As students arrive on campus this weekend for the start of the academic year, they might be missing home-cooked meals, but they will be pleasantly surprised to find the new Segundo Dining Room at UC Davis a far cry from the mess halls their parents may have experienced.

In fact, eating at the new dining room serving the Segundo community of about 1,600 students is more like visiting the food court at a mall. Eight different platforms throughout the 825-seat facility serve as mini-restaurants and offer traditional bistro items, sauté specialties, pizza, Mongolian barbecue, a salad bar, vegan choices and, of course, dessert.

"I see people thrilled when they walk in here," says Karen Keon, a graduating senior working on campus this summer. "The layout is great and provides better locations to eat. You get to see your food prepared, and the experience is more like a restaurant."

The new facility is expected to serve up to 20,000 meals a week in the fall.

Away from the dinner table, here is a campus round-up as the new academic year kicks off.

Student numbers

A total of about 29,650 students are expected to enroll for fall quarter, 415 less than last fall, with classes starting Sept. 29.

Approximately 4,400 new freshmen are expected to register by the start of classes, about 135 or 3 percent more than last fall. About 1,760 new transfer students are expected to enroll, 88 (about 5 percent) fewer than last fall's 1,848. An estimated 1,010 of the new transfer students participated in UC Davis' Transfer Admission Agreement program at 82 community colleges throughout the state.

Graduate and professional students, including interns and residents, are expected to total about 6,950, an increase of 56 compared with last fall.

And, the campus expects to accommodate at least 20 students displaced by Hurricane Katrina (see "Campus Honors, Offers Relief to Katrina Victims" in this issue).

Fees and financial aid

Undergraduate students who are California residents will pay fees of $8,129 this school year — up from $7,557 last year — and resident academic graduate students will pay $8,960, up from $8,407 last year.

About two-thirds of the undergraduate student body is expected to be receiving some form of financial aid. By the end of August, aid totaling $129 million — in grants, federal work-study, scholarships and loans — had been awarded to about 13,000 undergraduates for 2005-06.

The Financial Aid Office has a Web-based tool — faoman.ucdavis.edu — that helps students stay informed about their loan indebtedness. The tool provides them with estimates of their current loan balances, allows them to make future estimates and calculates estimated loan payments.

New Programs

Students can now major in science and technology studies, a new program offered by the Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies. In the Division of Biological Sciences, the new minor in computational biology will accept its first students this fall quarter.

The UC Board of Regents recently approved reconstitution of the division as the College of Biological Sciences, beginning a formal process of transferring courses to the new college. The change brings a number of administrative changes and gives college faculty more control over the biology curriculum. It also makes UC Davis one of the few universities in the nation to organize basic biology research and teaching into a single college.

At the graduate level, several new programs will enroll their first students in 2005-06, including: doctorate in Animal Biology; Master of Science in Neuroscience; and Master of Advanced Study in Clinical Research.

The UC Davis School of Education is opening a joint doctoral program in educational leadership with California State University, Sacramento, and CSU Sonoma.

The Graduate School of Management brings its Working MBA program to the San Francisco Bay Area. The program will offer weekend classes at the San Ramon Valley Conference Center, 35 miles east of San Francisco.

The book selection for the fourth annual Campus Community Book Project is The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Told from the perspective of an American immigrant recalling his childhood in Afghanistan, this novel offers a glimpse into life in Afghanistan before and after the Taliban took over the country. The book will be the focus for events involving the campus and Davis community throughout the year. For more information, visit occr.ucdavis.edu/ccbp.

Housing

Student Housing will accommodate about 4,320 undergraduates in the residence halls this year, including an estimated 3,950 incoming freshmen. Two halls, Castilian North and South, will house about 320 transfer, continuing and international students. In addition, housing is being offered to 45 students affiliated with the University Extension program.

In addition to the undergraduates in residence halls, almost 1,820 other students will live in Student Housing facilities, privately owned projects and family housing on the UC Davis campus.

Other construction

New facilities include the new Segundo dining commons, which opened this summer, and new residence halls at the Tercero that will open for 400 residents. The Tercero dining commons expansion project is in the final stages of completion and is expected to open in mid-November.

A number of other major projects are underway, including the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science, a new multi-use sports stadium, the Mathematical Sciences Building and the Veterinary Medicine IIIA building.