By Emily Nguyen
Katie Miller walks around the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden in thick green pants, and leather gardening boots. She repeats the scientific names of the plants she comes across quietly under her breath. Salvia spathecia. Encelia californica. Lupinus succulentus.
Miller is a UC Santa Barbara Environmental Studies major who is doing a minor in Indigenous Studies. In spring 2021, she took the course “Introduction to Native American Religions” with professor Greg Johnson, director of UCSB’s Walter H. Capps Center, which is dedicated to connecting ethics, religion, public life, and the environment.
Miller then did the Sara Miller McCune Public Endowed Internship Service program, a 10-week seminar followed by a 20-week internship at a local non-profit — in her case the Botanic Garden. She eagerly applied for the position, one of several administered by the Capps Center. And a longstanding passion for environmental conservation made her the right candidate.
“As a kid, I was interested in animals and marine biology. I started to realize a lot of those are under threat by climate change and human development issues,” Miller said in a recent interview.
Since January, she has interned at the garden for 10-15 hours per week. In June, she hopes to begin a part-time position there and increase her workload to 20 hours.
“When I first applied to be an environmental studies major, I didn't necessarily know what I wanted to do with it,” Miller said. “I had a really big interest in learning about Native American stewardship, because who better to ask about environmental conservation than the Chumash and Santa Barbara? It's been really interesting to tie those two things together.”
As part of her internship, she cleans seeds and organizes native species of plants in the Botanic Garden seed bank. She also “accessions” plants, which assigns each a unique identifier.
Capps intern Katie Miller working on the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden digital database to document plants of the Central Coast
“Some of the packets of seeds have been stored since the 80s. I clean them and enter them into the database. I work on the garden grounds by collecting data and accessioning plants. I love being out in the garden, digging and identifying stuff. It’s really cool to learn by experience,” she said.
Learning the names of over 1,000 classifications of plants that the garden hosts has been challenging, but Miller has learned to seek help from her boss, Christina, and her colleagues.
Miller loves the Island View and Redwood sections of the garden as they represent the broad range of California biomes within a small space. She immerses herself in the garden which is decorated with vibrant plants and delicate floral scents.
“We have some plants here that are really rare. My favorite plant is the Dendromecon harfordii (island tree poppy) because it has really pretty glaucous [waxy] leaves and yellow flowers, and it’s endemic to the Channel Islands.”
Miller wants to take away from her internship a broader knowledge of California’s ecosystems and plants that are native to our state. She hopes to educate garden visitors on conservation by way of preserving local biodiversity, which can be done by planting natives in our own yards. After graduation, she wants to transition to freelance conservation.
“This internship has given me a lot of skills that are cross-applicable with different fields that I'm interested in. It's really exciting,” she said. In addition to working with seeds and data mapping, Miller feels she has gained crucial soft skills such problem-solving, leadership, and communication.
UC Santa Barbara undergraduate student Katie Miller working at the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden for her Walter H. Capps Center internship. When not cleaning seeds or archiving plants into the database, Katie helps to give tours around the facility.
Emily Nguyen is a second-year UC Santa Barbara student majoring in Biology and Art & minoring in Technology. She wrote this article for her Writing Program course Digital Journalism.