This month, a group of IU Southeast students will fly to Borneo for a field biology course. In doing so, they will be benefiting from the pioneering vision of Dr. Claude D. Baker (1944—2023), the father of field biology at IU Southeast.

A proud son of El Dorado, Arkansas, Claude Baker was a Renaissance Man whose unceasing energy and relentless curiosity compelled him to explore and make his mark in the natural sciences, history, genealogy, and politics, and whose kindness, sense of humor and love of music, art, and family won him friends wherever he went.

Heading out

After completing a doctoral degree at the University of Louisville, Baker joined the faculty of IU Southeast in 1976 as a professor of biology and spent the next 36 years teaching, researching, publishing, captivating, and inspiring.

For his accomplishments in the classroom, Baker’s efforts earned him the IU Southeast Distinguished Teaching Award and the IU All-University Teaching Award, among many others.

But today he is often most remembered for his teaching outside the classroom.

Initially, that meant out in the area’s many waterways. Led by Baker and Dr. Bill Forsyth, professor of biology and Baker’s superior, students gathered fish specimens to build the zoological collection that is now one of the gems of the IU system.

But soon he took them further out, developing the field biology program that would eventually provide learning experiences in more than 30 countries in the South Pacific, the Caribbean, Central and South America, Africa, and the Middle East.

It started simply enough, recalls Jon Norman, then a student and today IU Southeast’s laboratory services coordinator. Baker and his colleague Dr. Carl Christensen, professor of biology, invited students to pitch in $100, form a carpool and simply “head out.”

The first trips landed in Acapulco and Baker’s native Arkansas, before settling into a groove in Florida. Here the passionate scientists worked in the Everglades and other locations from 5 a.m. until 10 p.m., and lived off fish they caught and cooked themselves. By 1984, the trips had coalesced into an official field biology class, L303.

To read the activities of these journeys is to share in Baker’s boundless sense of wonder and his ecological awareness that everything is connected.

On a trip to Tahiti and Moorea in 2000, students probed the inside of a dormant volcano, hiked to a hidden waterfall, took part in a shark feeding, and spent time with dolphins, before enjoying Polynesian food and stargazing beneath the South Pacific sky.

In San Salvador in 2004, students followed a creek from its source to a distant lagoon where it found the sea, peered down upon towers of calcium carbonate (stromatolites) in hypersaline lakes, searched for crabs in red mangrove thickets, snorkeled through seagrass beds and reef ecosystems, and toured an early 19th-century plantation.

“These were more adventure trips than field study,” said John Click ‘82, who majored in biology and chemistry, and took a class with Baker every semester during his college career. “Dr. Baker was a free thinker who gave us carte blanche to get our feet wet.”

Click was part of the cohort that began capturing the fish specimens that now form the IU Southeast Zoological Collection. Inspired by Baker’s “lust and thirst for knowledge,” Click responded to his academic challenges.

“The goal was always to learn more, but also to excel,” Click said.

At the time, recalls Norman, IU Southeast’s biology program saw itself primarily as a launching pad for medical school. Click, a practicing dentist for 38 years, is one of many of Baker’s students who went on to successful careers in medical practice.

Transforming lives

Baker’s method combining academic rigor with extensive field work had the power to transform. Steven Moberly ‘12 experienced this first-hand.

“He changed my life,” Moberly said. An active youth, not overly fond of school, Moberly first met Baker while visiting his younger brother, a student in Baker’s class. “Dr. Baker was in a creek, wearing waders, netting up fish,” Moberly said. “I remember thinking, ‘Maybe college ain’t so terrible.’”

Baker had a way of getting rid of stereotypes about what it takes to succeed in school, Moberly recalled. He seemed to know how each student ticked, and how best to inspire them.

Moberly worked locally as a welder and then as a commercial fisherman in Alaska before taking his first course at IU Southeast–oceanography with Baker–at age 25. Once, succumbing to doubts, and feeling out of place, he came to Baker for advice.

As Moberly recalled, “Dr. Baker asked me, ‘Can you do the work? I said I could. ‘Then do the work,’ he said.”

Moberly graduated with a 4.0 GPA, went on to medical school, and became a psychiatrist. He subsequently created the Claude Baker Scholarship at IU Southeast to honor the memory of his mentor.

A life of service

Baker’s academic passion was inseparable from his service ethic, which he sought to instill in his students.

“I want to encourage students to want a life of service,” Baker said in an interview for the SAU magazine. “Financial gain is great, but it would be nice if it were used to push their fellow man forward to make the world a better place.”

A perfect example is his work with Floyd, Clark and Harrison county health departments and the Indiana State Department of Health to combat the spread of West Nile virus. Over 200 students fanned out to trap mosquitoes in waterways and other likely habitats. It was Moberly who eventually captured and documented the invasive Asian rock pool mosquito, a species new to Indiana. With Baker as academic advisor, Moberly, and two fellow students published their findings in a paper in the Journal of the Indiana Academy of Sciences, and even traveled to Washington, DC to present their work at the Council on Undergraduate Research.

An enduring vision

Baker retired from IU Southeast in 2008, returning to his roots in El Dorado, where he taught at Southern Arkansas University (SAU) and, together with his wife Neva “Skeet” Baker, established a marine biology scholarship endowment to support marine biology majors with evidence of financial need. In memoriam, the SAU biology department has created the Dr. Claude Baker Award for outstanding marine biology students, with the inaugural presentation taking place in May of this year.

It’s a testament to Baker’s enduring impact that so many students became lifelong friends, including Click and Moberly, both of whom visited him and his wife Neva shortly before he passed.

Their dedication to walking in his footsteps is a tribute to the enduring value of his vision.

“He always said there were three things that were important in this life,” Neva Baker said. “Love, joy, and happiness.”