Yeah, I remember those UCSC days, all of us clutching our Derrida Readers and copies of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, bemoaning the University’s increased focus on the “hard” sciences. It was a liberal arts school, we would exclaim, a place for the stern unpacking of dense literary and political theory. Despite my attempts at iconoclastic skepticism towards theory, I too had drank the lit crit Kool-Aid. And as the University beefed up its science focus, all we could do was wallow in a morass of arcane jargon and a distaste for those who dared to study what we considered to be the less expressive, less compelling, and prosaic sciences.

How wrong we were — while we buried our heads deep in political theory, a new generation of science students at the University has developed an emergent center for scientific inquiry. In a de-evolutionary period when the study of evolution and the origin of the universe has come dangerously close to resembling activism, UCSC has established itself as a bastion of the new scientific progressivism.

For the past year, UCSC has been turning up all over the pages of Seed Magazine (one of the most compelling publications to hit the newsstands in years, a science magazine that explores the intersections between the liberal artist and the politically progressive scientist.) In September, UCSC astronomers discovered that hundreds of galaxies in the university were formed in a relatively short flurry of intense activity—13 billion years ago. Back in May, a group of UCSC biologists discovered evidence while studying side-blotched lizards to support Richard Dawkins’ theory that during the process of natural selection, genes can recognize their genetic match and drive organisms to mutually beneficial mating arrangements. And Earth Sciences professor James Zachos became a national science celebrity, his research into the effects of carbon dioxide emissions on pH levels in the ocean, gaining heat as global warming broke through to the mainstream. Zachos virtually became a pundit, appearing in the New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, Scientific American, the Independent, the London Daily Mail, and on NPR.

Sure, Dawkins may never match the dangerous allure of Che, and it’s doubtful that Zachos’ syllabi will ever achieve the countercultural cred of having the IWW songbook on your bookshelf. But if you’re looking for people in the community who are making a very real, physical impact on the world and the future, then get your heads out of the dense theory tomes that couldn’t move a politician much less the universe, and give these folks their due.