The Field Naturalist Program

Giving Field Naturalists the tools they need to move the world

Autumn Foushée

The daughter of a fifth generation farmer, Autumn grew up no stranger to dirty, hard work and the concept of conserving resources. Her hands were always covered in soil, and she was never happier than with the summer sun warming her back in the hay field. Kentucky's rolling hills, tall grass fields and winding streams nourished her love of the natural world. At an early age, she decided that wide open spaces and flowing streams were far more valuable to humans than the overabundance of cookie-cutter shopping complexes and parking lots—it was just a hunch, but one in which she felt confident.

Her hunch guided her throughout her education at the University of Kentucky, where she pursued dual degrees in natural resource conservation and journalism. She tailored her education to her passion—bringing science to the public through writing and communicating the value of open spaces and healthy waterways to those who need to know—everyone!

After a stint with AmeriCorps in Olympic National Park, she worked for an environmental non-profit as a federal grants specialist. When tides changed in Washington politics, she jumped into corporate America as a managing editor for the Popular Farming Series, Hobby Farms and Hobby Farm Home—national publications geared toward small farmers.

In the afterglow of an unraveling journey in Argentina, she decided it was time to get her hands dirty again. She returned to Kentucky and began work as the field technician for a fire ecology project in the southern Appalachians.

Grateful for the journey that has delivered her to the Green Mountains, Autumn hopes to expand her knowledge and skills in communication, sustainability, and community watershed management and conservation. When she's not thinking about those things, she's on (or in!) the water, playing soccer, flying stunt kites, reaching the mountaintop, gardening, reading Wendell Berry's books, or snapping photos of her two dogs—her most beloved subjects.

Rosemary Mosco

Rosemary grew up in several towns in Canada and the US, but Ottawa, Ontario will always be home. From an early age she was attracted to both scientific and artistic hobbies, and the nation's capital, surrounded by a broad greenbelt, offered a balance of both. Saturdays were always a tough choice between digging through local trilobite-heavy shale deposits, making comics, or writing terrible short stories about talking birds.

Rosemary's studies in Anthropology at McGill in Montreal were a further attempt to examine both science and art in a social context. Over the next few years she continued to hunt for this balance, working in the nonprofit sector in a part-time capacity while filling the rest of the time with writing and art. Her employment included a Toronto-based migratory bird charity and a large and diverse public radio station. On her days off, she made nature-based comics for print and web publications and traveled to comics conventions.

Rosemary is a born nerd, and her many attempts to connect art and science have included a videogame about albatrosses, an environmental podcast, a comic book about the Burgess Shale, and a web-based project in which she drew hundreds of birds for people who made their home more environmentally friendly. She discovered the Field Naturalist Program in a typically geeky way, by googling the words "naturalist" and "graduate". Rosemary is thrilled to find herself in a program that will give her the knowledge base and skills to successfully combine her interests, and to discuss environmental issues in new and interesting ways.

Teage O'Connor

Teage was born in a magical memory of Alaska, was ousted to southern California, stole away to Chicago, resettled in western Mass, was uprooted to NYC, recruited back to Mass, called to Nevada, taken with southern California, then flapped his wings once, then twice before gliding his weary bones over to Burlington. Big sigh, and he's finally feeling a bit more settled. In Burlington, he started the Bike Barn, a free community bike shop, cooks and serves for Food Not Bombs, and helps with Burlington's InfoShop. He likes sharing (Neil Young's mantra, "We lose our love when we say the word mine"), idealism (but never absolutism), and hugs (not quite as much as Emily, though). Teage think hugs are more the revolution itself than part of the revolution. In his other free time he runs ultramarathons and explores. He likes animals more than plants, and floating in bodies of water more than either. He prefers story over fact and potlucks over nutrition labels.

In college, Teage took the intro classes for human development, computer science, photography, calculus, and environmental studies. He stuck with environmental studies because it left him free to pursue his diverse interests—he eventually wrote his thesis on environmental education. At times, however, his life seems to be filled with everything but a thesis. He's full of ignorant bliss and pessimistic realism and he's intent on learning as much as he can about a selective reality in the hopes of sharing his excitement over everything with everyone. The FN program is a beautiful forum for Teage to exchange the love of knowledge with others equally passionate about everything.

Emily Stone

One of the hardest questions you can ask Emily (besides anything involving chemistry) is "So, where are you from?" Depending on her most recent travels, the answer varies wildly. A simple answer is rural Iowa, specifically the limestone bluffs, silty rivers and contoured cornfields of the Driftless Area. But even though she spent her entire childhood there—mostly making mud pies—it's not so simple any more. College drew her to the shores of Lake Superior and the satisfyingly smooth swish of cross country ski trails in northern Wisconsin. There she studied outdoor education, natural history and geology. Deepening her understanding of the natural world also strengthened her love for it. Some might label her a tree hugger. She won't deny it (there are pictures to prove it), but Emily always adds "I hug people too!" Desiring to share her newfound passion, Emily became a seasonal naturalist and environmental educator, and took off on a whirlwind tour of the country. A Minnesota Audubon Center was her first, fourth and seventh stops, educating college students about the staples on old fence posts, wolves, and plants. Teaching is a great way to learn, and Emily has the uncanny ability to be more excited about a subject the ninety-seventh time she teaches it than her first. By that time she's figured out a greater context for the information and can make fascinating connections. How does the piezoelectricity of quartz relate to a water mold killing oaks in California? You'll have to ask her.

As Emily continued on her naturalist adventure, working in Canyonlands National Park, Acadia National Park, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and even the redwoods of Northern California, she realized that "home" is a place where she can name most of the plants, cavort with chickadees, go canoeing, and, by the light of the stars, read a bit of Mary Oliver poetry. "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

Tate Bushell

Tate Bushell is a man who wants a life immersed in the natural world. After graduating college he took a job that required living full time in a forest. Since then he has been searching for a way to stay connected to nature and bring peacefulness and minimalism into his life and work. He feels that the Field Naturalist program offers an excellent opportunity to meet these goals. Tate doesn't call his birthplace of suburban Northern New Jersey his home any longer and has thankfully succeeded in shedding any bitterness associated with the society existing there. Perhaps the saving grace of his childhood was the creek at the end of the road and the patch of woods behind his house. Tate loves birds, boats without engines and hopes to one day keep bees. Finally he wants to give a shout out to his mother: "Yo ma, I did it!"

Charlie Hohn

Charlie Hohn spent his childhood years exploring a suburban wasteland south of Los Angeles, California. A concrete ditch served as the local "creek", so Charlie constructed his own miniature watershed in his backyard. Charlie learned to look for nature in its smallest forms, such as turning over rocks to look for insects, and raising "tadpoles" found in a puddle (they turned out to be mosquito larvae). In high school, these experiences inspired Charlie to start a restoration project at a small local marsh.

Charlie left the suburbs to study Environmental Horticulture at University of California at Davis, exploring the northern part of the state. Fate then led him back south, where he fell in love with the coastal mountains of southern California. In addition to mapping vegetation communities and battling invasive plants in the mountains, Charlie was inspired to bring some of this beauty found in natural ecosystems back into the urban landscape, and he occasionally returned to the house of his childhood, which is now surrounded by dozens of plants native to coastal California ecosystems.

Charlie comes to Vermont with the intent to learn about, and maybe fall in love with, a whole new set of animals, plants, and climate patterns. He is fascinated with the exuberance of plants in Vermont, fed by the moist climate, and is excited (and nervous) about the upcoming winter, which will be his first in a truly cold climate. When not out botanizing, he can be found singing quirky science themed songs, trying to sketch every plant species found in Vermont, and angrily shaking his fist at invasive species.

Zac Ispa-Landa

Zac was born and raised in central Missouri--a landscape of limestone bluffs, rolling hills, big skies, and deep caves. After nineteen years in the Midwest, he felt ready for a change and moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina. During the five years he lived in Asheville, Zac acquired a BA from Warren Wilson College, an orange dog, and a wink from a girl who would later become his wife.

He's worked as a wilderness therapist, a park ranger, a youth mentor and a gardener. Before moving to Burlington to start the Field Naturalist Program, Zac was living in a 1969 Airstream trailer in Northern California, studying regenerative design and cultural mentoring and growing some of the sweetest turnips a Missouri boy has ever tasted.

Bryarly McEachern

Name: Hard to pronounce and impossible to spell. Just call me Bryophyte.
Home Town: Planet Earth, until further notice

Bryarly's typical response to the question, "Where did you grow up?" is "Ummmm...." and a puzzled look. Then she says, "Well mostly Asia." When she was six, her parents flew her and her six siblings to Jordan, where she spent two happy years living outside Amman, surrounded by olive orchards, sheep flocks, and dusty pines. After Jordan and a brief stint in Australia, the clan moved to Nepal, where they set up camp for five years. This is where Bryarly discovered her love for diverse environments: mountains, jungle savannas, deep river gorges, and Buddhist stupas. The final stop on her clan's migration route was Cambodia, where she finished high school before returning to Canada for university.

At university, Bryarly studied Geography and Global Development Studies, which enabled her mind to keep traveling, even while she was pinned to a desk in southern Ontario. She also satisfied her earth-nerd tendencies by studying geology, which gave her an inspiring preview of the northeastern United States.

After graduation, the travel bug carted her to the Canadian Arctic, where she did environmental remediation work on decommissioned military sites- relicts of the Cold War. The work was fun, but after digging one too many soil/garbage pits through stinky landfills, she decided that she would prefer to work on the less malodorous side of the environment sector: conservation instead of remediation. Her desire to learn more about natural ecosystems and communication led her to the Field Naturalist program. Bryarly is keen to become a close friend of Vermont's plants and do yoga on the shores of Lake Champlain, and if she has any spare time, she would love to be a hot air balloon pilot on the side.

Sam Schaefer-Joel

Sam's childhood was enriched with many hikes in the Pacific Northwest and upstate New York. He was fascinated by the natural world, and spent many hours chasing dragonflies, collecting rocks, and climbing trees - always asking, "what is it, where did it come from, why?"

Seeking to satiate his curiosity, Sam left home to embark on the study of Biochemistry in Bellingham, Washington. His lofty goals were a complete understanding of how life worked, and the know-how to make the world a better place. After graduation, he worked in a research lab creating phage-display libraries but was unfulfilled by the slow pace of research and the abstract nature of this work.

Exploring a career change, Sam found an Americorps position managing a small organic farm and leading natural history field trips with children and young adults. This experience sparked several passions for Sam and he spent the next several years working on organic farms and exploring nature throughout the Americas, from Patagonia to northern Washington.

Sam is now part of the Field Naturalist program at UVM, continuing his quest for an understanding of life and the know-how to be a positive force in the world. In his spare time, he can be found strumming and tootling on various instruments, juggling clubs, and teaching flying yoga. He lives in Burlington with his fiancee, Kelli Mae.