCIPAL DEAN/PROVOST:_____________________________

 

________________

 

                                                                      (name)                                            (date)

 

 

I agree to the above terms:

 

 

 

CAMPUS APPLICANT:  __________________________________

 

________________

 

                                                                      (name)                                            (date)

 

 

 

 

PROJECT DETAILS:

 

1. Major project activities. Student access to trustworthy news is a crying need of social media age. “Old media” are only read through uncertainly filtered social media, leaving major questions of old-fashioned civics and the newer field of media literacy unanswered.

  

         Into this void, first in Santa Cruz, Lookout Local has answered the call. Built by nationally known business of news analyst and UCSC Foundation Trustee Ken Doctor, Lookout is a new, well-resourced digital-only, mobile-first news product. It is aimed at replacing the flagging local press, as represented in Santa Cruz, and increasingly nationally, by newspapers being slowly milked to death by hedge funds and other distressed property owners.

        Launched in 2020, Lookout Santa Cruz is now by far the largest news company in Santa Cruz County. Its news staff will number twelve by June, with early financing support from both the Knight Foundation and Google, as well as local funders. Lookout covers the county – from the relatively prosperous north end to the less prosperous and historically disadvantaged south end – as whole. It believes the revival of democracy starts with a high-quality, non-partisan factual reporting. In its short life, it has exceeded early goals in audience, advertising and in membership.

        Reader revenue is a fundamental part of Lookout’s model, which overall, borrows heavily from the New York Times’ transformational success, scaling it to what communities like Santa Cruz County can support. While Lookout requires that reader revenue – and is already earning it at the rate of $17 per month, or $187 year, with adoption quickly mounting – it also aims to reach a broad audience across the county.

        One key part of that broad strategy: Lookout aims to serve its content to all of the county’s 40,000 college and high school students. This program, too, is modeled on and advised y the New York Times. Like the Times, Lookout heavily discounts its student program, 94% off of the regular member price: $12 per year pays for the costs of the access. That program is now 63% funded for fall launch overall.

       Donors have paid for Cabrillo College student access fully. UCSC student access is now 60% funded, with $85,000 left to raise to complete the first-year funding, while Lookout works – with support of the County Office of Education and the county’s largest school district, Pajaro Valley Unified School District – to fund high school access.

       This BOF proposal requests $20,000 in funding, only to be activated if the remaining $65,000 is raised to allow full access for UCSC’s 19,000 students. $145,000 toward that goal has been raised through the generosity of three individuals, Rowland Rebele, Felix Magowan and Foundation Trustee Linda Peterson.

       Among the major outcomes of fully funded student access:

• Complete student access to all Lookout content, including local civics/political news, enabling them to be better citizens of the community;
• Inclusion in Lookout’s planned Student Voices project, both allowing students to voice their own concerns and for community members to better understand them.
• Working with UCSC Student Media, appropriately, with the Digital Arts and New Media program, City on the Hill Press and KZSC. Lookout has already established a working relationship with UCSC’s esteemed Science Communications program, with an intern now placed for the spring quarter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Outcome(s), measurements

 

Lookout has spoken with University Librarian Elizabeth Cowell, who can coordinate the actual access for students through the campus’ .edu account.

 

Students will be provided an activation code – presented to them in multiple ways through both Lookout and campus messaging, and in person, as the fall allows. Lookout will seek to multiply the activations and measure them, as well as growing usage. It will track the kinds of content students actually use, on their phones and laptops.

 

Also measurable will be the Student Voices enabled by Lookout and shared with the wider community, in a major effort to bridge the half-century town/gown divide.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Student interaction

 

          Lookout is already in contact with City on the Hill press (and its advisor Susan Waltrous) and the campus’ Student Media Associate Director & Broadcast Advisor Jennifer Cain, and plans to reach out broadly to student groups in the run-up to providing access.

         Student interaction will be both planned and organic, as access activates. It’s easy to see how Student Voices will immediately provide needed connections. Others will depend on which parts of the student body get traction earliest.

         Importantly, as UCSC itself is better covered by Lookout Higher Ed correspondent Nick Ibarra, the student and faculty achievements of the campus are getting into the mainstream of Santa Cruz “town” knowledge. Such coverage inevitably brings students in the conversation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Schedule

 

Lookout access will be provided either beginning in summer, 2021 or fall, 2021, depending on funding and the campus’ level of summer activity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Partners, key organizations, individuals

     

 

Lookout is all about partnership, having brought dozens of civic, content and marketing partners into its fabric: https://lookout.co/santacruz/footer-nav-partners   It has quickly integrated itself into the fabric of the county’s civic life. 

 

Importantly, while Lookout is relentlessly local in its focus, its editors selectively curate timely, contextual news from Lookout’s content partners. Those currently include the Los Angeles Times, CalMatters, Kaiser Heath News and Inside Climate News.

 

On campus, Lookout is already deeply engaged with UCSC’s marketing division, which has seen Lookout as an emerging key conduit of messaging and marketing to the wider community – in a time still fraught with division. Lookout is actively working with both the Humanities Institute, on co-sponsorship of community activities, and the revived Quarry, as they ready programs for society’s reopening.

 

It is also at work with Vice Chancellor Mark Davis, on several going-forward mutual opportunities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. Target community

 

The Student Access & Engagement program seeks to serve UCSC’s 19,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Lookout’s around-the-clock news content would be delivered to current students through the campus’ .edu network. As they activated their accounts, they’d have full access to Lookout, through any digital device. Currently, 70% of Lookout’s news usage is via mobile, and it is anticipated that number may well be higher for students.

 

In addition to the Student Access program, in conjunction, Lookout offers a faculty/staff discount to employees of educational institutions, including UCSC.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7. Plans for promoting, publicizing, and/or disseminating the project

As a means to build visibility and support for the Board Opportunity Fund, we require that Foundation support be noted in any public materials, communication or publicity about the project.

 

Lookout, as a large news medium, will share news of the program on its site, and ongoingly as student voices are published, at least weekly. It will also share both the goals and details of the program on campus, both digital and physical communication. It will proudly note the Foundation’s generosity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8. Plans for documenting, evaluating and disseminating the projects results

 

Lookout will document the program in its own pages, in press releases and in national writing about Lookout’s unique model.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9. Evidence of impacts on research, participants or community

 

 

Over time, we will look for metrics on 1) student news reading; 2) student participation in local democracy and 3) student voices/participation heard within Lookout by the whole community, and report them.

 

 

 

 

10. Have you ever submitted a proposal to the UC Santa Cruz Foundation for this or a similar project?

If yes, was it funded? Did you submit a final report? If yes, please provide the date.

 

No.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11. What additional support are you able to take advantage of as a result of this funding?

 

Contributions to the UCSC Student Access and Engagement project already include:

---Rowland and Pat Rebele: $115,000

---Linda Peterson: $25,000

---The Turnip Top Foundation (enabled through Santa Cruz resident Felix Magowan): $5000

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BUDGET:

 

1. Amount requested: $20,000 to be funded as the final $65,000 is raised.

 

 

2. Date funds are needed: 09/01/2021

 

 

3. Budget (attached spreadsheet) $20,000, as part of larger fundraising detailed above.

 

 

4. Campus administrative office contact (name, phone number, email): tbd