The
University of California, Santa Barbara (commonly referred to as
UC Santa Barbara or
UCSB) is a
public research university and one of the 10 campuses of the
University of California system. The main campus is located on a site near
Goleta, California, United States, from
Santa Barbara and northwest of Los Angeles. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an independent teachers' college, UCSB joined the University of California system in 1944 and is the third-oldest general-education campus in the system.