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 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 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...

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 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...

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 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...

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...

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 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...

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 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...

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...

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...

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 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 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 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,...