Meet Steve, a member of our Board of Directors and a regular at the Museum since the ‘80s. From keeping his finger on the pulse of our building’s structural wellbeing to ensuring our programs’ financial support, Steve has played a crucial role in the Museum’s trajectory for many years.
Steve first came across the Museum when he and his wife Julia helped set up the California Native Plant Society’s Spring Wildflower Show when it was held here. He’s been involved in several of Santa Cruz’s scientific institutions, having worked his way from sample-collecting field technician to Managing Director at UCSC’s Long Marine Laboratory over a 39-year career there.
Ask him which of our County’s native wildlife he enjoys most and he’s hard-pressed to choose just one. A longtime enthusiast of the natural world, Steve has been inspired by natural history since he first learned to sail on lakes as a boy and, years later, on open ocean voyages.
It was on one such trip he was first inspired to engage the natural world in a deeper way. While sailing home from Hawaii, he was struck by the expansiveness and wonder of the Pacific, and determined to study ocean and Earth sciences when he arrived back on California shores. Since then, he has enjoyed a diverse career in marine operations and research organizations, including the U.S. Geological Survey Branch of Marine Geology, the UCSC Institute of Marine Sciences and others.
“I think it’s important to instill in everyone, especially youth, an appreciation — and hopefully a love — for the natural world,” he says.
Whether you’re noticing the broad shape of our coastal mountains or which bird species frequent your backyard, Steve is a fan of deliberately familiarizing oneself with the natural world, one phenomenon at a time.
“If I could make a pitch it would be that people pick one natural thing to observe, then go learn more about it and figure out why it’s there. Doing that, I think, makes life richer, and perhaps makes us more likely to know, appreciate and protect our environment.”