A Marine Biologist Down Under
Carolyn Lundquist, Ph.D. ’00, works for a national research institute and university in New Zealand.
Carolyn Lundquist, Ph.D. ’00, prompted by a high school career test, studied communication at UCLA, until an elective completely changed her path, leading her to eventually settle thousands of miles from her native California.
The course convinced her to switch to marine biology, a new offering at UCLA at the time. “It brought me back to the days when I was a kid playing in tide pools,” she said. Lundquist got her scuba diving license and enrolled in the “Marine Biology Quarter” field course at the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory. She applied for the ecology program there soon after and started her Ph.D. a week after her UCLA graduation. Originally from the Bay Area, Lundquist has moved from the West Coast of California to New Zealand, where she is now an established marine biologist and professor at the University of Auckland.