December 13, 2005
Glenn Hening, founder of the Surfrider Foundation, to deliver the illustrated free public presentation Waves of Warning—Is Modern Surfing a Business, a Contact Sport or a Religion?
Summary Facts:
- Glenn Hening
- Waves of Warning—Is Modern Surfing a Business, a Contact Sport or a Religion?
- Founder of the Surfrider Foundation, Hening is a well-known environmental and community activist, teacher and surfer
- Regents’ Lecturer in the UCSB Department of Geography
- Free illustrated public presentation
- Sunday, January 22 / 3 pm / UCSB Campbell Hall
- Information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535
An environmental and community activist, teacher and surfer for more than three decades, Glenn Hening, founder of the Surfrider Foundation, will take a look at modern surfing from his own unique perspective in the illustrated presentation Waves of Warning—Is Modern Surfing a Business, a Contact Sport or a Religion? on Sunday, January 22 at 3 pm at UCSB Campbell Hall. Hening—visiting UCSB as a Regents’ Lecturer in the Department of Geography—is co-founder of The Groundswell Society and author of Waves of Warning, a novel about Polynesia, Wall Street and the future of surfing.
Glenn Hening’s credentials are unparalleled in the world of modern surfing. For over twenty years, he’s established a unique reputation for “asking the hard questions” according to surfing’s premier magazine The Surfers Journal.
Hening’s first notable accomplishments as a surfer included winning contests both individually and with the UCLA surf team in the early 70s. He became a high school history teacher and taught in Central America for five years. After his return to California he developed a second career in computer programming. But his dedication to surfing never wavered, and in 1984, while working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL-Caltech/NASA), he founded the Surfrider Foundation, leading a small team of visionary surfers who established the concepts behind surfing’s largest environmental organization.
In 1989 Hening returned to teaching and for fifteen years worked with at-risk high school students and adults in diploma, GED, ESL and job training programs throughout Ventura County. Surfing remained a passion and in 1997 he co-founded the Groundswell Society to address broader issues affecting modern surfers both in and out of the water. He has written or edited over one hundred articles about trends, projects and people from surfing’s past and present for the Society’s publications.
Over the years he has delivered speeches and lectures to a wide variety of audiences on such topics as the surf industry, the environmental movement in surfing, surfboard design and the origins of surfing in ancient Pre-Incan cultures. In 2002 he led an expedition to archaeological sites in Northern Peru built by the first “surfriders” over a thousand years ago.
Today he owns a business providing training and motivation systems to small companies and large corporations. He also does a daily radio spot “Surfing Your Ocean” (KVTA 1520 AM in Ventura), consisting of entertaining and motivating stories from the world of riding waves for audiences of non-surfers.
Throughout his unique career Hening has remained a dedicated and talented surfer while riding some of the world’s best waves throughout California, Hawaii, Australia, Peru, Polynesia and Central America. For the past nine years he has organized the Rincon Clean Water Classic, a special fundraising event for environmental projects and high school scholarships. At an age when many surfers are starting to take it easy, he still rides high performance surfboards and can be found checking the surf every day at dawn across the street from his home at Oxnard Shores, California.
As a Regents’ Lecturer in the UCSB Department of Geography, Hening will engage with students and faculty from various academic departments. Instituted in 1962 to encourage rare and invaluable interaction between gifted non-academics and the university community, the Regents’ Lectureship program of the University of California has continued to provide campus residencies in sponsoring departments for people with distinguished achievement in the arts, sciences, humanities, business, politics and international affairs.
Glenn Hening is presented by UCSB Department of Geography and UCSB Arts & Lectures.
For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.
Editor: For photos, please call
George Yatchisin at (805) 893-3494.