Alternative Tours/Panels

The SPACES Alternative Tours and/or Alternative Student Panels were created to provide a personalized campus experience to various K-14 groups. Our work is geared to provide schools and communities of diverse, underrepresented, under-served, and/or under-resourced backgrounds with access to institutional knowledge in order to inform and empower their decisions. The goal of Alternative Tours and Alternative Student Panels is to give students a holistic understanding of the undergraduate experience on campus by engaging them in the academic, social, cultural, and political aspects at UCSD. Moreover, these programs coincide with SPACES’ mission of increasing students’ access to higher education.

Alternative Tours include an overview of several important locations on campus, various resource centers offered to students of diverse communities, and a brief history of student activism at UCSD. Additionally, Alternative Student Panels consist of current or past UCSD students who provide personal insight on multiple aspects of the college experience. Alternative Tours take about 1 hour and Alternative Student Panels take an additional hour. Either program, or both, could be requested for your campus visit. Requests can also be tailored to meet your group’s learning outcomes.

Our services are provided by full-time students who work and volunteer at SPACES at no cost to visitors and student groups. For this reason, please make sure your requests are submitted within the following guidelines: 

  • Submit requests for Alternative Tours 2 weeks or more prior to requested date
  • Submit requests for Alternative Tours with Alternative Panels 28 days or more prior to requested date

We are unable to accommodate Tours and Panels during the following periods: 

  • Tours/Panels that occur during Week 10 and Finals Week of each quarter 
  • Tours/Panels that occur during UCSD academic holidays, including Winter and Spring Break

We highly encourage tours/panels to take place during the weekdays as this will provide participants with a more accurate picture of what student life is like at UC San Diego. Offices/resource centers included in the tours may be closed on weekends; our tour guides also tend to have limited availability on weekends.

We will do our best to accommodate your needs. However, we cannot guarantee that we will be able to accept your request.

*To place a request, please email cde.ucsdspaces@gmail.com with your requested date and time frame, the number of students and chaperones, which school you are coming from, and if you are also requesting a student panel and/or food. Label the subject: “Alternative Tour Request” or “Alternative Tour/Student Panel Request”

**To place a request for a panel of 60+ participants, please submit a request 4 weeks prior to the event.

***To place a request for food and special accommodations, please submit a request 7 weeks prior to the event.

Welcome! We are not accepting Alternative Tour and Panel requests for the 2024-2025 academic year

To see SPACES’ full mission statement, click here!