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Department Directory

Christopher J Krohn
  • Title
    • Internship Director
  • Division Social Sciences Division
  • Department
    • Environmental Studies Department
  • Phone
    831-459-2104
  • Email
  • Website
  • Office Location
    • Interdisciplinary Sciences Building, ISB 491
    • ISB Rm. 491
  • Office Hours Thurs. 2-3:30p and Friday, 12-2p
  • Mail Stop Environmental Studies
  • Mailing Address
    • 1156 High Street
    • Santa Cruz CA 95064

Summary of Expertise

--Local politics, reform politics
--Education theory, how students learn
--Experiential Education

Biography, Education and Training

Chris Krohn is a true 'slug.' He/him/his graduated with honors in Latin American Studies and Community Studies from UC Santa Cruz in 1987 and spent three years teaching and practicing journalism in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Germany. Chris completed the teaching credential program at UCSC ('90-'92) and taught high school locally for a brief period. In 1995 his first daughter was born and he became a not-so-stay-at-home dad, dragging her to many meetings and to the city's landfill to study use, reuse, and recycling. While becoming interested in moving the local landfill away from burying garbage and toward creating a reuse facility, he moved directly into local political reform. He was elected to the Santa Cruz City Council in 1998 and was mayor of Santa Cruz in 2002. Chris joined the Environmental Studies Department in 2005 because the most important issue was global warming. The planet's climate is changing. Since the faculty in the ENVS Dept. was laser-focused on climate disruption it was an easy landing pad for Krohn's interests, desires, and environmental passions. Krohn says, "So here I am hoping to direct students towards the multiple opportunities that exist for them to participate in nurturing and sustaining their world."

In 2015, Krohn earned an MFA degree in Creative Writing from San Jose State University.

In 2016, unhappy with the enviromental and land-use direction of the city, and encouraged by his students, Chris Krohn again won a council seat on the Santa Cruz City Council in hopes of curbing the developer and real estate take-over of Surf City. The fate of Santa Cruz is still, TBA. 

Selected Publications

For a selection of Chris Krohn's jouralistic articles go HERE.

Selected Recordings

Chris Krohn's "Talk of the Bay" show.

Teaching Interests

--How to make the most of your internship experience
--Social change
--Essay writing and journal keeping