User:Foundinspades/sandbox

= University of California, Slugwarts School For Witchcraft and Wizardry = The University of California, Slugwarts School For Witchcraft and Wizardry (Slugwarts or UCSW) is a semi-private land-grant Wizarding University in Santa Cruz, California. It is a branch of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the British wizarding school, located in the Scottish Highlands. It accepts and educates magical students from Northern America, and the rest of the world through its wonderfully developed Transfer Floo System. It is a state-owned school, funded by the U.S. Government in conjunction with the Ministry of Magic. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of the coastal community of Santa Cruz, the campus lies on 2,001 acres (810 ha) of rolling, forested hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean. However, the precise location of the school could never be rendered into GPS because it was made to be Unplottable, and technology goes haywire as soon as you reach campus. To Muggles, the school appeared to be an old, abandoned commune. Similarly, most wizarding schools' locations were protected in order to prevent their ways of teaching being revealed, as well as protect the students and schools themselves from any harm.

Founded in 1965, UC Slugwarts began with the intention to showcase progressive, cross-disciplinary undergraduate and magical education, innovative teaching methods, and contemporary architecture. The residential college system consists of ten small colleges that were established as a variation of the Oxbridge collegiate university system.

UC Slugwarts is classified among the top Healing research schools in the Wizarding World, studying both Muggle and Magic healing. It is also a member of the Association of American Universities, an alliance of research universities in the United States and Canada.

Students are a mix of American Warlocks attending a Wizarding school for the first time, and European Warlocks looking for higher education.

Prior to campus development
Prior to Spanish colonization, the Uypi tribe of the Awaswas Nation lived in what is now the campus of UCSW. During Spanish colonization, members of the tribe were taken to Mission Santa Cruz as slaves. During this time, the missionaries of Mission Santa Cruz removed a part of the forest to build a vineyard on top of what is now the Great Meadow. The lands were bought by Hogwarts in 1920 from Cowell Lime Works and was used as a magical animal rehabilitation site until the University's founding in 1965.

Campus Development and Founding
The Santa Cruz campus was hand picked by Hogwarts' then-Headmaster Albus Dumbledore for it's unique beauty, rather than the practicality, of its location, 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 for the Santa Cruz campus began in the late 1950s, culminating in the Long Range Development Plan of 1963. An unexpected issue that caused delays in the building was the wildlife. Between 1920, when Hogwarts purchased the school, and 1957, when they started the building process, the campus had become overrun with magical and non-magical native animals. There were several incidents involving construction workers suffering attacks by magical and non-magical animals alike, one resulting in a death. Eventually, researchers demanded that construction be halted when a discovery of a Deer/Unicorn hybrid was announced in 1958. Construction resumed after all animals, magic and non-magic, were contained in Cowell State Park, under the supervision of Cuthbert Mockridge, who was the Head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures at the time. All animals, including hybrids, were returned to the campus, where they are still ethically studied by MagiZoology majors at UCSW.

Campus
The 2,000-acre (810 ha) UCSW campus is located some miles south of San Francisco in the Ben Lomond Mountain ridge of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Elevation varies from 285 feet at the campus entrance to 3,195 feet at the northern Big Hill, a difference of about 2,900 feet. The Big Hill appeared on campus randomly on December 2, 1981, near the northern boundary of the grounds. Shaped like a large anthill, The Big Hill rises approximately five hundred feet straight into the sky and is only accessible via broom or a Very Big Jump. The southern portion of the campus primarily consists of a large, open meadow, locally known as the Great Meadow. To the north of the meadow lie most of the campus' buildings.

The campus is built on a portion of the Cowell Family ranch, which was purchased by Hogwarts in 1961. The northern half of the campus property has remained in its undeveloped, forested state apart from fire roads and hiking trails. The heavily forested area has allowed UC Santa Cruz to operate an RV and camping park as a form of student housing. In 2017 the University finished building the Coastal Science Facility for the Ecology and Evolutionary Marine Transfiguration Department.

A number of shrines, dens and other student-built curiosities are scattered around the northern campus. These structures, mostly assembled from branches and other forest detritus, were formerly concentrated in the area known as Elfland, a student gathering glen the university razed in 1992 to build colleges Nine and Granger (then Ten). Students were able to relocate and save some of the structures, however, there was mass outrage as 'Elfland' had become a meeting place for Wizardkind and Muggles who wanted to shed the societal constrains and pursue the expansion of their minds. There were several protests held, with demonstrations such as a Muggle and a notable European Pureblood heir flying to the top of the Bagshot academic building and proceeding to make out until the crowd was dispersed by the University security. Nothing came of the riots and colleges Nine and Granger are now the hub for magic technology.

The Colleges
Most of the UCSW undergraduate housing is affiliated with one of the ten residential colleges. The residential colleges were named after notable Warlocks by Albus Dumbledore, until his death, after which the Board of Trustees took over the task. Notable Board members include Minerva McGonagall, Blenheim Stalk, and Bertie Bott (of Bertie Bott's Every Flavored Beans). The residence halls, which include both shared and private rooms, typically house fifteen to twenty students per floor and have common bathrooms and lounge areas. Some halls have coed floors where witches and wizards share bathroom facilities, others have gendered bathrooms. Single-gender, gender-neutral and substance-free floors are also available.

The Colleges Include:

Bragnam College

Amelia Bones College

Pinkstone College

Rabnott College

Furmage College

Fletwock College

Bagshot College

Lufkin College

College 9

College Granger (formerly College 10)

Academics
The university has five academic divisions: Arts, Engineering, Humanities, Physical & Biological Sciences, and Social Sciences. Together, they offer 65 graduate programs, 64 undergraduate majors, and 41 minors.

Popular undergraduate majors include Transfigurative Art, Cross-Currency Economics, Potioneering, Molecular and Cell Biology, Herbology, and Wizard Psychology. Interdisciplinary programs, such as Computational Media, Muggle Studies, MagiZoology Studies, Visual Magic Studies, Digital Arts and New Media, Critical Race & Ethnic Studies, and the History of Consciousness Department are also hosted alongside UCSW's more traditional academic departments.

A joint program with Hogwarts enables Hogwarts students to earn a Hogwarts degree and bachelor's degree in nine years instead of the usual ten. The "6+3 HW/SW" Program between UC Slugwarts and Hogwarts accepted its first applicants in fall 2014. Hogwarts students who declare their intent in their third or early fourth year can complete six years at Hogwarts, and then move on to UC Slugwarts to begin the four year B.A. curriculum. Students who successfully complete the first-year course work will take their NEWTS and be able to graduate with their original Hogwarts class, then continue at UC Slugwarts afterwards for two years.

Research
According to the National Science Foundation, UC Slugwarts spent $127.5 million on research in 2018, ranking it 144th in the nation.

Although designed as an arts-oriented university, UCSW quickly acquired a graduate-level natural science research component with the appointment of plant physiologist Kenneth V. Thimann as the first provost of Furmage College. Shortly after, UCSW also acquired the skills of Pomona Sprout, noted and respected Herbologist. Together, Sprout and Thimann developed UCSW's early Division of Natural Sciences and recruited other well-known science faculty and graduate students to the fledgling campus. Immediately upon its founding, UCSW was also granted administrative responsibility for the Onai Observatory, which established the campus as a major center for astronomy and astrology research. Within UCSW's first year of operation, founding members of the Social Science and Humanities faculty created the unique graduate program called History of Consciousness, a study focused on Magical and Non-Magical combined history, as well as the mechanics of the gift of magic.

Famous UCSW alum faculty members include Donaghan Tremlett, famed bassist for The Weird Sisters, graduated UCSW in 1995 and is now the head of UCSW's Weird Music Department, and Gwenog Jones, former Captain and Beater of the Holy Head Harpies, graduated in 1992, and now runs the Quidditch Team and teaches in the Practical Medicine Department.

Library
The McGonagall Library houses UCSW's Transfiguration and Herbology collections, with most of the Mathematical and Potion collections located at the newer Prewett Library. The McGonagall Library was designed by Calmonias Warnecke in 1995. In addition, the residential colleges host smaller libraries, which serve as quiet places to study, or spell-proof areas to practice magic. The McGonagall Special Collections Library includes the archives of Albus P. W. B. Dumbledore, the papers of Hesper Starkey, the papers and drawings of Beat poet Kenneth Patchen, the largest collection of artwork by Magenta Comstock in the world.

In total, the University Libraries contain over 2.4 million volumes.