August 16, 1999

Appointments

Julie Barrett Heffington has joined the Institute of Marine Sciences as the director of the Seymour Marine Discovery Center at Long Marine Laboratory. Heffington comes to Santa Cruz from Austin, Texas, where she was the director of education and gardens at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.

Heffington, who grew up in California's San Joaquin Valley, has a B.A. in botany and M.A. in biology from Humboldt State University. During and after college, she worked with the U.S. Forest Service in the Cascade Mountains, as a botanist in Alaska, at the marine lab at Humboldt State, and as a park ranger at Redwood National Park north of Eureka.

In 1989, Heffington became an interpreter at the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, and later administered interpretive programs in the north coast area for the state Department of Fish and Game. She took the position at the Wildflower Center in Austin in 1993, at a time when the center was in a start-up phase similar to where the Marine Discovery Center is now. Heffington will oversee the opening of the new center and its ongoing operations and public education programs.

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