Field Naturalist Faculty and Students

Our tight-knit cohorts of six students per year learn as much from each other as from their mentors, our core faculty and numerous affiliated instructors. Many alumni return to share their expertise with the next generation, either as instructors or guest lecturers, or for a casual brown-bag lunch.

Faculty

Walt with binoculars by a flowering tree

Walter Poleman

Director, Field Naturalist Program • Senior Lecturer

An FN graduate himself, Walter is the program director and teaches Fundamentals of Field Science in the fall and Landscape Inventory and Assessment in the spring, using the classic Field Naturalist "layer cake" approach to ecology. He is...

Sonia smiling

Sonia DeYoung

Assistant Director, Field Naturalist Program • Curatorial Associate, Natural History Collections

Sonia leads the discussion seminar of Fundamentals of Field Science. Much of her other work happens behind the scenes, where she helps to recruit and orient new students and keep the program running. Elsewhere in the department, she works...

Cathy outdoors smiling at the camera

Cathy Paris

Botany Instructor, Field Naturalist Program • Senior Lecturer Emerita

Cathy teaches Field Botany, a fast-paced course designed to acquaint FN students with the diversity of vascular plant species in Vermont and the organization of those species into natural communities. Since 1991, she has taught a variety of...

Alicia smiling in a winter hat on a frozen pond

Alicia Daniel

Practicum Instructor, Field Naturalist Program

Walking through the forest without knowing how to read the landscape is like walking through a library without knowing how to read a book. Forests record their histories in rock formations, tree rings, cellar holes, and beaver chew. Alicia...

Josh smiling

Joshua Brown

Writing Instructor, Field Naturalist Program • Senior Writer for Science and Environment, UVM Magazine

Josh is a science writer and photographer whose work has appeared in a variety of places, from the Wall Street Journal to Conservation Magazine to the NASA homepage. He teaches Professional...

A snowy Jason whose beard and mustache are covered in frost.

Jason Mazurowski

Part-Time Instructor, Field Naturalist Program

Jason is a Wildlands Ecologist for Northeast Wilderness Trust who teaches Winter Ecology every January in partnership with Bernd Heinrich. After graduating from the FN Program in 2019, he worked for several years with UVM's Gund Institute for...

Morgan kneeling on the forest floor holding a GPS

Morgan Southgate

Part-Time Instructor, Field Naturalist Program

Morgan is a postdoctoral researcher with the Appalachian Mountain Club. As a former Ph.D. student in Plant Biology, she worked closely with Field Naturalist students in several different roles: taking field-based classes, conducting collaborative...

Students

Rachel in a canoe

Rachel Goland

Cohort AN, Class of 2025

Rachel grew up in upstate New York and has since had the privilege of exploring mountains and other wild places near and far from home. Rachel graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. in Environmental and Sustainability Sciences. As an...

Lucy in a sunny bog

Lucy Gross

Cohort AN, Class of 2025

Growing up in the Midwest, Lucy often found the places she traveled, like the Boundary Waters and Rockies, far more exciting. However, when she wandered into a prairie with a botanist while attending Grinnell College, the vast plant...

Robert against a background of trees

Robert Langellier

Cohort AN, Class of 2025

Robert is a magazine writer and field botanist from the Missouri Ozarks. After being fired from a hometown job waiting tables, he decided to become a long-haul trucker, a confused tangent that became a feature story for...

Veronica taking plant cuttings in the field

Veronica Magner

Cohort AN, Class of 2025

Before moving to Vermont, Veronica grew trees for the City of Philadelphia, aiding in the effort to grow and restore the native tree canopy in the city's watershed parklands. She is currently expanding on her ability to support urban...

Steve in front of a grove of trees

Steve Root

Cohort AN, Class of 2025

Steve was born and raised in Florida, where he spent his youth exploring longleaf pine forests and coastal sand dunes before studying psychology at the University of Miami. After graduating, he served as a Peace Corps volunteer, connecting...

Alyssa standing on a mountain summit looking down and away

Alyssa van Doorn

Cohort AN, Class of 2025

Growing up on the Jersey Shore, Alyssa spent many days soaking up the sun and wading through ocean water looking for marine critters. Her original interest lay in marine science, but as she grew and ventured into the woodlands of her home...

Greta Aiken

Cohort AO, Class of 2026

Ben in front of a forested lake in autumn

Ben Applegate

Cohort AO, Class of 2026

Ben has been drawn to trees ever since he started climbing them as a child growing up in southwestern Ohio. His fascination grew into a love of forests as he hiked throughout Maine and New Hampshire as a teenager. After studying forestry...

Naya by a turquoise mountain lake

Naya Banerjee

Cohort AO, Class of 2026

As an adolescent, Naya left suburban Maryland with her family to settle in New Delhi, India. In the midst of that immense city, she found herself in an oasis of wilderness as she rambled the thorny, dry, deciduous jungles of the Delhi...

Laura by a forest stream

Laura Costello

Cohort AO, Class of 2026

Laura grew up in the woods and corn fields of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. She studied computer engineering in Boston and loved her career in software product management, but a chance encounter with a pink lady’s-slipper orchid threw...

Emily on a mountain summit

Emily DeAlto

Cohort AO, Class of 2026

Emily grew up in New Jersey and attended Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, where she received a B.S. in Earth and Environmental Sciences. Tearing up the coast in search of cooler weather, she became an AmeriCorps intern in Vermont's...

Matthias with a sunset behind him

Matthias Sirch

Cohort AO, Class of 2026

Matthias is fascinated by the philosophical questions of science and humanity's place in the natural world. After earning a degree in Wildlife and Fisheries Biology from the University of Vermont with a focus in geospatial technologies,...