Shortly after arriving at Weber State University in the mid-1980s, Sam Zeveloff attended a gathering of university administrators.

The newly hired provost stepped to the podium and attempted to break the ice.

Despite his name and his large nose, the administrator joked, he wanted everyone to know that he was not Jewish.

Some people laughed.

Zeveloff did not.

“I was just aghast,” he recalled during a recent Utah Stories interview.

More than forty years later, he still remembers the moment clearly. Not because it reflected open hostility, but because it revealed something about Utah that he had not expected.

When Zeveloff arrived at Weber State in 1984, he entered a state that was far more isolated than the Utah most residents know today. The state was growing, but it had not yet experienced the population boom, national attention and influx of newcomers that would come in later decades. At Weber State, most professors were white, male and Mormon. Most either came from Utah or had received their graduate training there.

Zeveloff was different in nearly every way.

He grew up in Queens, New York. He had earned degrees in New York, North Carolina and Wyoming. He was a wildlife biologist whose academic passion was raccoons. And he was Jewish.

“I think at that time, it’s safe to say, I was the only Jewish person in the College of Science,” he said.

His journey to Utah had been long and somewhat unconventional. After graduating from what is now Binghamton University, he taught junior high and high school in Queens before pursuing graduate work in wildlife biology at North Carolina State University and later earning a doctorate in zoology at the University of Wyoming.

His interest in wildlife began early. As a child, he spent summers in the Catskills and Adirondacks. He loved observing animals and exploring nature. Like many boys of his generation, he was captivated by Walt Disney’s Davy Crockett television series. He even owned a raccoon-skin cap, one he proudly recalls was made from an actual raccoon rather than the cheaper imitations his friends wore.

While many Jewish families encouraged their children toward careers in medicine, law or business, Zeveloff found himself drawn toward wildlife ecology and field biology. Eventually he became one of the country’s leading experts on raccoons, publishing numerous scientific papers and a book through Smithsonian Institution Press.

Yet for all of his travels and academic experiences, nothing quite prepared him for Utah.

Growing up in Queens, diversity was simply part of daily life. Different religions, ethnicities and cultures existed side by side. Looking back, he acknowledges that he may have lived in a bubble of his own, but it was a very different bubble than the one he encountered in Utah.

What surprised him most was not hostility. It was unfamiliarity.

One conversation in particular stayed with him.

The wife of a department chair explained that her image of Jewish people came largely from Fiddler on the Roof. To her, Jews were the villagers she had seen portrayed in the famous Broadway musical.

“She had this impression of Jewish people as being these folksy types from Fiddler on the Roof,” Zeveloff recalled.

The comment was not intended as an insult. Yet it revealed something important. For many people he met, Judaism was something they knew primarily through popular culture rather than personal experience.

Growing up in New York, Zeveloff had never thought much about being Jewish. In Utah, however, he often found himself becoming an informal ambassador for an entire religion and culture.

There were moments that were humorous. There were moments that were awkward.

And there were moments that left him genuinely puzzled.

Early in his career, a senior professor placed a copy of the Book of Mormon in his faculty mailbox.

A few weeks later, the professor followed up and asked whether he had started reading it.

One of Zeveloff’s fellow non-Mormon faculty members was outraged and immediately returned the book with a strongly worded note. Zeveloff chose a different approach. Eventually he explained to the professor that he thought putting religious literature into an employee’s mailbox was inappropriate.

The exchange fascinated him because neither person saw the situation the same way.

For many Latter-day Saints, sharing a Book of Mormon is an act of friendship and concern. Judaism, by contrast, does not actively seek converts. What one person viewed as a kind gesture, another viewed as an uncomfortable mixing of religion and professional life.

Looking back, Zeveloff sees many of these experiences through a generous lens.

“There were often comments made to me that I found either straight-out insulting or certainly at least bizarre,” he said.

Yet he is reluctant to attribute bad motives.

“I would like to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume that it was either due to naivete or being inconsiderate and not understanding how certain comments could be hurtful.”

That distinction runs throughout his recollections of Utah.

It would be easy to frame his experiences as examples of antisemitism. Zeveloff largely resists that interpretation. Instead, he sees many of them as the product of a state that, at the time, had limited exposure to people from different backgrounds.

His observations extend beyond religion.

When he arrived at Weber State, he joined a university that was still evolving from a regional institution into a more nationally connected one. The faculty reflected that reality. Most professors came from local backgrounds. Few came from outside the state.

Over time, that changed dramatically.

Today, according to Zeveloff, only one member of Weber State’s zoology department is from Utah. Faculty are recruited nationally. Students come from a wider range of backgrounds. The university bears little resemblance to the institution he joined more than four decades ago.

The changes extended beyond geography.

When Zeveloff entered graduate school, wildlife biology was overwhelmingly male. The same was true of many scientific disciplines. Throughout his career he watched women enter those fields in growing numbers.

Veterinary medicine provides perhaps the clearest example. Once dominated by men, the profession is now largely female.

Research opportunities changed as well.

As an undergraduate in the early 1970s, Zeveloff considered himself fortunate to work with a prominent population ecologist who allowed him to participate in research. At the time, such opportunities were relatively uncommon.

Today, undergraduate research is a central part of university life. Students routinely work alongside professors in laboratories and field projects, gaining experience that once would have been reserved primarily for graduate students.

Not all of the changes impressed him.

Like many professors who spent decades in higher education, Zeveloff worries about the growth of university administration.

“I’ve seen a tremendous growth in the number of administrators,” he said.

The increase, he believes, has contributed to rising costs and added layers of bureaucracy that did not exist when he began teaching.

In some ways, his reflections mirror a broader debate taking place throughout higher education. Universities are more diverse, more research-oriented and more connected than ever before. They are also more expensive and more administratively complex.

Utah has followed a similar path.

The state that Zeveloff encountered in 1984 was more insular, more homogeneous and less connected to national trends. The Utah of today is a destination for newcomers from around the country. Its universities recruit nationally. Its economy attracts workers from around the world. Its residents encounter a far wider range of cultures and perspectives than they once did.

For Zeveloff, that transformation is impossible to miss.

The professor who arrived from Queens expecting to study wildlife instead found himself observing something else entirely: a state in transition.

Over the course of four decades, he watched Utah become more diverse, more outward-looking and more connected to the broader world.

Along the way, he changed too.

The outsider became a longtime professor. The newcomer became part of the community. The man who once found himself explaining Judaism to colleagues spent more than thirty years teaching generations of Utah students.

When Zeveloff arrived at Weber State, he believes he was the only Jewish faculty member in the College of Science.

Today, that fact would hardly seem remarkable.

Perhaps that is the clearest measure of how much Utah has changed.