UCLA Magazine: | "The secret lives of UCLA professors: Dr. Wendelin Slusser"

In a feature published in the Fall 2026 edition of UCLA Magazine, Dr. Wendelin Slusser, professor in UCLA Fielding’s Department of Community Health Sciences, was one of four UCLA Fielding faculty profiled under the headline: “Our faculty members excel in their professional fields. But sometimes what they do outside the classroom is even more revealing of who they are.” 

On any given day, you’ll find UCLA professors lecturing on political science, designing healthier communities, studying wildlife, advancing public health or teaching the next generation of architects. But when the lecture ends or the lab closes, many of them head off to other pursuits — ones that are often every bit as fascinating as their professional work.

Some are hobbies, escapes that are wildly different from the professors’ day jobs in academia. Some other pursuits might be considered second careers. All are extensions of the same curiosity, creativity and problem-solving that define these professors’ research and teaching. The skills they develop outside the classroom often shape the way they approach their scholarship; conversely, the questions they ask as scholars frequently spill over into their personal lives.

Consider this a peek behind the office door. These are the passions, projects and pursuits that don’t always appear in faculty biographies but can provide a fuller portrait of the people behind them.

As a girl visiting her family’s ranch, Wendy Slusser learned a lesson that’s as valuable in the actual fields as it is in her professional fields of pediatrics and public health.

“When I was 5, I picked string beans with my Aunt Maxine,” she says. “Afterward, she boiled them, and I had this sinking feeling because I didn’t like green beans. So she served them to me in different manners: One was with salt; one was with butter; one was raw; one was overcooked; and one was cooked, buttered and salted — that was my perfect string bean, it turns out!”

The lesson: “You just need to try a different angle sometimes,” she says. “There are different ways of navigating a small family ranch, and I take that approach in my own work promoting health and well-being.”

At UCLA, she leads efforts to build an inclusive culture of health. One research project resulted in a UC systemwide healthy vending machine policy. Slusser was also instrumental in the planting of a medicinal garden. “It honors a lot of the large cultural populations in L.A., from Chinese and Mexican to Native American Californian,” she says. She is currently focusing on brain health and on how universities can be good citizens within their communities.                                       

At Slusser Ranch, located in the Russian River Valley, Slusser and her siblings are the fifth generation to work the land, which today has 67 acres of vineyards.

Slusser sees a through line between the work she does at the ranch and her work in the academic field. “My North Star is food,” she says. “We need to be addressing our climate, as well as our social, emotional and physical well-being. That includes food. My strength is as a scientist and also as a food enthusiast. And I bring that to everything I do.”

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