You may have taken one of her courses, seen her on campus, maybe even mistaken her for a student with her long blonde hair and skinny black jeans. She’s Dr. Jill Stein, professor of sociology and anthropology at City College.

From inspirational disc jockey professors to rock star ex-boyfriends, Stein has deep roots in music that have played a big role in shaping who she is. During her time in Santa Barbara in the late ’70s, Stein wrote music reviews for the Daily Nexus, the UCSB newspaper, worked at record stores and had a gig at KTYD radio.

It was one of her UCSB professors that had a passion for rock music and made it the focus of his research that inspired her.

She dated the drummer from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and toured and witnessed first-hand the lifestyle of working musicians. It was this insight that sparked what would become her career focus and the backbone of her dissertation.

“I wrote what I knew, and what I knew was this reality of the culture of professional musicians and how it is they went about their creative lives,” she said.

For the past five years of her life, Stein and a colleague have been writing a sociology textbook with a focus on media and popular culture in society, which will be published next January by W.W. Norton & Company. “It’s the fruition of a big career goal,” she said with a bit of relief.

The textbook is just the beginning of Stein’s expanding influence. Next spring semester she will start teaching a course she has developed on media, culture and society, the topic she is closest to and considers her “baby.”

Jessie Smart, a UCSB student, tutors Stein’s sociology students twice a week at the Luria Library. She speaks highly of Stein and her efforts as a teacher. “She has a lot of life experience that makes her understand her students,” said Smart. “She ties in current events to society, making her teaching dynamic.”

The 47 year-old Los Angeles native started teaching at UCLA, where she also received her bachelor’s in French and worked in marketing and advertising in the film business before deciding to get her master’s and doctorate in sociology. She moved to Santa Barbara after her position opened five years ago at City College.

Perhaps there’s something unspoken in the air that draws people, including Stein, to Santa Barbara. “I don’t know what it is about this place that I love so much but there was no other place I wanted to live,” she said. Stein did undergraduate work at UCSB in the ’70s, lived in Isla Vista on Del Playa, and even took a few courses at City College and loved it, giving her a window to her future.

Stein’s connections to the community are not only limited to her teaching. She exercises an active environmental conscience by serving on the executive committee of the Surfrider Foundation. It’s there that she fights to protect the Santa Barbara coastline from the threatening development that much of California’s coast has fallen to.

Beyond Stein’s academic sphere exists a spiritual component. For many years she has been practicing meditation, and enjoys reading religious, philosophical and esoteric literature. “I think a lot about those big kinds of questions about the nature of the soul and our purpose here,” explained Stein.

She has also traveled throughout her life. “I have a tremendous sort of thirst and curiosity about life so I’ll never stop wondering about things and wanting to explore things,” Stein revealed. Her top-three unexplored destinations include Bhutan in Southern Asia, Machu Picchu in Peru and French Polynesia.