Chris Lay is the manager of UC Santa Cruz's Kenneth S. Norris Center for Natural History. He has been the curator of UCSC's Natural History Collection since 2008. Chris also teaches classes on environmental education, UCSC campus natural history, and museum curation, as well as the department’s renowned Natural History Field Quarter—a traveling ten-week hands-on immersion course in the study of California habitats and ecosystems.Chris was an undergraduate at UCSC and has a Masters of Science degree in Conservation Biology from San Jose State University where he completed his thesis on the distribution of the American badger (Taxidea taxus) in the San Francisco Bay area.