Forget books, exams and professors. The campus buzz at Stockton’s University of the Pacific is about the hottest new idea in off-campus housing: Lofts at the University Plaza Waterfront Hotel.

Few San Joaquin success stories can rival that of Lodi grape growers, winemakers and tasting room hosts whose efforts have propelled an unheralded wine region to prominence.

The black widows caged in professor Craig Vierra’s laboratory evoke the macabre. But here, in the Department of Biological Sciences at Stockton’s University of the Pacific, these crawlers are the story’s heroines.

If you think starting a business during a recession is a risky enterprise, imagine putting your entrepreneurial faith in the commercial future of a river flowing to a desolate wilderness.

The University of the Pacific arrived from San Jose in 1924, planting a brick-and-ivy educational institution in the heart of the San Joaquin agricultural community. Since then, it’s grown to become the second-largest private employer in the county. But, school officials say, the university can still do more in the business community.

Opportunity, timing and a willingness to assume entrepreneurial risk led Kevin Hernandez to plan his second startup on the trendy stretch of Stockton’s Pacific Avenue, known as the Miracle Mile.

Pamela Eibeck has made a career of distinguishing herself in the male-dominated fields of engineering and college administration while balancing life as a wife (of law professor William D. Jeffery) and mother of four children. This month, she reached another milestone and is reporting to a new job. Eibeck is the first female president in the 158-year history of University of the Pacific.