UC Santa Cruz - Giving

Stories of Support

Kit Mura-smith

"Too many credits in too many majors." That was Kit Mura-smith’s situation when she applied to UC Santa Cruz in 1974. Recently divorced with three small children, she was ready to finish her degree and start a new life. “When you have that many units and four majors, universities don’t want you,” Mura-smith noted. “UCSC made an exception and allowed me to complete my degree in one year, with a grant and the support I needed to complete the year without working. I am grateful to UCSC for accepting me, even under the title of an ‘older re-entering woman.’ It was a challenging year in a very supportive environment.”

After graduating in applied social anthropology in 1975, Mura-smith went to work for a Santa Cruz attorney as a jury observer. In 1978 while attending law school and working for Hewlett-Packard, Mura-smith and three others purchased technology from Hewlett-Packard to found their own company, Trimble Navigation. Trimble is the leader in Global Positioning Systems (GPS) technology, with applications in fields as diverse as marine navigation, land survey, mobile communication, aerospace, geographic information systems, personal navigation, and precise time. Mura-smith held executive positions in marketing, product development, and manufacturing operations, as well as heading the original marine business. She holds several GPS application patents. She retired in 1998.

In preparation for launching a campaign for the new library technology center, librarian Margaret Gordon was looking for high-tech alumni on the Internet and came across Mura-smith’s name as founder of Trimble. Gordon contacted her and as a result of their meeting, Mura-smith has contributed a $2 million charitable remainder trust that equally supports McHenry Library and the Services for Transfer and Re-Entry Students (STARS) program.

Now, Mura-smith is lending her diverse talents to the library, supporting its effort to define and develop the technology addition to McHenry Library. She is approaching the project as “a lot of fun and a real challenge to come up with a physical and intellectual concept that will make the UCSC library extension a unique intellectual and artistic resource to very broad educational, social, and business communities.”

For more information about supporting McHenry Library, contact Margaret Gordon, (831) 459-4211; mgordon@library.ucsc.edu. For more information about supporting Services for Transfer and Re-Entry Students (STARS), contact Corinne Miller, (831) 459-4968; corky@cats.ucsc.edu