Learn More about Beth

B.A. Anthropology and Economics (University of Kansas), Ph. D. Anthropology (UC San Diego)

I took the scenic route through my undergraduate education. I started out at the University of Missouri, Kansas City majoring in math and pre-secondary education. I spent my first semester of college drinking coffee and playing UNO across the street from where all of my classes were taking place. After failing 3 of those classes, getting a B in one, and getting an A in the other, I decided I might need to do something else for a while. I eventually went back to UMKC, took a few more classes here and there, then dropped out again. During that time I moved to Denver, CO and worked at Wild Oats (I don't think they exist anymore but it's basically a less fancy Whole Foods) and read a lot of books. One of those books was Jane Goodall's Through A Window: My Thirty Years With the Chimpanzees of Gombe. I knew who Goodall was before then and had always loved animals but had never learned much about primates. It was then that I knew I wanted to be a primatologist. I moved to Lawrence, KS after that to live with my best friend and started school at Johnson County Community College, about 30 minutes from where I lived. It was in my Introduction to Physical Anthropology class there (before we changed it to biological anthropology) that I first saw a bonobo. We watched the film, The New Chimpanzees, and I had a revelation. I wanted to study bonobos. I knew about chimps and I liked chimps. But seeing a female bonobo pick up a branch and do a dominance display changed everything for me. The idea that male dominance was not the default in primates and that our other closest living relative solves their problems not with aggression but with...friendliness...really got me thinking about all the ways we talk about human evolution and the evolution of human behavior.

After a few semesters at JCCC (bringing up my GPA!), I transferred to the University of Kansas (I also randomly took an economics class and really liked it so I added economics to my major). I took all the primates classes they offered, did an honors thesis (which apparently I never finished because my transcript still shows an "I" for incomplete...oops) on conflict management and reconciliation with the chimpanzees at the Kansas City Zoo, and then applied for graduate school. Start to finish, it took me about 8 years (on and off) to finish my B.A. But it was worth the wait. I had some growing up to do and had to figure out what I wanted to do.

I was really lucky to get into UC San Diego, where I got to work with Jim Moore (studies chimps) and Shirley Strum (studies baboons) in the anthropology department and Chris Johnson (studies bonobos and dolphins) in cognitive science. I did research with the bonobos at the San Diego Zoo for about 6 years, starting as an intern with Chris Johnson's on-going work and then doing my dissertation research. I had a great time hanging out and watching bonobos and writing down what they did. I loved graduate school. It was so amazing to get to do such a deep dive into primatology.

During graduate school, I also started teaching. In my second year, I was a TA in the Making of the Modern World program, which is an interdisciplinary writing, literature, and history program. TAs were responsible for all of the writing instruction and it was there that I realized teaching was what I wanted to do. I love bonobos and I love learning about them but I really found my stride teaching. I was lucky to get to start teaching at Mira Costa College while I was still in graduate school and then to get a job at Cabrillo before I was even done writing my dissertation. I started at Cabrillo full-time in 2013. I knew I had landed my dream job. I loved everything about being at Cabrillo--the students, my colleagues--and I was ready to have that job until I retired. Unfortunately, life had other plans for me. Family stuff took me back to Lawrence, KS but I have been so lucky that Cabrillo has kept me on as a part-time teacher online. I love teaching at Cabrillo and the opportunity to bring biological anthropology to students (and sometimes cultural). We ask really big questions in anthropology--Who are we? How did we get to be the way we are?--and it is a privilege to ask those questions with students.