 He was registering for classes at Sacramento Junior College when a faculty member heard that he was interested in archaeology and took him out of line to meet the president of the college, Jeremiah Beverley Lilliard, who was similarly interested; subsequently he became a protégé of Lilliard.After two years, Heizer went on to the University of California at Berkeley, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts with high honors in 1936.There was little interest in local archaeology at Berkeley then, and Heizer dug with the only graduate student at the time, Waldo Wedel.