Mike Moser

College Friend

“I’ve taught at every level of college. Among all of them, SMC is the place where one enthusiastic teacher can make a difference.”

Transitions. From high school. From one profession to another. From raising a family to getting an advanced degree. That’s what SMC is all about. But for Mike Moser, it was a transition back to the real world. “I served in Vietnam where I saw a lot of action,” he says. “I’d been accepted to study at Berkeley, but I just wanted to ease back into a less hostile world.”

It took some time, but eventually Mike got his feet beneath him. “SMC was such a great place, filled with such gifted teachers,” he says. “It’s a place where teachers not only get excited but also make what they teach seem important. Studying biology with a great teacher,” he continues, “is of equal value with being able to perform brain surgery or sell a million dollars of real estate.”

Now with advanced degrees in marine biology, Mike has made serious contributions to the solutions of the earth’s oceanic problems. “I’m a specialist in parasitology, on the faculty at U.C. Santa Cruz,” he says. “I study the diseases of fish and marine mammals. And I take the ecological approach with my colleagues,” he says with a laugh, “which enables me to spread my incompetence around.”

Mike Moser feels, after all his degrees, that “you never truly become educated. It’s just a continuing process.” And Mike is currently involved in the ‘process’ of running marathons where he says, “I look forward to belonging to the ‘over 50’ set. So I can finally start winning.”

Back