For thousands of students on campus and at UC Davis field stations, summer has not meant a break from the books.
Instead, the students are catching up on required major courses, fitting in electives and embarking on field courses around California, Idaho, Hawaii and abroad. For the second year in a row, UC Davis has even operated a satellite program with UC Merced, allowing students in the San Joaquin Valley to take UC courses before their UC campus is built.
Summer courses, students and administrators say, are an increasingly popular option for undergraduates looking to accelerate their graduation track or gain intensive, hands-on experiences not available in most school-year courses.
This year, 4,306 students are enrolled in UC Davis' summer Session One courses, up from 3,818 students last year, said Norma Cotter, a Summer Sessions Assistant III. Cotter's office is still enrolling students in the second session, beginning Aug. 6, as well as in special off-campus and foreign-study programs.
Other UC campuses have seen even larger increases. Summer enrollment at UCLA is up 64 percent, and at UC Berkeley 35 percent, according to preliminary figures from the UC Office of the President.
Normally, summer school can be pricey for students, as most UC summer programs are self-supporting or receive only small state subsidies. But this year, the UC and California State University systems received $34 million from the state to lower class fees. For example, an introductory UC Davis lab physics class that cost $500 last year, costs $300 this year, Cotter said.
Summer Sessions has also focused on offering a larger variety of upper-division courses this year, Cotter said.
This year, for example, students can take such high-level courses as "Recent U.S. Foreign Policy" or "Advanced Linear Algebra."
Some summer-school classes offer students an experience no classroom-based school year course can replicate, according to instructors.
Students in professors Randy Southard and Randy "Field Studies of Soil Resources" class spend 31 days on the ground from Mount Shasta to the Los Angeles basin analyzing properties of soil and learning its environmental origins and appropriate uses.
"The advantage to the class is that it's an immersion to the discipline," Southard said. "Students get hands-on mechanics skills, but we also talk about the same types of things we do in lecture.
"I view it as a life-changing class," he continued. "A lot of students have only had cursory experience with soils and cursory exposure to their professors."
Students in Vic Chow's "Marine and Coastal Field Ecology" class at the UC Davis Bodega Marine Lab station spend a few days in the classroom and on instructor-led field trips before embarking on research "apprenticeships for future scientists."
UC San Diego fourth-year student Tina Reising came to Bodega in order to bolster her application to UC Davis' veterinary school. The general biology student knew only the basics of marine science before enrolling in the course but can now describe in detail the mudflat burrow habitats of the innkeeper worm, her research topic.
"I've always wanted to do research, and this was a really good way to get my foot in the door," Reising said.
Even for students who stick closer to campus, summer school can provide a different educational experience.
Without taking at least one summer class this year, UC Davis student Margarita Calpotura recently realized she wouldn't be able to graduate in four years. So far, this summer she's enrolled in a needed geography elective, along with a class for her economics major. Next session, Calpotura will take an economics class, lightening her class load for her fourth year.
She's found the pace of her summer classes more intense, but much of the campus more relaxed than during the rest of the year.
"It's different," Calpotura said. "The Silo isn't open all the time, but I can always find a parking place."