With great pleasure, Susan Bok (Rachel Carson College ’77, environmental studies) has established the Susan L. Bok Scholarship In Environmental Studies, a future endowed scholarship for environmentalists and planners at UC Santa Cruz, through her will. The endowment will provide financial opportunities for deserving undergraduates pursuing careers in the protection of the natural environment and improvement of the built environment.
Bok, a retired senior transportation planner for the City of Los Angeles Department of Transportation, views this as an opportunity to give something significant and lasting back to an institution that gave her something significant and lasting—a first-class education and activities usually reserved for graduate students.
Because of its excellent professors and its mentorship and research opportunities for undergraduates, Bok was able to do work at UC Santa Cruz that led to her first professional job as a city planner, right in Santa Cruz, and her subsequent acceptance at top graduate schools in her field. She chose a graduate program where she continued to be mentored and financially supported, becoming a Ph.D. candidate and earning a master of city and regional planning degree.
Bok went on to a rewarding and challenging career in city planning and transportation planning. She conducted internationally recognized research in truck movement, helped plan and design LA’s regional mass transit system, and worked on many other projects that helped improve the built environment.
It is my hope that recipients of this scholarship fund will continue this tradition of public service, balancing privilege and opportunity with a sense of responsibility about the world in which we live,” Bok said.
If you would like to discuss how you can include the university in your estate plans, please contact the Office of Planned Giving at gift.planning@ucsc.edu or (831) 459-5227.
“It is my hope that recipients of this scholarship fund will continue this tradition of public service, balancing privilege and opportunity with a sense of responsibility about the world in which we live.”
—Susan L. Bok, Rachel Carson College ’77