Transitions Magazine - Spring issue

Transitions Spring 2013#

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Cover photo: Monarch Caterpillar 2 by Willis Peterson scholarship winner Ana June’13 B.A.program

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Transitions MagazinePrescott College220 Grove Ave.

Prescott, AZ 86301

Email us [email protected]

Call us. We’d loveto hear your feedback

(877) 350-4506

Intro

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PublisherMarjory J. Sente

EditorAshley Mains

DesignerMiriam Glade

Contributing WritersEmily Affolter • Walt Anderson • Joel Barnes • Molly

Beverly • Jen Chandler • Suzanne Druhv • Anita Fernández Tom Fleischner • Deb Ford • Lisa S. Garrison • Allison Jack David Lovejoy • Ashley Mains • Candace McNulty • Dana Oswald • Terri Pearson • Tandy Rackerby • Mary Trevor

Kristin Woolever

Staff PhotographersDenise Elfenbein • Miriam Glade • Aryn LaBrake

Marj Sente • Marie Smith

Photo ContributorsAlligator Juniper • The Arader Galleries • Joel Barnes

Dan Bigley • Julie Brown • Grace Burford • Casamar Suites Jen Chandler • Lili DeBarbieri • Anita Fernández

Meg Ferrigno • Tom Fleischner • Deborah Ford • Allison Jack • Anna June • Steve Lockton • Patrick McMullan

Denise Mitten • Delisa Myles • Dana Oswald • Peregrine Books • Roberta Peterson • Jorge Phillips • the Prescott

College Archives • Daniel Roca • the family of Linda Ryan the family of Mary Thurtle • Bill Timmerman

Vice President for Institutional AdvancementMarjory J. Sente

(928) 350-4509 • [email protected]

For Class Notes and address changes, contact Marie Smith • [email protected]

Send correspondence, reprint requests, and submissions to:Ashley Mains

Prescott College220 Grove Ave., Prescott, AZ 86301

(928) 350-4506 • [email protected]

Transitions, a publication for the Prescott College community, is published two times a year by the Office of Institutional Advance-ment for alumni, parents, friends, students, faculty, and staff of the College. Its purpose is to keep readers informed with news about Prescott College faculty, staff, students, and fellow alumni. Transitions is available online at www.prescott.edu.

©2013 Prescott College

Prescott College reserves the right to reprint materials fromTransitions in other publications and online at its discretion.Prescott College is committed to equal opportunity for its employees and applicants for employment, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, creed, sex or sexual orientation, age, disability, marital or parental status, status with respect to public assistance, or veteran’s status. This policy applies to the administration of its employment policies or any other programs generally accorded or made available to employees.

Contact Admissions at(877) 350-2100 • [email protected]

For the Liberal Arts, the Environment, and Social Justice

WWW.PRESCOTT.EDU

TransitionSTransitionS Contents3 College News6 Natural History: The Oldest Tradition10 50 Years of True Excellence Timeline11 Multi-Generational Conservation 14 The Josephine Michell Arader Collection17 Julie Brown: From PC to National Geographic20 Willis Peterson Photo Scholarship21 A Parent’s Perspective: Steve Lockton 22 Farewell Mary Trevor

Departments23 Class Notes25 Alumni Briefs26 Faculty & Staff Notes28 In Memoriam29 The Last Word

BistiDeNaZin by Willis Peterson scholarship winner Ana June’13 B.A.program

What’s Your Communication Preference?The Advancement Office is always looking for ways to streamline its processes, save money, reduce paper waste, and improve communications with you—the friends and alumni of Prescott College.

So tell us: Do you like getting printed communications through the mail, or would you prefer electronic correspondence? Even Transitions is available for online viewing and in PDF format.

If you want to stay on our mailing list, there’s no need to do anything, except let us know when you move. If you’d prefer e-communications only, make sure we have your email address on file by sending your updated contact information and a note indicating your communication preference to [email protected].

We find ourselves in the heart of the Spring 2013 semester at Prescott College, and we can look back at Fall 2012 with pride at all we’ve accomplished, and look to the year ahead with excitement at our continuing successes. This fall we opened our new student residences—the Village—and welcomed 91 students to their new home. The overwhelming report from students is that the facilities and the camaraderie this living space creates constitute a real asset for the College. By the time this magazine is published we should know what level of LEED certifi-cation we achieved for this state-of-the-art sustainable housing complex.

A kudo of particular note is that Prescott College has been named the Asso-ciation of Experiential Education’s Organization of the Year. Quite an honor! Another kudo goes to our Tucson location as we celebrate its 25th anniversary. Our presence in Tucson has been an important point of outreach, and we hope to honor this year the Tucson location’s faculty, staff, and students, both past and present. Currently, as part of our social justice mission, Prescott College in Tucson is offering a banned Chicano Studies course for college credit (page 5). Finally, we honor Mary Trevor, who is retiring after 12 years as registrar. Her contribu-tions to professionalizing administrative services and our compliance with federal and state regulations have been profound (page 22).

This issue of Transitions focuses on natural history, a part of the College’s DNA since its founding. Beginning with the Ford Foundation Symposium that gave birth to the College fifty years ago and running up to the present day, students and alumni carry a love and understanding of the natural world with them for a lifetime. For example, alumni a generation apart have carried this love into their careers: Matt Blake ’00 and Lisa Garrison ’75 have partnered on conservation efforts in the Northeast (page 11); and Julie Brown ’01 is the Ocean Education Coordinator for National Geographic (page 17). On campus today our Natu-ral History Institute is opening as a resource not only for our students but also for the local community and beyond (page 6). The Institute features a collec-tion of natural history prints given to the college by the Arader Galleries, and in November our own Sam Hill Art Gallery will mount a special exhibit of these prints. They will also be on continuing display at various locations around cam-pus (page 14).

Enjoy these pages as they feature aspects of the College’s ongoing story that started some fifty years ago and persist today.

Best wishes,

Dr. Kristin R. Woolever

Transitions Spring 20132

President Woolever speaks at Commencement, 2010

President’s Corner

Transitions Spring 2013# Transitions Spring 2013 3

College NewsGraduate Teaching Assistants on Black CanyonOn Sept. 5, 2012, Prescott College’s fifth cohort of the Graduate Teaching Assistant Program (GTAP) took off from Willow Beach on the Colorado River to begin a four-day expedition. Each Fall Semes-ter, a small cadre of graduate students joins the On-Campus Program faculty in a discovery of experiential education and practice, led by Dr. Joel Barnes ’81. It’s a professional development opportunity to discover and examine the College’s mission, pedagogy, and methodologies that will later be applied in an On-Campus Undergraduate Program classroom as a professor’s assistant, co-instructor, or solo instructor in a course aligned with each graduate student’s background and interests. The river trip was also packed with presentations from each graduate student, ranging from canoeing instruction and creating mandalas to learning classroom somatic exercises and understanding leadership styles.

The Art of Fermentation Prescott College hosted a free talk by Sandor Katz titled “The Art of Fermentation” in celebration of

National Food Day Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2012. Sandor Katz is a fermentation revivalist and the author of Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods and The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved. Local groups involved in fermentation and the food movement tabled at this event, which was followed by a pre-opening sneak peek, reception, and book signing at Peregrine Books (see Ty Fitzmorris’s Class Note page 24). This talk was the first of a series in the Prescott College Environmental Studies Fall Colloquium.

Prescott College Named Experiential Education Organization of the YearThe Association for Experiential Education (AEE) awarded Prescott College with the 2012 Organization of the Year Award at their conference in Madison, Wis., in November. According to the AEE, Prescott College embodies experi-ential education and consistently demonstrates a high standard and higher level of commitment to support its students. Faculty and staff from the College were present to receive the award. Pictured here: Erin Lotz, Denise Mitten, Steven Pace, Cheryl Schwartz, and Rick Medrick.

First Student Film FestivalPrescott College hosted its first film festival on Dec. 12, 2012. Six documentaries from Dana Oswald’s ’71 The Documentary course were showcased along with a sci-fi short and several three- to five-minute shorts created independently by students. Over 200 people attended the festival, which ran for three hours in a single screening. The success of this festival encouraged students interested in creating films to start a filmmaking club on campus. Club members intend to hold a second film festival in spring 2013 to air student work created in College courses along with independent student work. The club will also meet weekly to hold workshops in camera work and editing tools to support students interested in creating films.

A New Minority Endowed Scholarship FundThe idea for the Lovejoy, Rifá, Hulmes Minority Endowed Scholarship came from Amparo Rifá ’89, wife of faculty member David Lovejoy ’73, when she realized that the current tuition at Prescott College

would be unaffordable for her if she were starting college today. “Although there is no denying that the impediments to ethnic and racial diversity at Prescott College are complex,” says Lovejoy, “it would also be naive to think that affordability was not one of them.” After some thought, Lovejoy approached fellow faculty member and alumnus Doug Hulmes ’74, who served with him on the College’s Diversity Committee at the time. “The three of us put together some seed money to start the scholarship,” Lovejoy says, “and upon hearing about the idea my mother contributed in my late

father’s name, knowing that it was consistent with his lifelong dedication to social justice.” If you are interested in learning more about this fund or would like to make a donation, contact Marj Sente in the Advancement Office at [email protected] or (928) 350-4509.

Faculty Member Starts National Science Foundation Fellowship Agroecology faculty member Allison Jack has been awarded a one-year postdoctoral train-ing grant through the National Science Foundation International Research Fellowship Program. She will be living in Wageningen, the Netherlands, home of “Food Valley,” the world’s largest intersection of food and agriculture researchers, professionals, and multinational corporations, through 2013. Allison will be working on a project titled “Harnessing Biodiversity for Sustainable Agriculture: The Metagenomics of Disease Sup-pressive Soils.” She’ll be blogging about her experiences and laboratory research adven-tures at www.agroecologyaz.wordpress.com. Allison will return to Prescott College in spring 2014 even better prepared to teach about the global food system and having gained valuable research skills to start up a soil biology lab and field research program using Prescott College Jenner Farm as a field station.

Tomorrowland Exhibit at Sam HillThe Prescott College Art Gallery at Sam Hill Warehouse hosted Tomorrowland, featuring unique sculptural installations of Los Angeles–based artist Aili Schmeltz, Jan. 11 through Feb. 16, 2012. Tomorrowland explored themes of utopia and idealism while paying homage to the past and looking forward to the future. Aili’s artist statement illuminates her creative process: “My current body of work explores the idea that utopia can be considered not only a place or a goal, but also as the very act of striving for such a target. These hybridized structures are materializations, remnants of an ideal that never was and may never be.” Schmeltz earned an M.F.A. from the University of Arizona, holds a B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute, and has exhibited internationally in cities such as New York, Berlin, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami.

Prescott College, Tucson Community CollaborationsAt their February meeting, the Board of Trustees viewed a video highlighting the excellent work of the Tucson location serving southern Arizona for the past 25 years. Following the presentation Trustee Betsy Bolding was honored for her 30 years with the College and her unwavering support of Prescott College in Tucson. On April 6, 2012, Prescott College, in partnership with Arizona Wilderness Coalition, Ironwood Tree Experience, and Environmental Education Exchange, hosted a 25th anniver-sary event along with a birthday celebration for John Muir (175 years!) at Zuzi’s Theater at the Historic Y in Tucson. Additional community collaborations included an environmental service project for the National Collegiate Leadership Conference in collaboration with the Ironwood Tree Experience in February; participation in the Tucson Books Festival in March (left); and hosting the Go Outside and Play on Earth Day 2013 event at the U of A/Prescott College High Ropes Course GreenLot, where kids and kids at heart experienced a day of outdoor activity.


College News Continued

Jenner Farm, Skull Valley, Ariz., 2012

Tucson Books Festival, 2013


Transitions Magazine Wins!The Prescott College Advancement Communications team (Miriam Glade ’03, Ashley Mains M.A. ’11, and Marj Sente) won Bronze in the first annual 2012 Collegiate Advertising Awards for Magazine Publication—single, with a 1,001 to 2,000 student body. From logos to social media to entire marketing campaigns, the 2012 Collegiate Advertising Awards program boasted some of the best advertising in the nation. All entries were judged by industry experts and were scored on multiple criteria, with a possible total of 100 points. Prescott College’s Fall 2012 issue of Transitions scored 89 points and ranked in the top 16 percent of the more than 700 entries from the United States and Canada. For more information or to see a complete list of winners, visit www.collegiateadawards.com.

College Credit Offered for Banned Chicano Studies CoursePrescott College faculty member Anita Fernández developed a credit-bearing course with Curtis Acosta, former Tucson Unified School District Teacher of Mexican American Studies, for students who want to take the literature course that was recently banned by Arizona state law HR 2281. The course, Chican@ Literature, was designed to replace the banned Mexican American Literature course and will count for two college-level credit hours for any high school students who complete it through Prescott College’s Early High School Experience. “This is an excellent way for Prescott College to reach out to prospective students in the Tucson area and to make a strong statement for critical, multicultural educationwhile supporting our mission for social justice,” says Fernández.

A Nearly Fatal Illusion New photographic works by faculty member Deborah Springstead Ford were on view at the Prescott College Art Gallery at Sam Hill Warehouse March 22 through April 20, 2013, in an ex-hibit titled A Nearly Fatal Illusion. This show represents three interconnected bodies of work and is Ford’s attempt to explore the interaction of art, science and nature, chaos and climate, while trying to understand the tenuous balance that core elements play within the ecosystem, for reclamation and restoration of a planet in peril. Special guest and former faculty member Alan Weisman led a discussion, “Where Do We Go From Here,” in connection with the exhibit at Sam Hill on Friday, April 12.

Sustainability Symposium May 16-19, 2013With internationally known keynote speakers and renowned sustainability experts, each May the Prescott College Ph.D. program in Sustainability Education hosts a symposium centered on the theme of sustainability and its connection with education throughout our society. Prescott College is pleased to announce the Fifth Annual Sustainability Educa-tion Symposium, to be held May 16-19, 2013, at the College’s Prescott campus. With a theme of Celebration and

Regneration, this year’s symposium features Dr. Craig Chalquist as keynote and Owen and Moley Ó Súilleabháin as live musical performers throughout the conference. For more information about the Symposium, and to register for Friday’s keynote lecture and Saturday’s workshops, please visit www.prescottsymposium.org. Open to the public!

Congratulations Dean Herring!Dean for Campus-based Delivery, Planning and Research Jack Herring was offered and has accepted a prestigious position at Western Washington University. Starting July 1, he will serve as Dean of Fairhaven College a small 500 student, innovative unit within a comprehensive public liberal arts university of 15,000 students. “Pedagogically, it shares much in common with Prescott College,” Jack explains, includ-ing the use of narrative evaluations, seminar style courses, student designed degrees, and capstone projects to demonstrate competence. Jack’s main goal will be advocating for experiential, integrative, student cen-tered education to be woven more deeply into mainstream higher education. “It has truly been an honor to serve as dean and faculty member here for the past 15 years. I’ve learned more during this time than I ever could have imagined. It is with a sense of gratitude and respect that I step into the next phase of my professional life, carrying with me these gifts that you have given me.”

Students with author Luis Alberto Urrea, 2013

By Tom Fleischner, Ph.D.

A dozen students lean into the steep hillside above the snout of an enormous valley glacier. For the moment, though, they pay no heed to the massive muscle of ice—their atten-

tion is focused on the enchanting structures within tubular corollas of the arctic-alpine flowers at their feet. The world suddenly takes on new depth and beauty as these details emerge in tiny, significant patterns. The Pleistocene feel of the immense northern landscape adds new dimension and meaning.

In an open panga in the Gulf of California students gasp with won-der as a whale larger than the boat gracefully curls underneath it. Which species is it?! Instantly, students and teacher search for field marks: size and shape of dorsal fin, length of pectoral flippers, color, markings on the head … Art students carefully observe bones laid out before them, shad-ing contours with pencils on paper, rendering three dimensions onto a flat surface. Photographers explore and document the wild world around them, merging technical skill with artistic imagina-tion, guided by careful field observation. Writing students hike up canyons, unveiling narrative threads for essays, poems, and stories. Psychology students discover that attentiveness to the world beyond human psyche illuminates their understanding of human emotions. Student educators lead sixth-graders through ponderosa pine forests, showing the children how the number and length of needles can help them distinguish several species of pine trees, and pines from firs. The children’s hometown becomes more intricately beautiful; they learn that the world has more stories to tell than they ever realized, and that their place is special. Adventure education students—whether rafting through the Grand Canyon or climbing vertical granite—find that an under-standing of landscape undergirds the human experience of wild lands, that the understanding of place precedes the understanding of self-in-place. These students, and hundreds more, representing every academic


The Oldest TraditionHumanity’s oldest tradition is strong at the Prescott College Natural History Institute

area at Prescott College, engage in the practice of natural history throughout their coursework. While there are many definitions—some narrower, some broader—of natural history, the common denominator is a focus on observation and description. I prefer the more expansive definition: “a practice of intentional, focused attentiveness to the more-than-human world, guided by honesty and accuracy.” Simply put, natural history is the practice of paying attention.

While natural history inquiry can yield impressive bodies of knowl-edge and storehouses of artifacts, at its heart it is a practice—a verb, not a noun. I’ve come to describe it as the practice of falling in love with the natural world. So often when we open our eyes more widely, and tune our other senses into sharper attentiveness, we find delight and beauty that can sustain us. Natural history, in my experi-ence, is an inherently uplifting, hopeful endeavor. Natural history is the oldest continuous human tradition. There have never been people in the world without its practice. For most of the history of our species human survival literally depended on attentiveness to the surrounding environment with eyes, ears, heart, and hands. The term natural history actually dates back to the first encyclopedia, which was called Historia Naturalis—literally, “the story of nature”—a multi-volume compendium of everything known about the world, compiled by Pliny the Elder in the decades following the birth and death of Christ. From the outset, then, natural history was broad-based and interdisciplinary. As centuries passed, the realm of natural history narrowed and focused on the more strictly scientific form of inquiry, forming the empirical basis for biological and ecological sciences, for geology, and for cultural anthropology. Darwin’s astute observations in the Galápagos, and Wallace’s in Malaysia—exemplary natural history—led to the most essential, and revolutionary, insights of modern biol-ogy. But at its best there is no clear boundary between the scientific, artistic, and literary components of natural history. Consider the

Plant identification session at Kluane National Park, Canada, Natural History of Alaska, 2001

Aspens, Escudilla Wilderness , ArizonaHeliconia, Costa Rica


stunning prints by Audubon, Catesby, and many others in our new Josephine Michell Arader Collection (see page 15) representing, in a unified whole, the best art and the best science of the day. Before World War II natural history was seen to be the core of a liberal arts education. At that time, a standard part of teacher train-ing in most states was a course called “Nature Study,” based on cur-riculum developed at Cornell. But the onset of the Cold War, the space race, and advances in genetics pushed aside attention to the world that is visible all around us, focusing research into what was beyond our sight—inside of cells and beyond our atmosphere. In academia, natural history came to be seen as antiquated and irrelevant to the modern world. It has been increasingly marginal-ized during the last three or four decades, as numerous colleges and universities replaced natural history–oriented faculty with molecular biologists who could bring in major government grants. This

led to what many people consider a crisis in higher education—the loss of natural history training. A dozen years ago two of the most respected biologists in the United States wrote an urgent plea in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the importance of maintain-ing natural history’s place at the center of the liberal arts, but it remained unheeded by most institutions. Throughout these cultural shifts, no other educational institution has been more steadfast in its commitment and dedication to natu-ral history than Prescott College. Natural history has been part of the teaching and learning every single day of this College’s history. Today, by rough estimate, more than a third of PC faculty are natu-ralists of one sort or another. It’s doubtful whether any other college comes close to a percentage that high. And a list of distinguished natural history alumni would run to many pages. People affiliated with Prescott College—faculty, alumni, current students, staff, and Board members—have been at the center of a new national movement to revitalize natural history. And so Prescott College is now getting recognized for what it has been doing ex-ceedingly well all along. Highly regarded government biologists, for example, have publicly proclaimed that Prescott College graduates are some of the only people they can find for field staff—compe-tent individuals who know how to live in the field, how to identify flora and fauna, and how to think critically. All skills fostered by the practice of natural history, and by Prescott College. A separate NGO, the Natural History Network (NHN) was

founded in 2006, to facilitate a national conversation about the im-portance of revitalizing natural history and restoring it to its rightful place at the center of natural science, education, and healthy culture. Among the five founding board members were Dr. Josh Tewksbury ’92 and myself. Soon thereafter, Arya Degenhardt ’98 joined the board, followed more recently by College Trustee Dan Campbell. Elizabeth Worcester ’09, then a student, created the organization’s first website, and Dr. Gary Paul Nabhan ’73 and longtime faculty member Dr. Ed Grumbine, serve on the NHN Advisory Council. The Network’s momentum led to some exciting leaps forward. We organized an interactive symposium titled A Renaissance of Natural History in Human Ecology at the annual conference of the Society for Human Ecology in 2008. The following year Josh Tewksbury led a session titled Natural History: The Basis for Eco-logical Understanding and a Global Sustainable Society at the

annual conference of the Ecological Society of America (ESA). The Ecological Society meeting is the largest gathering of professional ecologists in the world, and this session was the buzz of the confer-ence—standing room only. Three of the speakers were affiliated with Prescott College; another was the president of the host univer-sity, who, in his address on the lamentable demise of natural history in academia, singled out Prescott College as “one of the only places getting it right.” Among the people standing in that room was a staff officer for the National Science Foundation, who felt this work was critical, and encouraged the submission of a proposal. A few months later, Josh Tewksbury, Dr. Kirsten Rowell ’96, and I wrote and received an NSF grant for “The Natural History Initiative: From Decline to Rebirth.” This collaborative grant to Prescott College and the Uni-versity of Washington, where Josh was Walker Professor of Natural History and Kirsten a Research Associate, provided for convening four high-level gatherings of naturalists over a six-month period in 2011. (Kirsten is now acting assistant professor in Biology and Curator at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, and Josh is Director of the World Wildlife Fund-International’s new Luc Hoffmann Institute in Switzerland.) Each session of the Natural History Initiative gatherings focused on a particular aspect of natural history’s role: society, education, re-search, and management. Participants included people whose names you read in textbooks, as well as less known practitioners of natural

Chugach Mountains, Alaska, Natural History of Alaska, 2001

Identifying alpine flowers,Thompson Pass, Alaska, Natural History of Alaska, 2008

“leadership and resources for a revitalized practice of natural his-tory, integrating sciences, arts, and humanities, within Prescott Col-lege and throughout North America.” This will be accomplished by creating a natural history lab for Prescott College classes from across the curriculum; providing space and resources for student and faculty research; offering public programs, including exhibitions, lectures, and field experiences; by archiving and documenting landscape change in the bi-national Southwest (slide collections, significant field notes, etc.); and by archiving digital and physical collections of biological and cultural resources of the Arizona Central Highlands and adjacent ecoregions. A singular feature of the Prescott College Natural History Institute is explicit integration of art, science, and humanities—a true liberal arts approach to natural history, harkening back to the interdisciplinary roots and history of the field. Rather than aiming at a narrow or superficial subset of biological science, the Institute will demonstrate that natural history is larger than science alone. Original Audubon prints will hang next to Seri baskets, in a room where literary naturalists give readings, around the corner from scientific collections of biological diversity. It is remarkable what Prescott College has accomplished in the realm of natural history in spite of a distinct dearth of physical re-sources. The new Institute, infused with the thrust of the Arader art collection, will propel the College into an extraordinary new phase

of leadership in natural history education, research, and outreach.

Tom Fleischner (left), Director of the Natural History In-stitute, has taught natural history and conservation biology at Prescott College for 25 years; he is also the founding President of the Natural History Network (naturalhis-torynetwork.org). If you are interested in learning more about the Natural History Institute or if you would like to make a donation to support its programming, visit http://www.naturalhistoryinstitute.org or https://www.facebook.com/NaturalHistoryInstitute?fref=ts for info and http://naturalhistory.kintera.org to donate, or contact Tom at [email protected].


history. Poets and painters, biologists and psychologists, teachers and land managers engaged in animated discussion—on everything from the relationship of emotional and rational ways of interacting with the world, to technical research issues, to natural history in the digital age. A social movement had erupted. At one of the sessions, nine of the 25 participants were affiliated with Prescott College. These sessions and the follow-up symposium at another ESA conference affirmed the notion that we are really doing something right here (the organization now has a formal Natural History Section)—and that Prescott College is at the center of this important movement. In the spring of 2011, seven Prescott College students and I joined with peers from our sister school, College of the Atlantic, to present “Teaching and Learning Natural History in the Field,” a special session at the Society for Human Ecology conference. One of the conference’s keynote speakers commented that the student presentations were among the most hopeful things she’d witnessed in a very long time. Meanwhile, a multi-media exhibit, “The Natural Histories Project” (naturalhistoriesproject.org), which grew out of recorded conversations during the From Decline to Rebirth sessions, was featured at a second ESA conference, and is currently being developed into a traveling exhibition. It only seemed natural that the institution central to the practice and renaissance of natural history in higher education establish a center of excellence to serve as a local and national resource on the subject. This past summer, after two years of planning, the College founded the Natural History Institute. I have the honor of serving as its first director. The Institute’s mission is to provide

I N T E G R A T I N G A R T, S C I E N C E , A N D H U M A N I T I E S

Exploring tidepools, Kino Bay, Coastal Ecology of the Gulf of California, 1992

Masked Trogon, Ecuador

Lizard on Slickrock, Paria Canyon, The Colorado Plateau: Natural History and Conservation, 1990


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Identifying alpine flowers,Thompson Pass, Alaska, Natural History of Alaska, 2008

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50 Years of True Excellence

1963

198419881976

1962 “It’s up to you in ’62 to open the door in ’64!” Founding fund for Prescott College established. Core philosophical and educa-

tional principles emerge ata Ford Foundation symposium.

1965 Ground is broken by Tanner Construction Company for the campus of Prescott College.

1966 The charter class of 80 students from around the country (and one from Taipei, Taiwan) arrives.

1968 A new distinctive tradi-tion in higher education begins with the first Wilderness Orientation.

1995 Wolfberry Farm established 15 miles north of Prescott, quickly cementing its reputation as one of the top “learning farms” in nation.

First issue of literary magazine, Alligator Juniper, published.

1978 Limited-Residency Undergraduate Program (ADP) established to meet needs of adult learners.

Current logo icon created and motto “For the Liberal Arts and the Environment” adopted.

1991 Kino Bay Center for Cultural and Ecological Studies in Sonora, Mexico, established.

1996 Students found first collegiate consortium for sustainability.

College also awarded a $3 million NASA grant to de-velop regional sustainability decision support systems.

First integrative Sustainable Community Development undergraduate program in the nation established.

1992 Launch of the Limited-Residency Master of Arts program.

Center for Bilingual Teacher Training Education established to meet needs of Native Americans in the region.

The Tucson Center opens, expanding the College mission in Southern Arizona.

2012 Opening of The Village student housing facility, on track for LEED green building rating.

The Ecosa Institute for Regenerative Ecological Design becomes a sponsored program.

The Association for Experiential Education named Prescott College Organization of the Year.

2003 Prescott College forms the Eco League with schools that share similar ecological values.

2005 Crossroads Center is completed.

The Ph.D. program in Sustainability Education (first program of its kind in the nation) is launched.

A comprehensive equestrian therapy and learning program (Centaur Leadership Services) established.

The Kenya Project, an ongoing collaboration between the Maasai people and Prescott College, begins.

The Crossroads Center, and later the Welcome Center (2010), become the first buildings on campus with roof-mounted solar panels.

2006 Prescott College joins Consortium for Innovative Environments in Learning.

2010 Journal of Sustain-ability Education inaugural edition published.

2011 Natural History Institute established with plans to open a publicly accessible space in 2013.

2007 A charter signatory to the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment.

“Social Justice” is added to the College motto.

2008 Art Gallery at Sam Hill Warehouse opens.

The learning farm moves to Jenner Farm in Skull Valley.

Historic Sisters of Mercy Hospital building becomes a center for operations near downtown.

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Although Matt Blake ’00 earned a bachelor’s degree a quarter century after Lisa S. Garrison graduated, interweaving threads and a sense of kinship and place connect the paths of these two Prescott College alumni. Follow-ing their respective sojourns and studies in the Southwest, each returned to longstanding family roots in the Northeast, where they’ve worked on various environmental causes. We asked Lisa and Matt to examine the way their work lives have intersected and the role a Prescott College education played in shaping each of their approaches to learning, leadership, and land protection. Lisa: When I first met you, Matt, you were managing the Delaware Bay Program of the American Littoral Society, and I immediately realized that you were a force to be reckoned with … In my advisory role for the Bayshore Highlands Fund of the Open Space Institute, I recog-nized the creativity with which you were piecing together parcels to strategically protect farmlands and forested wetlands along the southern coast of New Jersey. You were vocal in helping the general public and government leaders understand the value of laying a groundwork that embodied sound planning. You were also working ahead of development in the most rural part of the state with the greatest population density anywhere in the US.

You may have endured the occasional fire-storm, but you were speaking truth to power (and anyone else who would listen) in a part of the country which, at the time, had rela-tively little history of government involve-ment in land protection. So I wasn’t atall surprised when I learned you were a graduate of Prescott College. There aren’t many of us in this part of the world, and I immediately sensed you as a kindred spirit. Matt: It was a blessing to encounter someone with similar values who understands what I’m doing and how I’d been educated. Cumberland County and the Cohansey River is the place

where you were born and raised and where I spent my childhood summers. We both grew up mucking around in marsh and mud, intrigued by insects and birds, hiking in cedar forests, around ponds, along meandering rivers. It isn’t the West, and I can’t say I haven’t envied friends from Prescott who settled there, but this is a pretty amazing environment. Even when we’ve lost what we should have treasured, we’ve been able to rally support to turn the tide here. We’ve successfully brought back the Osprey and the Bald Eagle … Lisa: We both brought specific tools here from our time at Prescott College—ways of encouraging and framing encounters between people and the natural world, but also an inclination to apply the

kinds of experiential education we’d been immersed in at Prescott to a place like the Delaware Bayshore region whose story has not been fully told. Taking an interdisciplinary approach that combines history, environment, social action, and adventure can be a very compelling way to lead people into a connec-tion with the landscape.

We’ve both led tours, for example, to help people understand and explore the route of the Underground Railroad in this area, in and around the 18th century Black-founded township of Springtown. You did it by land, running annual bus tours that impart a first-hand view of the pathways enslaved people took as they came north from the Eastern Shore of Maryland and across Delaware Bay—seeking shelter in the safety of bogs and woodlands here surrounded by Quaker farms.

“As safe as Canada” is the way one refugee described the sense of sanctuary here. I did it by sea when, over a decade ago, I arranged for the Delaware Bay Schooner, New Jersey’s historic Tall Ship, to sail out to meet then New Jersey

Secretary of State Regena Thomas at the mouth of the Cohansey River to guide her vessel into port as she retraced the journey of her forebears from Wilmington across the bay and up the labyrinth of waterways through the marsh. What better way to convey to

To Do Mighty ThingsThe vast tidal marshes and hardwood swamps of the Delaware Bayshore, February 2013

Maurice River, New Jersey, 2012

Dix Wildlife Area, near Black-founded Springtown, 2012

Lisa S. Garrison and Matt Blake


“The environmental approach I learned [at Prescott College] has been a consistent touchstone for me in a career that has spanned the arts, history, education, and philanthropy.”

- Lisa S. Garrison

Lisa S. Garrison and Matt Blake explore Elk Lake in Hopewell Township, New Jersey, 2013


Matt: When I became President of the Prescott College Envi-ronmental Club, I used that platform to rally people in a fight to protect a scenic mountain in Yarnell, Ariz., that had been slated for destruction by a Canadian gold-mining company. It was a publicly owned mountain, surrounded by a community of senior citizens who were opposed to the project—a community fully aware of the mine’s potential negative impact on the environment and its inevi-table desecration of scenic views. The proponents of the mine were trying to intimidate this group of elders, and government officials were anxious to ignore them. But we sat down, listened to their concerns, and invited them to come speak to the Prescott College student body. What resulted was an overwhelming uprising

of students in Yarnell’s defense—we simply would not let them stand alone. It was one of those battles that many said couldn’t be won. And I’ve heard that kind of defeatist counsel so many times since I left Prescott. I went on to fight in the trenches of New Jersey’s ongoing battles against sprawl and overde-velopment. But thanks to my ex-perience in grassroots organizing at Prescott College, I’ve understood how to use the power of citizen advocacy; that democracy works when people show up, and that victory is always within reach of the optimists who believe it can be done. Prescott may be a small col-lege, but it empowers its students to realize that they can do mighty things in the world.

Lisa: In your new position in local government planning you will essentially be creating a model for the state, and I know you’ll be bringing new skills and perspec-tives to bear on the environmental issues we both care about. See you in the neighborhood, Matt.

Matt Blake currently directs Community Development for Woolrich Township in Southern New Jersey, where he is implementing a Transfer of Development Rights Program and related transportation and util-ity improvements—key components of the community’s development and preservation goals. As Program Director of the New York City Environmental Fund at the Hudson River Foundation, Lisa S. Garrison currently conducts environ-mental grant-making programs through the Newtown Creek and North River Funds in North Brooklyn, Southwest Queens, and West Harlem.

Transitions Spring 2013 13

the group of African American civic leaders and young people on board all that was at stake in those times than to make it possible for them to experience for themselves what it might be like to conduct freedom runners on a safe passage—up the broad reaches of an unfamiliar river toward freedom. Matt: Prescott gave me tools, but it was also a safe place to grapple with my learning difficulties, which included dyslexia. I had ter-rific faculty support to overcome my writing challenges, and today writing is a central component of my work in local government. I was already focused on community action and town planning when I was at Prescott, and I organized self-directed studies to pursue that interest. As an intern with the City of Prescott, I was involved in efforts to pass a community-wide open space ballot question to acquire and forever protect Watson Lake. It opened my eyes to the incredible role government and citizenry can play, partnering to protect places that matter. It defi-nitely laid the foundation for what I am doing now in the world. I realized for the first time that you can be a change agent while working within the system.

Lisa: The atmosphere at Prescott encouraged and, in fact, required us to take initiative and respon-sibility for our learning. I arrived on campus in the early stages of the women’s movement of the 1970s and was quickly embold-ened to create the first women’s consciousness-raising group, the first feminist dorm, and the first women’s studies class. Twenty-four young women would meet in an old grey farmhouse off-campus to ardently discuss historic and contemporary women’s literature. We used Women and Their Bodies in the syllabus on the grounds that the book employed narratives from women’s real lives. Our version of The Mandala, Prescott College’s magazine, dubbed The Womandala, was controversial, not without a sense of humor, and linked to what was happening with women across the country and world. At first glance that concentration of studies may seem removed from environmental issues, but what I understood then still influ-ences how I work in environmental justice communities today: to galvanize social change—bring the voices of those who haven’t been heard into the storytelling. In one way or another, each of us absorbed the ethos of activism and deep respect for the natural world that colored the curriculum and imbued our communal life at Prescott College. The environmental approach I learned there has been a consistent touchstone for me in a career that has spanned the arts, history, education, and philanthropy—and that is true of my college classmates as well.

Turkey Point in the Glades Wildlife Refuge, one day after Hurricane Sandy, 2012

Back Creek, a tidal river in South New Jersey, 2010


By Ashley Mains M.A. ’11

Enter the art gallery at 1016 Madison Avenue in New York City and you’ll find a beautifully main-

tained early 1900s Beaux Arts Town-house; the mahogany and oak walls covered with frame after frame of creatures peering back at you, each a unique creation—a moment in history captured for the annals of science and discovery. The forest of frames contains antique maps and natural history prints depict-ing everything from birds and snakes to plants and rodents. This veritable menagerie gathered from around the globe and throughout his-tory is the lifework and passion of Graham Arader, the largest and most signifi-cant dealer of rare maps, prints, and natural history watercolors within the United States. And he’s using his massive collection in an unusual and entrepreneurial way to benefit Prescott College. Arader calls his program “Educating the Next Genera-tion,” where world history and science come to life through the study of art. In the past he’s partnered with the Harn Museum at the University of Florida, Northeastern University, and Mary-mount College, among others. The Arader Galleries, boasting six locations throughout the country, have loaned Prescott College $1 million worth of natural history prints from the Age of Dis-covery to be co-curated by the Natural History Institute housed here (see page 6), and the Art Gallery at Sam Hill Warehouse. Arader is helping the College purchase the collection through periodic auctions in which he extends a special offer

Snakes, and Birds, and Botanicals—Oh My!Prescott College receives large collection of natural history prints and watercolors

to his clients: A portion of the ham-mer price will be donated to the

charity or organization of their choice. If they choose one

of the educational institu-tions he supports, such

as Prescott College, the donation facilitates the

College’s purchase of the loaned prints. At the end of

a three-year period, Arader will donate any portion of the

collection that hasn’t already been “paid for.” By way of

Arader’s fundraising efforts with private

donors outside of the auctions, the College already

owns more than half of the collection. “The opportunity to accept this gift and the establishment of the Natural History Institute at Prescott College coincided in a moment of serendip-ity,” explains Marjory Sente, Vice President for Institutional Advance-

ment. Arader’s daughter Josephine ’07, an alumna

of the On-Campus Under-graduate Program (see page

16), helped facilitate the donation, and serves as

the namesake for the Josephine Michell Arader Collection—approximately 250 historically signifi-cant natural history prints dated from the 16th through 19th

centuries.

continued on page 16

Rosa pimpinelli folia by Pierre-Joseph Redouté, circa 1820


John James Audubon Collection at Prescott College:A. Great Auk (Great Auk)B. Carolina Parrot (Carolina Parakeet)C. Great-footed Hawk (Peregrine Falcon)D. Californian Vulture (California Condor)E. Passenger Pigeon (Passenger Pigeon)

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Who is Josephine Arader? Josephine Arader ’07, no doubt, took inspiration from her father’s devotion to the art of the natural world. She graduated from Prescott College with a degree inEnvironmental Studies with an emphasis in conservation biology, and a breadth in religion and philosophy through the On-Campus Undergraduate Program. She studied under Tom Fleischner as his advisee and student through several courses, in-cluding the Alaska field program and Coastal Ecology in Kino Bay, and served as a teaching assistant in his Conservation Biology course. Josephine has been living in San Francisco, working at the Arader Gallery located there, and keeping up with the Natural History Network—a national nongovernmental organization developed by Fleischner and several Prescott College alumni, among others. “Tom’s work with the emerging Network is inspiring,” Josephine said. “I have thoroughly enjoyed watching the Network grow and saw parallels in the concurrent work the Arader Galleries had been involved in for several years.” She sent a letter to Fleischner telling him about the Educating the Next Genera-tion program, explaining: “It is our strong feeling that once students learn in considerable detail about the natural history of our planet, they will fight passionately to protect all living things. Once they appreciate the art and illustration of our world, they will want very much to keep it stable. As these students enter the workforce and build families, they will remember what they saw and learned and will tend to vote and act in ways that will protect the natural world going forward.” As a demonstration of her commitment to making this project possible, Josephine offered to personally raise $300,000 to give Prescott College a collection of natural history illustrations. She helped select and personally prepared the collection—which ended up being worth $1 million—along with the accompanying catalog that the College took receipt of in September 2012, just one year after her initial letter to Fleischner. “My father’s motivation for this project is to create a higher degree of regard for this art form in our nation’s universities and institutions by creating truly interdisciplinary centers for the study of natural history illustration, including art, art history, history, environmental science, Linnean nomenclature and entomology, to name a few,” Josephine said. This model, she felt, was already in line with her alma mater’s values and mode of operation: “This collection exemplifies what is taught at Prescott College.”

“There could not be a more fortuitous gift to the College, right when the Natural History Institute, whose tagline is ‘Integrating Art, Science, and Humanities,’ is getting off the ground,” says Tom Fleis-chner, faculty member in Environmental Studies and Director of the Natural History Institute. “This art is a priceless educational resource, representing the best science and best illustration of its day. Not only is it aesthetically stunning, but it was one of the primary resources for biological conceptualizations of taxonomy and evolution.” Fleischner explains that faculty and instructors from across curricula are planning to use the artwork in their classes: “Art students will help catalog the collection this spring, and in the fall humanities students will use certain pieces as writing prompts, while conservation biology classes will get new perspectives on the history of conservation successes and failures in North America by close examination of a set of Audubon prints, specially selected for this purpose.” The greater part of the collection will be featured in a major exhibition at the Art Gallery at Sam Hill in November 2013, coinciding with the formal/grand opening of the Natural History Institute. Smaller portions will be on rotating display in dedicated areas throughout the College campus and at the Natural History Institute in conjunction with educational events about the Collec-tion ongoing. “This is the only collection of its kind in the entire Southwest,” Sente says. “Through the permanent display at the Natural History Institute, we’ll in essence become the ‘fourth museum’ of Prescott. Sharlot Hall, the Phippen, and the Smoki museums are all about the history and culture of people. The Natural History Institute, enhanced by the Arader collection, will fill a clear void and become the museum about our natural world.”

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From PC to DCAlumna Julie Brown’s journey from undergrad to National Geographic Education Specialist

By Candace McNulty

If you’re a regular visitor to these pages, you may have caught an item in Class Notes: three Prescott College grads met by chance in Washington, D.C., at the Grosvenor Teacher Fellow (GTF)

workshop, a National Geographic professional development event. Each of the three women represented an angle of this program. Emily Sherman ’01, then teaching in Maine, was a fellow. Naturalist Elise Lockton ’96 represented Lindblad Expeditions as a member of their expedition staff. Julie Brown ’01 runs the GTF program, planning professional develop-ment workshops designed to give teachers direct experience leading to an understanding of the oceans that they can bring back to their students. This and other work with educators is just one part of Julie’s position as National Geographic Ocean Education Specialist. She also develops curriculum and resources and puts them online for classroom use—and she feels the position is perfect for her. “I saw it on a listserv, headed ‘It’s a Whale of a Job.’ The description basically said, ‘Julie Brown, this is your job!’ It completely suited my qualifica-tions. My background was not linear; it’s an … interesting group of skills and experiences.” From a Prescott College alum, this is not an unusual statement. Julie’s interesting path definitely bears the distinctive marks of a Prescott College journey: an unquenchable passion to understand the environmental web we inhabit, a delight in observing it, an erasure of the line between learning and teaching. And her professional trajectory reflects another Prescott College character-istic—the mission to share and propagate the understanding, the passion, the delight, through hands-on education. As early as age four, Julie began telling people she wanted to be a marine biologist or an astronaut when she grew up. She was a child who always had fish tanks going and played mostly outside. After consuming every science class her high school offered, she spent some unsatisfying time in Tulane Univer-sity’s environmental science program. An internship with the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency took her to California and gave her a break from full-time school to figure out her next steps. Julie could sense where she wanted these steps to take her. In between inspecting buildings for environmental code violations, monitoring regrowth at controlled burn sites, and planning a nox-ious weed eradication program, she took a course here and there at the community college in South Lake Tahoe. She chose a winter wilderness in nature course, hoping to learn how the instructors

got into environmental outdoor ed. “One of them went to Prescott College and told me all about it. I investigated. I fell in love with the school’s mission—the idea of field studies in Kino and a more intimate, hands-on education. My instincts were right! PC was the perfect fit for my educational needs and professional goals.” Julie threw herself into the research Prescott College’s Kino Bay station conducts in the Sea of Cortez, helping monitor cormorant nesting on an island there, participating in research on fin whales and on small-scale and commercial fisheries. She wrote an under-graduate thesis on her sea turtle research in the waters off Costa Rica. And her journey’s “educator” piece began to take shape in a teaching assistantship for a Prescott College biology course, as well as a summer environmental educator gig with a Long Island Sound

nonprofit creating curriculum and coordinating indoor and outdoor activities for 5th- to 8th-graders. After graduating Julie got into research and also informal education on the waters off the Florida Keys, teaching aspects of marine ecology to groups of students in an experiential field setting among the mangroves and coral reefs. To this day she remains active with the Advanced Assessment Team the government contracts to assess fish population and diversity on coral reefs. All of these experiences made her the ideal candidate for a position at St. Justin Marine Academy in Key Largo, where, beyond classroom teach-ing, she also headed the science department, designing and implementing a non–textbook- driven, hands-on science cur-riculum for grades 4 to 8 that

met the standards of the relevant state and diocesan agencies. Julie also created and led the school’s scuba, kayaking, and science clubs. When it was time for her to start a family, Julie found parenting-compatible ways to continue her mission to educate, privately contracting to teach a home-schooling coop and teaching online for Kaplan in her subject areas to middle- and high-school stu-dents. Julie was still teaching online when she saw the National Geographic position listed. She knew it would make use of all the elements she’d spent her life assembling—and fulfill her mission. National Geographic spearheads the proposition that geography is not what it used to be. Nowadays we speak of geoliteracy; Julie and her peers want to bestow ocean literacy on the next generation’s learners: “We want to make informed twenty-first-century decision

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“I am gratified because I know that thousands of teachers and their students are learning about the ocean and the need for Marine Protected Areas.’’


- Julie Brown

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makers.” National Geographic shares photography, videography, GIS applications, and interactives with its education audience. “National Geographic has the most incredible resources,” she says, and these fuel her mission. Alien Deep, a five-part TV series following renowned ocean explorer Robert Ballard thousands of feet below the surface, is one such resource. Julie had access to the shows months before they premiered. With a National Science Foundation grant, and working with Dr. Ballard’s unused footage, she decided which clips she could use to develop four original five- to seven-minute videos, plus support materials for classroom use. This also provided a learning experience for Julie as she juggled roles—working with a film editor to identify content and storylines not used in the series; keeping detailed paper trails tracking numerous contracts for the NSF grant; managing budget, film production, script writing, and content development. These videos are up for CINE awards in June; Julie would be thrilled with the extra exposure and the possibility of “ultimately educating thousands of students about the ocean.” National Geographic attracts a lot of outside resources, like the NSF grant mentioned above. Julie and her team are thankful for Oracle Education Foundation’s $2 million in grants, a part of the Foundation’s overall collaboration with National Geographic in a five-year, $70-million initiative aimed at reversing the current trajectory of ocean deg-radation. Over the past three years, this funding has supported development of several projects. Julie explains: “I’ve done a lot of curriculum design and writing for K–12 audi-ences. My team of three and I (I’m the ocean person) created over 500 assets on our website. Probably 150 are classroom activities for teacher use—the rest include illustrations, interactives, photos, videos.” Not content to park information passively on a website, Julie works to propagate it outward, in waves, to reach as many learners and teachers as possible. The team and their writers developed drafts of these materials, and then, in summer 2010, hosted 60 selected teachers at a ten-day professional development institute that included lectures and discussions with scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, near San Diego. These teachers would become “Ocean Ambassadors,” prepared to take ocean literacy back into their classrooms. “So now they’re my cohort of teachers,” says Julie. “They tried out all the activi-ties in their classrooms and reported feedback to me. With their help we’ve revised these to produce the high quality activities now housed on our website for the world’s teachers to use.” The following summer, Julie and her team invited the teachers to attend the professional development institute’s second year at National Geographic Headquarters in Washington, D.C., to prepare them as teacher-leaders, ready to share what they’ve learned with other teachers. The contact is ongoing: “I meet with this group of teachers monthly in an online meeting room to share new resources and

information, while facilitating their support of each other. I bring in special speakers, like our 2012 emerging explorer Mike Lombardi, who shared his experience of deep-sea diving and an innovative habitat that has changed deep-sea exploration potential. We keep them engaged, they’re our best advocates, so if we need anything from them, they’re on it!” The teachers come from all over country, from all kinds of schools, and include some informal educators—for example, one 2013 GTF fellow is the education program coordina-tor at Reid Park Zoo, in Tucson. Working with this group, Julie developed an entire high school marine biology curriculum: “The purpose was to get the ocean into classrooms, where the focus of biology classes is usually terrestrial. As it stands now, students do not learn about the ocean in high school unless they get to take an elective marine science course—which few high schools offer.” So this nine-lesson, 32-activity curriculum can partly or completely replace the standard terrestrially focused ecology unit with marine ecology. (Find it at http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/collections/marine-protected-areas/?ar_a=1.)

“I am gratified,” says Julie, “because I know that thou-sands of teachers and their students are learning about the ocean and the need for Marine Protected Areas.” Julie credits Prescott Col-lege and many of the instruc-tors she had there with both inspiring and preparing her for her profession. “Lorayne Meltzer was the teacher who really helped foster my pas-sion for marine conservation while in Prescott and at the Kino field station. She helped me see my natural ability as an educator and encouraged me to explore a career as a marine educator. Tom

Fleischner’s conservation biology course helped me gain confidence as a public speaker. Carol Kennedy helped me quiet my mind with yoga and meditation and express myself artistically, allowing me to care more about process instead of product.” She also names Doug Hulmes, Mark Riegner, Ed Boyer, and David Hanna as having influenced her personally and professionally. “Really, every teacher that I had a Prescott College had a significant impact on my educational journey. They were teachers but they were also mentors, role models, and friends. “Prescott College taught me how to think out of the box, to fol-low my passion, and also to manage my time, and be a self-directed learner.” And a self-evaluating one: “I was the one who ultimately evaluated what I learned, which is very different from how the rest of the world does it. So as a result, I expect a higher quality product from myself. I honestly believe that evaluating myself, being honest with myself, self-reflecting, has led me to be a better employee.” She jokes that Harvard-alum-coworkers along the way have envied her hands-on, experiential education. “My learning was deeper. I never took a test at PC, but I clearly learned the material.” Deeper, and broader: Julie works to bring young people that kind of learning, spreading waves of knowledge, respect, and love for the enormous marine component of our earthly home.

Expedition vessel in Wijdefjorden, Svalbard, Norway, 2012


Distinguished wildlife and nature photographer Willis Peterson was looking for the right place to leave a legacy: a place that values the beauty of nature and is attuned to

environmental issues—a place like Prescott College. This spring the first $1,000 Willis Peterson scholarship was awarded to Prescott na-tive Ana June ’13, currently in the Limited-Residency Undergradu-ate Program (see cover photo). Peterson’s photographic career began in his hometown of Colorado Springs when he was given a camera for his fourteenth birthday. His family hoped the gift would distract him from an emergent habit of bringing wild creatures home. Instead, he began photographing the “inmates” in his backyard. A notable career in photography had begun. With photographs and articles in National Geographic, Audubon Magazine, National Wildlife, Time-Life books, Pacific Discovery, and Natu-ral History, and an impressive 21 articles or photographic portfolios in Arizona Highways, Peterson is considered legendary in the field of wildlife and nature photography. He has pho-tographed in many countries and exhibited his photographs in London, New York, Washington D.C., Phoenix, and elsewhere. Walt Anderson, who teaches and advises at Prescott College in natural history and pho-tography, says: “We are grateful to Mr. Peterson for recognizing the strong connections we at Prescott College have with nature, often well expressed through photography. His generosity reinforces for our students the need for de-veloping the aesthetic, as well as the scientific, view of the natural world.” Peterson is not only an accomplished professional, but an esteemed educator whose intersection with higher education came long before investing in Prescott College. He founded the photography program at Glendale Community College and is a recipient of the Journalism Teacher of the Year Award at the community college level from the Western Newspaper Foundation. According to the scholarship requirements, the winning student must “show promise and insight into seeing the beauty of nature and environmental issues through the medium of photography.” According to the selection committee, which included Walt Anderson and fellow faculty member Deborah Ford from Prescott College, as well as Mr. Peterson him-self, Ana June did just that. June’s portfolio of eight photographs demonstrated a keen eye for light, composition, and “the decisive moment,” according to Anderson. June, whose parents are both Prescott College alumni, first at-tended Prescott College as a traditional freshman in 1990, but her life path diverged from the collegiate for some time. When she

Examining Nature’s Beauty and the EnvironmentThe Willis Peterson Photographic Award names first recipient

decided to go back to school, the Limited-Residency Undergrad Program was a perfect fit for her life as a mother and working professional. She expects to graduate in May with a focus on Creative Writing and Humanities. “I’m passionate about wildlife and welcome all opportunities to expand my own understanding of and experiences with this earth,” June says. “We are thrilled at the strong response of students to the Peterson Photography Award, and Ana June has set a high standard in this initial competition,” Anderson says. “We look forward to many years in which student creativity and passion for nature are rewarded through the generosity of the Peterson family.”

You can learn more about Willis Peterson at http://www.willispeterson.com/. For more information about Ana June, visit her website at http://www.anajunecreative.com.

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You were drawn as our Mexico vacation giveaway winner for donating to the Annual Fund. Aside from the chance to win, what motivated you to invest in Prescott College?We were not even aware that there was a prize being offered. We believe in supporting education and do so for all of our children’s schools.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?My daughter wanted to relay her reflections on Prescott College. She says, “I am so thankful for the two years I had at Prescott and the world of interactive education it exposed me to, and the path I discovered along the way.”

Interview by Ashley Mains M.A. ’11

Transitions Spring 2013 21

A Parent’s PerspectivePast parent Steve Lockton shares his personal perspective on Prescott College

What led your daughter to a place like Prescott College?We are a sailing, tennis, and golf family. She heard about NOLS and spent her sixteenth summer exploring nature. It was Elise’s first introduction to outdoor life and it changed her. She transferred to Prescott after three years at Colorado State University. Were you aware of the College before she transferred?No. When she applied, we were concerned that she wanted to attend such a small college and that the campus was so limited. How did your feelings about the College change once your daughter started?We were impressed with the field offerings and found Prescott College to be a perfect fit for Elise. Her desire to explore the world and nature were reinforced by her time spent there. How did Elise’s experience compare with your other expe-riences with post-secondary education?It was completely different. Our sons attended colleges in the east and one graduated from NYU Business School. Both of them are involved in the corporate world, as was I before retirement. My wife and I both graduated from colleges in the Northeast as well. What was the most meaningful part of your daughter’s education to you?Her ability to stick to a journey and life outside of the ordinary. At first we were hesitant and questioned her chosen field of expertise. As it happens Elise’s decision to follow her dream has been fulfilled.

What is Elise doing today?Elise is an international guide. Since graduating she has been leading nature-based trips in Alaska, Canada, Latin America, Japan, and Svalbard, Norway. She currently works on small expedi-tion ships for Lindblad Expeditions and leads land-based trips for Natural Habitat Adventures and Alaska Wildland Adventures, and she gives private tours in/on Kauai, Hawaii, where she lives in the winter.

Do you feel she’s making a difference in the world?She is definitely making a difference in the world. Her pure love for what she does is infectious. Her knowledge of nature and sense of place for where she lives and works leave her guests with an appreciation and knowledge that opens their minds and gives them a new perspective and understanding of our planet. Is a Prescott College education worthwhile in this day and age?These days there’s a lot of questioning of the value of liberal arts education, but I certainly feel there is value in an investment like this. I’ve recommended Prescott College to prospective students.

Elise Lockton ’96

Lindblad Expeditions in Svalbard Norway, 2012


I moved to Prescott in 1991 and soon began working at Prescott College. Initially I worked as an assistant and Board liaison in the President’s Office, and soon I was a Master of Arts student

as well. After graduating I left to apply my degree in organizational development and human resource management at Yavapai College. While I learned a great deal there, I jumped at the chance to return to “PC” in 2002 as Registrar. I was, and am still, excited by how learning happens here, and felt I could contribute by championing current business practices and technology. Nearly 12 years later, as I contemplate retired life, I’m also reflecting on how much we have developed and changed as an organization, and thinking of the accomplishments of which I can be most proud. I’m a collaborator, so whatever successes I can claim are mostly shared with others. All student records are now secured in a central repository and in the first relational data-base at Prescott College (the student information system). These systems assure our ability to better serve students and comply accurately with government reporting requirements. Not sexy, but essential. I’ve led the Student Affairs Leadership Team (SALT), an oper-

A Longitudinal ViewRetiring Registrar Mary Trevor M.A. ’95 reflects on her career at Prescott College

ations-oriented group of administrative staff that institutionalized cross-department collaboration, laying the foundation for “one college.” SALT was responsible for implementing the relational database, aligning academic calendars across programs, converting to

semester credits, and creating a comprehensive program approval process. I’m also proud to have been part of other activities that embody the “one college” vision and improve student experience: establishing and coordinating the All College Catalog; reorganiz-ing offices and instituting paperless initiatives to streamline administrative processes; aligning teacher education curricula across degrees and delivery models; aligning undergraduate pro-grams’ graduation requirements; establishing the “one stop” for billing, financial aid, and registra-tion; and introducing online services. It’s been a privilege and pleasure to work with and serve the Prescott College community over these past 12 years. As an alumna and an employee, I continue to be proud of what we do,

how we do it, and all we have achieved. I’m not really leaving, just changing how I work for the betterment of the College. See you on the trails!

When you support Alligator Juniper, you support Arts and Letters students at Prescott College. Undergraduates both serve and benefit from the magazine.:

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Subscription options: $15 for 2 years, $10 for 1 year, or $5 back issues from 1996-2000, 2002-06, and 2008-12. To subscribe, send check payable to Alligator Juniper to:

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Class N

otesClass NotesPlease send Class Note submissions to [email protected]

1970sRobin Rivet ’74 Robin encourages all San Diego area alumni to become aware of the tree/ecosys-tem benefits crowd-sourced map at www.sandiegotreemap.org.

Nevada Wier ’74 Nevada presented a one-day photography seminar with Jay Dickman (Pulitzer Prize, National Geographic Photographer) on Creativity With Light in Denver, Colo., on Sunday, Sept. 23, at the Denver Art Museum.

John H. Wright ’74 As a special event of the Alumni Office, John presented his new book, Blazing Ice: Pioneering the Twenty-first Century’s Road to the South Pole, in the Chapel on campus at Prescott College Nov. 9. He served as the US Antarctic Program explosives engineer for five years, executed the South Pole tunnel project over the course of four years, and later headed the South Pole Traverse proof-of-concept project. He has published authoritative engineering articles and presented papers at numerous scientific conferences. Wright currently lives in Silverton, Colo.

Diane Schmidt ’75 You can read Diane’s latest column, “Fragments: Architecture of the Holocaust, An Artist’s Journey through the Camps” at Examiner.com.

1980sJanet Hopkins ’87 Read Janet’s latest article, “Sobriety Made Easy,” in the first volume of inRecovery magazine. Subscribe today by calling (928) 533-7032 or emailing [email protected].

1990sJeff Carlson ’91 Jeff ’s new novel is a dark science fiction thriller called The Frozen Sky that deals with alien ecologies, human impacts, and preservation efforts. For more informa-tion visit http://www.jverse.com. Jeff ’s new website is now available for viewing at http://www.jverse.com/.

John Donohie ’91 John is happily teaching geography, math, character education, and sustainability at a private, progressive school in Marin County in California. Drop him a line at [email protected].

Tracy Puett ’92 Tracy Puett hosted a two-day workshop October 6 and 7 at Prescott College’s Crossroads Center. Governance by Design: Organizing Ourselves to Get Things Done was facilitated by John Schinnerer of the Sociocracy Consulting Group.

Stephen Scott ’95 Stephen and his wife Cindy ’94 run Terroir Seeds, an heirloom seed company in the Prescott area. They were also two of 200 official US delegates to Terra Madre, the International Slow Food conference in Italy last fall. Check out their blog: they’ve been doing some amazing things and are a great resource for current students. http://www.underwoodgardens.com/blog/.

John Sheedy ’96, M.A. ’05 John’s master’s thesis focused on Border Studies, which led to his award- winning films “El Inmigrante” and “The Tijuana Project,” both of which have been featured in Transitions magazine. Most recently, John created a film festival in Alamos, Sonora, Mexico that took place in March. The film festival is an extension of John’s work on the border, and one of the main objectives of the festival is to create cross-cultural bridges between Sonora and the border states of Arizona and New Mexico. In addition, the festival will give voice to documentaries from Sonora, especially those with themes of the environment and indigenous people and cultures of Northern Mexico. Free educational workshops were available to youth during the festival, and students from United World College and Santa Fe High School participated. You can find more festival information at www.festivaldecinealamos.org.

Debra Shirley ’96, M.A. ’99 Debra enjoyed 15 years in the field of Counseling Psychology before retiring for

health reasons in mid-2010. She specialized in working with du-ally diagnosed patients (substance dependence/sexual trauma) and enjoyed her last posting as Adult Services Program Director for Park Place Behavioral Health Care, a community nonprofit mental health facility located in Kissimmee, Fla.

Matt McCarty ’97 and Ivy Katz ’08Ivy, Matt, and a bunch of other wonderful folks started an Equine Assisted and Nature Based/Eco Therapy program last year, a half-hour outside of Portland, Ore. Learn more at http://www.thecenteratheronhill.com/.

Kristi Frazier ’98 Kristi helped promote the “sneak peak” events revealing scenes from the upcoming documentary Wrenched: The Legacy of The Monkey Wrench Gang, being produced in the four-corners region. Wrenched captures the passing of the monkey wrench from the pioneers of eco-activism to a new generation who carry Edward Abbey’s legacy into the 21st century.

2000sMatthew Blake ’00 Woolwich Township in New Jersey hired Matt Blake as their new Director of Community Development. (Also see story page 11.)

Dan Bigley ’01Dan Bigley’s new book, Beyond the Bear, will be released in May. His book is an account of how the last thing he saw was the grizzly that took his eyes and how, with the help of a community and a beautiful love story, he found his way out of darkness. It’s impor-tant Dan begin to build a legitimate online presence to build credibility for those who may carry the book or offer media spots in the year ahead. He needs the help of his friends and family to be successful. If you are interested in helping Dan, please visit his

Facebook page and “Like” it at www.facebook.com/DanBigleyBearAttackSurvivor. You can also sign on to his mailing list by registering at www.danbigley.com/contact.

Rachel Yoder ’01 Rachel was married to Seth Michel on June 30 at Secrest Octagonal Barn in West Liberty, Iowa, by her father, Wayne Yoder. The recep-tion followed with square dance music provided by the Goosetown Stringband. The couple took a short trip to the Wisconsin Dells, with a longer honeymoon to Europe later in 2012. They currently reside in Iowa City, Iowa.

Randy Barney ’05 Career and Technical Education instructor Randy Barney of Benson High School was named 2012 CTE Arizona Teacher of the Year. He received the award at a state conference in Tucson on July 18.

Andrew Beckham M.A. ’05 Andrew’s first book, The Lost Christmas Gift (Princeton Architectural Press, 2012), launched nationally, as well as in Canada and the United Kingdom last year. Barry Lopez, author of Arctic Dreams and Winter Count, writes of Andrew’s book, “Andrew Beckham brings us a won-drous, eerily timeless story about love, survival, war, ceremony, family, magic, and the gods. He delivers us to the realm of the marvelous.”

Debra Hunsicker ’05 Debra invites you to visit her website at www.sedonaroma.com.

Christine Eisenberg M.A. ’06 Christine presented Women and Wildness: A Postmodern Perspective at Lock Haven University in Pennsylvania in February. She explored the feminine connection to wildness through European and Native American mythologies, comparing them to the postmodern era, where we are learning that honoring wildness, both in the natural world and within ourselves, is an essential and beautiful part of femi-nine functioning and flourishing.


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otes

Darrell Frey ’06 Darrell’s book Bioshelter Market Garden: A Permaculture Farm was recognized by Transition Express with an Atlas Award during the Climate Heroes event in Washington D.C. in October. Read more at www.bioshelter.com.

Rowen Holland ’06 Rowen recently finished midwifery school and is now a licensed midwife in the state of California. Rowen and her daughter, Jasmine, who is now 16, live in Santa Cruz, Calif. You can reach them at [email protected].

Ashira Malka ’06 Ashira was invited to participate in an environmental photography contest called Connect 4 Climate. Two of her photos of Israel and the United States were featured by the contest.

Harry Apelbaum ’08 After years of working in wilderness therapy, Harry recently co-founded Cascadia Expeditions (CE), based in Portland, Ore. The program is all about experiential outdoor adventures that focus on self-discovery, empowerment, and adventure. CE donates 10 percent of proceeds to serve low-income and underprivileged kids, partner-ing with local nonprofits to offer incredible experiences for them. You can email Harry at [email protected] with any questions. He would love to hear from you.

Adam Baruni ’08 After conquering the 2012 Tucson Fringe Festival with his play The Starter House (and a mix of brutish force and razor-sharp wit), Catfish Baruni returned to Fringe in 2013 with his tale of William (the snowman) on Friday, March 1.

Neal Fair ’08 Neal invites you to visit the website for Mt. Hood National Forest at http://www.fs.usda.gov/main/mthood/learning. He is in charge of Learning Center activities there.

2010sKatherine Cudney ’10, M.A. ’12Katherine created the Border Doe Project, a social activist art project, by using remnants of failed border crossing attempts (bits of clothing, etc.) as inspiration for the creation of large sculptures—recreating who the people were as a way to connect with both the human-ity and inhumanity of these tragedies. The work exhibited at the Metamorphous Gallery in Patagonia, Ariz., went to the Office of Outreach and Multicultural Affairs, College of Medicine’s El Otro Lado New Student Union building at the University of Arizona for the month of February 2013, and will become part of the Smithsonian Institutes MoMS (Museum on Main Street) Journey Stories in January and February 2014. Katherine was also invited by Stephen Brown, foremost expert on research Q-Method, to speak on Q-Method at the International Society for Scientific Study of Subjectivity in Amsterdam in September 2013.

Ty Fitzmorris ’10Co-owner of the Raven Café in downtown Prescott, Ty recently opened the city’s largest independent book-store, the Peregrine Book Company, with former College Library mainstay Tom Brodersen as manager. The Grand Opening Weekend, Nov. 16, 17, and 18, 2012, was a great success. The store, located at 219A North Cortez, just a half block north of the Raven Café, carries a wide selection of new and used books, as well as stuffed animals, green

toys, innovative games, handmade cards, and cool indie magazines. The Peregrine also hosts national, regional, and local authors and poets, as well as book clubs and workshops.

Jennifer Longworth ’10 Jennifer recently received a Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts from the Art Insti-tute of Boston. She is also running her own business in Prescott, specializing in website development, video editing, and computer repair (www.WakingRevolutions.net). Jennifer’s art portfolio can be viewed online at www.JenniferLongworth.com.

Patricia C. Bischof ’11 Patricia exhibited her assemblage, mixed media, and painting art at Unity of Tucson from April 7 through April 28.

Michaela Precourt ’11 Michaela is currently continuing her employment with Outward Bound, working in Australia. She is a solo instructor taking school students into the outback as well as on kayak trips and climbing tours. Michaela will be in Australia through May 2013 and intends to travel a bit, perhaps over to New Zealand and even up to Japan with friends, to catch up on her snowboard skills during winter season.

Brooke Balla ’12 and Grant Williams ’06 Grant and Brooke are group leaders for the gap year and study abroad program Carpe Diem Education based out of Portland, Ore.

Matt Leonard ’12 I’ve been involved in ecologically oriented social movements for nearly 15 years, working both with grassroots movements and with international NGOs. I have more recently focused on climate change issues, seeing it as an issue that interconnects myriad issues from economics and social justice to ecological sustainability and globalization. More acutely, I see organizing around climate change as a key strategy to building a movement that can actually transform our economy and political institutions in a systematic way. I currently work for the international climate campaign 350.org, managing our US Actions Team (www.350.org).

Matt Pyatt ’12 Matt opened the Good Good, a gourmet grilled cheese shop and student hangout near Prescott College at 520 Sheldon Street. His shop is notable because every-thing in the store was bought used, even the “to-go” boxes. By limiting his over-head and hiring friends, Matt has built community while keeping costs low for customers. The Good Good’s menu includes a donation menu that lets customers pay what they can for select menu items. Matt caters to Prescott College students by offering free wi-fi and being open until 2 a.m. The Prescott College Student Arts Council is working with Matt to host open mic nights at the Good Good. Additionally, Matt plans for the shop to have regular movie nights, be kid friendly, and host other community events. The restaurant features homemade soups and baked breads.

Jenn Wendt M.A. ’12 Jenn recently developed a resource for distance learners focused on empowering collaboration, motivation, community, and lifelong skills. She invites you to take a look, like the page, and help spread the word! https://www.facebook.com/pages/edgab/240138489401432.

Tom Barnhill ’13 M.A. programTom is working on a master’s degree in adventure-based therapy and was recently able to study participants in a Combat Wounded Veteran Challenge. Participants climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in order to gather research on the effects of stress, extreme weather, and altitude on prosthetics, post-traumatic stress disorder, and traumatic brain injury. Tom’s interest lies in the study of whether the climb has any therapeutic benefits for those with PTSD.

Phillipe Holmstrom ’13 B.A. programFor his Senior Project, Phillipe spent the month of January on the Quinault Indian Nation in coastal Washington state doing work for the Quinault Division of Natural Resources. His philosophy of blending traditional/native ecological knowledge with Western science was covered in the Quinault tribe newspaper, Nugguam, and can be found at http://quinaultindiannation.com/nugguam.pdf.

continued on page 27


Alumni Briefs

Student Alumni Association (SIC)

Initiates Class GiftsThe class of 2013 will begin the tradition of a senior class gift. SIC is offering graduating seniors the opportunity to make a “living” gift to Prescott College to recognize their experiences at the College. Their goal is to raise $500 for a small tree (fruit tree, desert willow, or Gambel oak) to be planted in the College’s Campus Commons area. The Alumni Office has pledged matching funds up to $250, and one lucky student will be drawn from the list of donors to present the senior gift at the May 2013 graduation ceremony.

Make Sure We Have Your Updated InfoAre you receiving the monthly enewsletter Ecos? We can’t stay in touch with you unless we have your current information such as mailing address, email, and phone number. You can update your info online at http://pcalumupdate.kintera.org/ or by calling the Alumni Office at (928) 350-4502.

Past parent Steve Lockton, father of alumna Elise Lockton ’96, won a weeklong vacation at the Casamar Suites in Oaxaca, Mexico for his donation to the Annual Fund for Academic Excellence. All donations of $25 or more made to the Annual Fund from July 1 through December 31, 2012, were entered into a drawing for the prize. We thank each and every contributor to the Annual Fund for Academic Excellence in 2012, especially the 297 donors eligible for this drawing. Thank you for investing in Prescott College. Our sincere gratitude also goes out to the Sawyer family for offering this gift to the College community.

More information about Casamar Suites at www.casamarsuites.com.

Congratulations to the Winner of a Mexico Vacation!

Alumni and Parent GatheringsWe had a successful spring alumni gathering in Tucson on March 9 at the the Amerind Museum. Attendees enjoyed a catered lunch, conversation, College updates, and a presentation by alumnus and Amerind Museum Director John Ware ’73 at a special Prescott College event to

celebrate the 25th anniversary of Prescott College, Tucson. If you are inter-ested in planning or hosting an alumni event, contact Marie Smith in the Alumni Office at (928) 350-4502.

Prescott College Email for Life!Stay connected to your alma mater through our Google Apps for Education email service. This service is similar to regular Gmail and can easily be forwarded to your current email address, so you’ll never miss out on Prescott College news again! Once registered, you can keep in touch with former classmates by searching for their names in the system. As a bonus, retail discounts are associated with having an “.edu” email address. For more information or to register for your Prescott College email for life, visit http://www.prescott.edu/alumni/pcmail-for-life.html today!

Alumni gathering at the Amerind Museum, March 2013


Faculty & Staff N

otes

Faculty & Staff NotesRafaelle Abramovitz ’06 Adjunct instructor Rafaelle Abramovitz organized and led a women’s empowerment/cultural exchange program in Kenya with a combination of Americans and Maasai last February. The culmination of the experience was a self-supported climb of Mt. Kenya with all ten women involved.

Sophia Andali, M.A., M.B.A.Prescott College’s new Director of Student Life, Sophia Andali,

started in October. She came to us from The Art Institute of Salt Lake City, where she was the Director of Student Affairs. She has years of experience in higher education and the corporate world and is currently pursuing a doctorate in leadership.

Walt Anderson, M.S.Walt Anderson’s essay “In Defense of Tumbleweeds” was recently published by New Clear Vision Blog. You can read it at http://www.newclearvision.com/2012/10/08/in-defense-of-tumbleweeds/.

Joel Barnes ’81, Ph.D.Joel Barnes, on-campus faculty member and director of the Graduate Teaching Assistant Program, had two articles published on landscape ecology and wild and scenic rivers in Grand Canyon; one in Boatman’s Quarterly Review and another in the International Journal of Wilderness. Joel also presented on this topic at the Grand Canyon River Guide’s Training Semi-nar in March.

Melanie Bishop ’86, M.F.A.My So-Called Ruined Life, a young adult novel by facultymember Melanie Bishop, was accepted for publication by Torrey House Press.

Danny Brown, M.Ed.Program Development Director for Professional Preparation Danny Brown was recently appointed to represent the College on the Yavapai County Educational Technology Consortium Board of Directors. For more information visit http://ycetc.org/bylaws/.

Grace Burford, Ph.D. The Islamic Speakers Bureau of Arizona (ISBA) honored Grace Burford (faculty member in Cul-tural and Regional Studies) with the 2012 Building Bridges Award for Educators. Dr. Burford has worked with ISBA for more than 10 years to integrate interactions with Muslims and other first-hand experiences of Islam into her reli-gious studies courses. (With Azra Hussain of ISBA, above.)

Kenny Cook, M.F.A.K. L. Cook, Arts & Letters faculty member, was one of seven artists and writers awarded a 2013 Arizona Commission on the Arts Research and Development Grant. His essay, “Foot Notes,” which originally appeared in Shenandoah, was reprinted in the online journal Redux, at http://www.reduxlitjournal.com/2012/12/61-foot-notes-by-kl-cook.html. He was also interviewed for a series with contemporary authors from the American West, available at http://multi-interviews.com/western/?p=29.

Becca Deysach ’99 Instructor Becca Deysach put together an online anthology of some of her students’ writing from the fall Limited-Residency Undergraduate Writing the Wild class. Check out “Words Unbound” at www.writingthewild2.wordpress.com.

Suzanne Dhruv, M.A. ’05 Director of Prescott College, Tucson, Suzanne created and recently published a curriculum to engage youth and families in exploring the natural environ-ment around them. To learn more about the curriculum, go tohttp://neighborhoodnatureclubs.arizona.edu/sampleactivities.html.

Nina Ekholm Fry, M.S.Sc.Director of Equine-Assisted Mental Health Nina Ekholm Fry presented a lecture at Scottsdale Community College and at the Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship International conference. She was appointed Editor of the Scientific and Educational Journal of Therapeutic Horsemanship, and was chosen to contribute a manuscript on equine-assisted therapy for the book Biotherapy: History, Principles, and Practices.

Anita Fernández, Ph.D.On-campus faculty member Anita Fernández is working closely with the organization Save Ethnic Studies. Dr. Fernández and fellow faculty member Zoe Hammer’s forthcoming article “Red Scare in the Red State: The Attack on Mexican American Studies in Arizona and Opportunities for Building National Solidarity” will appear in a special issue of the Journal of the Association of Mexican American Educators.

Tom Fleischner, Ph.D.Environmental Studies faculty member and Director of the Natural History Institute Dr. Fleischner contributed a sidebar to the book Observation and Ecology. He also co-authored several articles: “Adapting to climate change on Western public lands” in Environmental Management; “Revisiting trends in vegetation recovery following protection from grazing, Chaco Culture National Historic Park, New Mexico” in The Colorado Plateau V (along with faculty members Lisa Floyd-Hanna and David Hanna); and “Toward transformative natural history education” in the Journal of Natural History Education and Experience.

Deborah Ford, M.F.A.Faculty member Deborah Ford recently exhibited her photographs and presented at Under Western Skies 2: Environment, Community and Culture in North America. She currently has work in the Desert Grasslands exhibit at the Tucson Museum of Art through July 7, and an exhibit of her photographs is on view at the B2 Gallery at the Biosphere in Oracle, Ariz., where she was an artist in residence.

Dan Garvey, Ph.D.Since returning from his stint as Dean for the Semester at Sea Program at University of Virginia, faculty member and former College President Dan Garvey has been working with the Institute for Sustainable Social Change, a consortium of programs, services, and scholarly activities aligned with the mission of Prescott College, specifically focused on projects and programs that seek to effect improvements in the human condition locally, nationally, and globally.

Ellen Greenblum, M.F.A., M.Ed.’Tis Art Center and Gallery in Prescott presented faculty member Ellen Greenblum’s hand-dyed fabrics and adjunct instructor Tom Alward’s woodfired ceramics Dec. 2–30, 2012

Zoe Hammer-Tomizuka, Ph.D.Faculty member in Cultural and Regional Studies Zoe Hammer-Tomizuka contributed to the forthcoming book Beyond Walls and Cages: Prisons, Borders, and Global Crisis. Dr. Hammer, in collaboration with fellow faculty member Anita Fernández, also presented a session focused on critical ethnic studies in Arizona at NAU’s conference Fanaticism and the Abolition-Democracy.

Allison Jack, Ph.D.Agroecology faculty member Allison Jack has been awarded a one-year post-doctoral training grant through the National Science Foundation


Faculty & Staff N

otesbearing offerings of the ECOSA Institute, a sponsored program of Prescott College focused on regenerative ecological design. For more information about ECOSA, visit www.ecosa.org.

Kerry Skarbakka, M.F.A.Arts & Letters faculty member Kerry Skarbakka’s photogra-phy was featured on Huffington Post and has since spread to ThisisColossal.com, Business Insider, Slate, Wired, and CBS News. This recent attention has garnered him representation by the prestigious Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles, where he will have his first major exhibition in the LA area, “Ten Years of Falling,” in May.

Kendall Smith, M.A.Kendall Smith, a new member of the Prescott College Admis-sions Office, recently continued her 12 years of service on the LEAD Programs Scholars Selection Committee. Begun by Johnson & Johnson Corporation with Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania more than 30 years ago, LEAD is devoted to creating leadership, educational, and advancement opportunities in minority students from North America.

Carl Tomoff, Ph.D.In September, Professor of Environmental Studies Dr. Carl Tomoff served as the ornithologist during a 5-day Madrean Archipelago Biodiversity Assessment expedition in Sonora, Mexico. In October, during the 10th anniversary celebration of the Arizona Important Bird Areas Program, Carl was recognized for his significant contributions to research and monitoring that have led to Important Bird Area designations in Arizona, and for his service on the Science Committee since its inception. He also attended the Arizona Field Ornithologists annual meeting, where a book honoring pioneer Arizona ornithologist Gale Monson, to which Carl contributed, was unveiled.

Vicky Young ’95, Ph.D. Faculty member Vicky Young was nominated and accepted to the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) board of directors as a Patient and Donor Affairs Representative. UNOS is the private, nonprofit organization that manages the nation’s organ transplant system under contract with the federal govern-ment.

Martin Zeibell, M.A.Field Ops Equipment Manager Martin Ziebell successfully completed his second circumnavigation of Isla Tiburon in the Gulf of California in a sea kayak in November. He was follow-ing the trail of this year’s WELS course. It marked the first time a College class has completed the challenging odyssey since 1997.

International Research fellowship Program (see more on page 4). She also made headlines in the New York Times science section as an expert in vermicompost. For more about Allison and her agroecology work in Arizona, visit her blog at http://agroecologyaz.wordpress.com/.

Elaine Jordan, M.Div.Former instructor Elaine Jordan was the writing specialist for the Master of Arts Program for nine years. Her memoir Mrs. Ogg Played the Harp: Memories of Church and Love in the High Desert was published in November. An excerpt from the book was published in the 2008 Alligator Juniper under the title “A Prayer for Earl.”

David Lovejoy ’73 David Lovejoy, faculty member in Adventure Education, presented at the International Snow Science Workshop on avalanche education in the United States. He is presently working as Snow Safety Specialist for the Arizona Snowbowl, teaching avalanche training courses, and developing weekly snow-pack condition summaries for KPAC’s website.

Delisa Myles, M.F.A. Delisa Myles’s choreography “Home” was chosen to be in Breaking Ground 2013, Contemporary Dance and Film Festival at Tempe Center for the Arts. “Home” was inspired by the woman-line of her Mormon pioneer ancestors and the faith and fierceness it took to create a new life in a harsh landscape.

Kurt Refsnider, Ph.D.Faculty member in Environmental Studies Dr. Refsnider has been steadily expanding geology and climate change course offerings and research op-portunities for students after coming to Prescott College in 2012. He also published three papers on glacial erosion and Arctic climate change and raced a tandem mountain bike across the country with his partner Caroline Soong.

DeeAnn Resk, M.Ed.Student Leadership and Event Coordinator DeeAnn Resk recently presented a workshop titled Global Citizenship and Social Change at both the National Collegiate Leadership Conference and the IMPACT National Conference for Community Service, Service-Learning, and Civic Engagement. This semester she also participated in an educational service trip via BorderLinks and the Unitarian Universalist Association focusing on immigration, human rights, and social justice issues in Nogales, Mexico.

Sheila Sanderson, M.F.A.On-campus faculty member Sheila Sanderson read from her poetry collection, Keeping Even, at the 36th annual Writers Week Conference at University of California Riverside in February.

Peter Sherman, Ph.D.Peter Sherman was selected as the faculty Academic Director for the credit-

Fall 2012 Transitions Corrections• Alumna Naomi Blinick ’09 took the cover photo featuring Cosme Becerra, Jacy Burkow ’06, Abram Fleishman ’08, and Wyatt Amith ’11 during the Marine Conservation Course in Kino Bay, Mexico, 2010 • Two students each received $900 scholarships from the Dorothy Ruth Ellis Endowed Scholarship fund for fall term 2012: Zoe Mason ’12 and Erika Deleo ’13.

Ph.D. Students in IndiaCurrent Ph.D. students Jenny Chistion Myers ’15, Lindsey Mica ’15, Clare Hintz ’14, and Meg Ferrigno ’14 traveled to India for their Earth Democracy and Social Movements for Sustainability course. Seen here with men-tor Vandana Shiva (third from right), Novem-ber 2012. Vandana Shiva is a global leader in the Earth Democracy or Navdanya movement, which translates into a living earth, living economies, living cultures,

continued from page 24Class Notes and living democracy. This course took a wider view of how social movements for sustainability can successfully be cultivated, garner momentum, and work collaboratively for both local and global suc-cess in the form of real change.

Social and Ecological PerspectivesThe students in Randall Amster’s Integrating Social and Ecological Perspectives class this fall wrote a manifesto “On the Importance of Integrating Social and Ecological Perspectives,” which was published as “Solstice Manifesto” on the NewClear Vision blog about winter solstice: http://www.newclearvision.com/2012/12/21/solstice-manifesto/#more-2058.


In Mem

oriam

In MemoriamMary Charlotte Thurtle ’09 Mary Charlotte Thurtle passed away on Aug. 25, 2012, in Tucson, Ariz. Mary worked for 13 years as a professional archaeologist and recently co-authored the book Last Water on Devil’s Highway. Mary earned a master’s degree in Organizational Studies at Prescott College in 2009 and devoted the last years of her life working as a filmmaker and social activist, most notably as the Director of Pan Left Productions, an organization that uses media for social and environmental justice and change. She lived a life dedicated to helping others achieve their dreams, and she will be lovingly remembered by her sister, her three brothers, and a wide circle of friends.

Linda Lee Ryan Linda Lee Ryan, 60, of Prescott, Ariz., peacefully passed away with family by her side on Dec. 12, 2012. She taught elementary school in Lavine, Page, Pine Top, Chino Valley, and Prescott before becoming the curriculum and testing coordinator for the Prescott Unified School District. She was also employed by the Bureau of Education and Research, Northern Arizona University, and Prescott College, and she was a member of the Prescott Kiwanis. Linda loved the outdoors, bird watching and traveling to beautiful places in the Southwest and abroad. Her love for life, family, and friends is cherished by many.

Lifelong Learning Summer Schedule 2013Certificate in Experiential Education – 3 weekend sessions in May and JuneThis certificate is designed for new experiential practitioners wishing to integrate experiential pedagogy into their adven-ture or classroom practices, and for “seasoned” practitioners to hone and advance their work. Learn the skills, knowledge, and dispositions central to experiential education, with in-class and out of class opportunities to design lesson plans, prepare presentations, and engage in activities that have direct, transferrable relevance.

AEE Therapeutic Adventure Best Practices Conference – May 9-12The Lifelong Learning Center is collaborating with the Association for Experiential Education Therapeutic Adventure Professional Group to provide this conference focused on integrating research, theory, and adventure/wilderness–based interventions into practice. We strive to engage practitioners of every experience level in improving the quality and sophis-tication of experiential interventions by using innovative, active learning approaches based in the principles of experiential education; providing participants direct experiences in the art and science of adventure therapy approaches; and impacting the direction of the use of adventure in therapeutic contexts.

10th Gathering on Equine-Assisted Learning and Mental Health Best Practices – May 13-16The Gathering is dedicated to bringing committed professionals together to explore, discover, and develop their best prac-tices in the fields of equine-assisted learning and equine-assisted mental health. Speakers and presenters gather from near and far to provide a platform for sharing experiential, theoretical, and foundational knowledge and experiences in their fields of expertise.

2013 Expressive Art Therapy Summer Institute – July 22-August 4The Prescott College Expressive Art Therapy Summer Institute (EATSI) brings masters in the fields of expressive art, music, dance movement, and art therapy together with students and professionals for an unparalleled, intensive learning experience. Participants gain experiential knowledge of theories, applications, techniques, and methods.

2013 Somatic Psychology Summer Institute - Aug. 9-13 Yoga and Aug. 9-14 RubenfeldThe Prescott College Somatic Psychology Summer Institute provides certification in multiple somatic practices, providing professional development for current practitioners and students. Certifications include: Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy Level I Training, Resourcing the Soma through the Rubenfeld Synergy Method®, Somatic Experience, and Hakomi. See the LLC website for dates and further information about each certificate listed above.

WWW.PRESCOTT.EDU/LIFELONG-LEARNING


The Last Word

The Last Word

The dream of the West is alive, and Lili DeBarbieri ’09 tells you how to get there in this guide-book featuring 22 southern Ari-zona ranches and farms. Traveling through the pages, I want to jump up to make reservations and grab those experiences on historic haciendas, working cattle ranches, organic farms, and artist retreats. I’m itching to immerse myself in the combination of charm, history, Hollywood Westerns, des-ert environments, organic farms and gardens, hot tubs, and gre-garious owners who live to share their world with other people. I’ve lived in Arizona nearly 40 years and never imagined I could:

• Stay on the oldest cattle ranch in Arizona, and spend time “riding, feeding and shoeing horses, calling and moving cattle, roping and branding … or clearing brush.” • Share an adobe hacienda with the memory of former guests John Wayne, Elizabeth Taylor, Clark Gable, Walt Disney, and President John Kennedy, among others.• Steep myself in the movie and TV locations of Red River, McClintock, West of the Divide, the original 3:10 to Yuma, Tombstone, and Andy Warhol’s Lonesome Cowboy, and, at the same time, stay at the cottage where the Marshall Plan was written in 1947 or where Japanese Consul, General Nagao Kita, and staff were held after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1942.• Stay in an adobe hacienda built and furnished with materials from a cantina that might have been “the second oldest building in Arizona, dating to the late 1600s.”• Ride horseback or hike through natural preserves and wildlife corridors where “desert flowers and cacti are everywhere. Habitat areas for wildlife, such as hawks, ravens, rabbits, roadrunners, quail, chipmunks and javelina, bobcats and coyotes … with the occasional hint of a mountain lion,” and then relax with a gourmet meal, hot tub, and massage.• Stay on a 63-acre organic farm where I can enjoy harvesting and planting parties, hayrides, farm tours, and sustainable living classes on gardening, water harvesting, animal husbandry, canning, solar and alternative energy, and then “harvest the season” for my meals.• Or stay at the Farm of the Turkey Vulture, Almuniya de los Zopilotes, with respected author, ethnobotanist, and Prescott College alumnus Gary Nabhan ’73 and his wife Laurie, experiencing this high desert experimental farm planted with Mission Era fruit and nut trees and Southwest heritage vegetables and animals.

A Guide to Southern Arizona’s Historic Farmsand Ranches: Rustic Southwest Retreats

Lili has written a guide that opens up iconic expe-riential niches. (I’d say she has a great job.) Now, if only I had enough vacation time to visit them all!

Review by Chef Molly Beverly, Prescott College Food Service Director

Lili is already committed to writing another book, Location Filming in Arizona: From Stagecoach to Star Wars, the Screen Legacy of the Grand Canyon State, forthcom-ing from The History Press in 2014. More information at www.lilidebarbieri.com.

Sonoran Desert HummusCourtesy of Almuniya de los Zopilotes

There are recipes peppered throughout the book, and the one I found most intriguing uses Southwest native and Spanish heritage ingredients:

1 pound Sonoran white tepary beans, boiled until tender and drained¼ cup Mexican lime juice4 tablespoons sesame paste½ teaspoon sea salt2 tablespoons Mission olive oil2 tablespoons ground lemonadeberry seeds1 teaspoon Mexican oregano leaves or cumin seed1 chiltepin

After completing cooking of the tepary beans, drain; then put in a blender or in a large molcajete grinding stone. Add lime juice, sesame paste, olive oil, salt, chiltepin, and the oregano leaves or cumin. Blend until whipped into a frothy paste. Refriger-ate until cold, then place in a ceramic bowl and sprinkle lemonadeberry—an American sumac—in a spiral pattern over the hummus. Garnish the edge with pomegranate seeds. Serves six.

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Transitions Magazine - Spring issue