I thoroughly enjoy assisting Luckiamute Watershed Council with their outreach and education programs. As soon as I started, I was able to hit the ground running – following up with landowners, planning and attending bird-walks, preparing for, and attending volunteer tree planting work parties. I’ve reached out to and confirmed speakers for Sips ‘n’ Science presentations. I’ve attended Education and Outreach Committee meetings and taken minutes. I’ve updated media contact lists and assisted in planning and coordinating their 20th Anniversary Celebration (including managing volunteers). Most recently, I helped coordinate a butterfly and moth walk in King’s Valley and as usual, my favorite part was making connections with participants from across the watershed who want to protect, conserve, and restore natural habitats on public and private land.

This is a volunteer role that I enjoy tremendously as it gives me the chance to give back in a small way to Oregon State University where I earned my degree in Environmental Science. My role is to provide an outside perspective to the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. The board meets at least two times per year and get updates on how the college and its programs are fairing. We provide feedback and ideas on topics such as how the college can best prepare students who will soon be looking for jobs in the public and/or private sector.

For five years I worked part-time assisting teachers and students in grades K – 5. I helped students practice reading, writing, and math as well as teaching the social and emotional skills that are needed to succeed in school and in life. In this position, I feel I grew tremendously – I learned best teaching practices, how to approach situations with more empathy and patience, how to be a better listener, to be flexible and supportive and to provide a positive perspective, even when things were tough. The school was where I weathered the long and difficult days of the pandemic -teaching via zoom, then with masks as we tried to help kids build back stamina and learn how to “do school” again. In my final year, I worked in a fourth-grade classroom with many students I have known since kindergarten and each day held challenges, along with moments of learning, smiles and growth. At Mt. View, I was fortunate to receive a wide range of trainings - including CPR, First Aid, collaborative problem solving, how to have courageous conversations about race, how to better relate to kids and families who have experienced trauma and/or have lived or are living in poverty, an introduction to the history of black communities and indigenous communities in Oregon, how to spot bias in myself and how to work on changing those biases, stress management, and how to better establish a supportive and inclusive classroom that welcomes all. I was so grateful to learn so much that could be applied not only in the classroom, but to future jobs and my personal life as well. It was a difficult decision not to return to school in the fall. I plan to stay in touch by volunteering whenever possible.

In 2013 my kids transferred to Ashbrook School and I decided to focus more of my efforts on outdoor education and science-related activities. I completed an Agent of Change Course as part of my training to become an Eco-School Leader and then plunged into bringing a sustainable outdoor education program to all students in grades preschool through eighth. I gathered data showing the benefits of outdoor education, researched partners, and approached the administration with my plan, goals and costs. The outcome was the Junior Naturalist Program - a science-based exploratory program designed to give students a chance to interact with and learn about the natural areas just outside their classroom door. For five years, I acted as coordinator, scheduling sessions with natural resource educators from our local nature center to get the kids outside and doing hands-on science in the schoolyard, nearby creek, park and wetland.

When my oldest started Kindergarten at Mt. View Elementary in Corvallis, I dived right into volunteering - the school needed people who could coordinate events, communicate effectively with other parents and staff, efficiently run meetings and generally organize others to make things happen. I fit the bill and got to work. I spent time inside the classroom patiently assisting students as they learned to read and write and outside the classroom (hurray!) planting native plants on school grounds, chaperoning field trips to the local forest and wildlife rehab center, and guiding students in filling out nature journals as the seasons changed in the school’s small wetland. During my time as PTA President, I worked to get the school and PTA website updated, communicated through newsletter articles, posters, and listserve messages, revived and organized the annual silent auction fundraiser, arranged visiting authors and recruited and partnered with other volunteers to provide naturalist programs, author visits, field days, and more. I loved being a liaison between the teachers/administration and the parents. Together we were able to bring many new opportunities to all the students at the school.

I got my chance to move back to Corvallis in the year 2003 and jumped at the chance to work for a natural resource agency again. In returning to this job, I focused on big picture improvements to the program – updating website information, developing a new volunteer application form and an Access Database for tracking volunteer information. (I designed this database from scratch and included an input form that reduced errors, queries to help find the right volunteers for the job, and automatic reports of volunteer hours and more.) I also saved money by delivering the quarterly newsletter electronically and worked with risk management to update our liability forms for volunteers. I started offering statewide trainings for staff on how to successfully recruit, supervise and retain volunteers. This was in addition to managing local volunteer efforts, facilitating several contentious statewide meetings on trapping rules and regulations, and leading a yearly workshop for natural resource professionals on meetings management.

This job gave me an opportunity to work as part of an outreach and education team who was in charge of starting a statewide program from scratch. It was a challenging, but exciting few years figuring out how to best deliver boater safety training to the public. I was in charge of advertising the program, meeting with a contractor to develop a database to track completion of the program and then overseeing data collection and entry. I learned a lot about boating in a short time and helped develop training manuals and online courses and led several trainings for future boater education instructors. I also coordinated with law enforcement groups, boater rental agencies and others to help this program get off to a successful start.

The highlights of my time spent in this position were learning the ins and outs of working with volunteers. I learned all about policies, procedures, and best practices, helped biologists recruit volunteers, and participated as a member of the volunteer council that decided statewide volunteer management. I also enjoyed daily supervision of volunteers who worked in the office and coordinating an enormous free fishing day event at Bonneville Hatchery.

This made for a fantastic first job as I got to learn a little of everything needed to coordinate a successful statewide program. I had to handle hundreds of details in event planning, fundraising, marketing, communications, and volunteer recruitment. I also had a great introduction to the power of volunteers – I supervised hundreds of them. I coordinated 25 seminars in my time in this position, using all volunteer instructors and site coordinators. We were able to teach over 1000 women outdoor skills ranging from flyfishing, to turkey hunting, to clamming and crabbing. This job opened my eyes to the importance of having a volunteer program – not only did volunteers allow our organization to accomplish a tremendous amount with very few paid staff, the large numbers of volunteers also became advocates of our program and of our agency as well. I also loved this job because it was designed to give women a place to build confidence and competence in outdoor skills that are often viewed as men’s domain. A huge part of my job was to be welcoming to women of all skill levels and to set expectations among instructors to be supportive and encouraging and to treat everyone with respect.