Volunteer Testimonies

to pursue their educational needs. These students aspire to not only succeed, but also contribute to the future success and improvement of their own communities. 

I also work with our Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Committee to pursue how we can further promote these core values at UCSC and make them an important part of the students and alumni experience. 

I encourage other alumni to become involved so they can receive the benefit of knowing how their contribution can make a significant difference for our university and the lives of our students.

but I had never been in an environment that thrived on making sense of the world around us—from unseen biological organisms to the place of humankind in the cosmos. As a history and religious studies major, I was comfortably between those extremes. 

My life was utterly transformed.

I found other students, grad student TAs, and professors who shared many of my questions, and had some thoughts (a lot of thoughts, actually) about how those questions might be answered. Some of the answers conflicted, but the discovery of a world where all questions and most answers were welcome and open for discussion was revelatory.

I graduated from Cowell in 1978 and, hardly missing a beat, came back as a history of consciousness student (we didn’t capitalize it in those days). After I finished grad school and while looking for a full-time teaching position in a California community college (going back to my roots), I taught in the Stevenson core course and served as Stevenson’s academic preceptor for several years. I continued to find the campus an exhilarating place to be for reasons personal, social, and intellectual. 

I retired a few years ago and have been fortunate to be able to return to Cowell, teaching sections of the Cowell core course to students born in this millennia. 

I’ve also gotten involved with the Page & Eloise Smith Scholastic Society, an inter-generational community of friends established by early Cowell alum, Bill Dickinson. The Smith society provides support for current UCSC students who are former foster youth, wards of the court, homeless—students who have overcome sometimes significant adversity to find their way to UCSC. 

Smith students are in some ways very different (no one had a cell phone when I came to UCSC), but in most of the ways that matter, they are the same hot mess we all were at 18, 19, and sometimes well into our twenties. I often wonder whether it’s the Smith students or their mentors who get the most benefit.

I began volunteering as a member of the UCSC Alumni Association’s leadership board – UCSC Alumni Council – in 2023. It has been great to serve alongside other alumni from various generations, degrees, work experience, and life-experiences. We meet at least four times a year and do most of our work through different committees. So far, I have served on the volunteer committee and the scholarship committee. The experience has been rewarding.

I would encourage all UCSC alumni—and even students who attended but didn’t graduate or transferred elsewhere—to reconnect with their Banana Slug roots.