Staff

John, a former oyster farmer in Massachusetts and current shrimp producer in Vermont, has a PhD in marine systems ecology from the University of Maryland and past collaborations with other Sea Grant programs. For Lake Champlain Sea Grant, he provides outreach to Vermont and Lake Champlain basin aquaculture producers, educates the public about sustainable products, and leads an aquaculture association in the basin. He is especially interested in helping producers strategically use grant money to improve their productions. 

John owns Sweet Sound Aquaculture, located in Charlotte, Vermont at the former Nordic Farm. He grows Pacific white shrimp and sells 100 pounds to market for Vermont consumers each week.

Ashley joined Lake Champlain Sea Grant and UVM Extension team in November 2015. As the Watershed and Lake Education Coordinator she oversees the Watershed Alliance program K-12 education program which has a UVM and a SUNY Plattsburgh location, coordinates watershed science professional development opportunities for K-12 teachers, and oversees an undergraduate Watershed Education internship program. She has a BS in Education and Environmental Science and a MS in Natural Resources from the University of Vermont and will be starting her doctorate this summer (2021) at the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point. 

Ashley’s educational and professional pursuits have been dedicated to helping create a sustainable future for Vermont, the greater Lake Champlain basin and beyond. Ashley works at the state and federal level to support watershed science and environmental literacy. She is the co-chair of the Vermont Education and Environment Network which is the state level North American Association of Environmental Education affiliate, which aims to foster a network of individuals and organizations working together to promote high quality outdoor, environmental, and educational experiences. Ashley is also the secretary of the Sea Grant Educators Network and an active member of the Champlain Basin Education Initiative. She is immensely grateful for all the time she has spent connecting and learning from natural systems; today she is most likely found  mountain biking, skiing, or SUPing with her floppy eared pup Callie.

Tori joined the Lake Champlain Sea Grant as watershed education coordinator based out of SUNY Plattsburgh in August of 2023. She coordinates and develops watershed and lake education programs for K-12 students, leads watershed science professional development opportunities for K-12 teachers, and oversees the New York Watershed Education internship program. Tori has spent the past five years in educational leadership roles, designing and teaching innovative, curriculum-based programming for K-college level students across upstate New York. She is now looking forward to creating similar opportunities for students and interns around the Lake Champlain region where she grew up. Tori's favorite free-time activities are gardening, playing yard games on the beach, or hiking in the Adirondack mountains. 

Marisa is a M.S Student at the University of Vermont and is originally from New Jersey. After graduating from Gettysburg College in 2020 with her bachelor’s degree, she returned to the Garden State to complete two consecutive terms of service with AmeriCorps as a New Jersey Watershed Ambassador. In this role, she was tasked with providing educational presentations, running community outreach opportunities, and assessing freshwater streams in the watershed she represented, the Millstone. Marisa is excited to begin working with Lake Champlain Sea Grant and cannot wait to explore the area through her position!

Dr. Jefferson is the Robert and Genevieve Patrick Professor in Watershed Science and Planning in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources at the University of Vermont, where she teaches undergraduate courses in the Environmental Sciences curriculum and graduate courses in the Aquatic Ecology and Watershed Sciences curriculum. She is also the Director of the Vermont Water Resources and Lake Studies Center. Through her research, she works to improve the resilience and sustainability of water resources and aquatic ecosystems. She conducts research in hydrology and geomorphology to understand river ecosystems in human-altered landscapes, with emphases on urban watersheds, stormwater management, and plastic pollution.

Aude Lochet is the water resources extension specialist based at SUNY Plattsburgh. She conducts outreach, educational activities, and applied research in relation to water resources and human use of Lake Champlain and its shoreline.

Aude started her career in France as a fish ecologist. She studied the otoliths (“ear stones” in Greek) of fish to understand the migration of many species, including sea lamprey in Lake Champlain. She also participated in fish restoration programs. She discovered herself as an educator when she started working with undergraduate students, as an instructor and research mentor. For several years, she managed undergraduate research programs for the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and taught biology and environmental science courses at Vassar College and at some SUNY institutions. In her spare time, you might find her swimming in a pool, reading a thriller, or cooking with her family.

Anna joined Lake Champlain Sea Grant in April of 2022. Her work supports the Lake Champlain Sea Grant, ecoNEWS Vermont, the Vermont Water Resources and Lake Studies Center, and the Northeastern States Research Cooperative. She runs the communications for these programs including website maintenance, outreach materials, social media, newsletters, and press inquiries. She also assists in research coordination and outreach programs and events hosted by Lake Champlain Sea Grant.

Anna is currently enrolled in UVM's Food Systems masters program and graduated from UVM’s Rubenstein School in 2021 where she studied Natural Resources with a concentration in Resource Ecology. She previously worked for the Vermont Public Interest Research Group in multiple capacities but most notably as an Assistant Canvass Director where she led their first ever virtual canvass. She also helped launch a new arm of the nonprofit, VPIRG Votes, that is involved in legislative elections.

Caroline has called Vermont home on and off for the past 10 years but grew up in the Finger Lakes Region of New York. She recently graduated with a Master of Science in Natural Resources from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point; however, she completed her undergraduate degree at UVM in 2013. Since 2009, she has called many states home (Vermont, California, and Wisconsin), but she is excited to circle back to UVM where her environmental education career officially began. She will enjoy being closer to the mountains and Lake Champlain.

Timothy (Tim) Mihuc oversees LCSG's SUNY Plattsburgh operations and serves as the coordinator of the Lake Champlain Research Institute at SUNY Plattsburgh. Tim began his career with an undergraduate independent research project on nutrient limitation of algae in a small eutrophic lake in Oklahoma. He continued his education as an aquatic ecologist through studies on invertebrate life-history ecology in a Colorado alpine wetland (M.S.) and post-fire food web dynamics in Yellowstone National Park streams (Ph.D.). He spent several years at Louisiana State University as a post-doctoral researcher (1994-1996) conducting invasive species research in the Atchafalaya River Basin, the largest contiguous hardwood swamp ecosystem in the U.S.  From 1996-1999 Tim served as director of the Great Rivers Field Station (Illinois Natural History Survey) where he led a multidisciplinary research team working on the Upper Mississippi River.

He has published over 35 research articles including in journals such as Ecology, Freshwater Biology, Aquatic Sciences, Hydrobiologia, Journal of Great Lakes Research and American Midland Naturalist and has co-edited the book volume titled “Lake Champlain: Partnership and research in the new millennium,” published by Kluwer Academic publishers. Tim’s professional areas of interest include aquatic food webs, fish population dynamics, ecological integrity and aquatic biodiversity. He enjoys outdoor activities, particularly fly-fishing, skiing, hiking and mountain climbing (preferably combined).

Mark was born and raised in Pennsylvania, earned a bachelor's degree in forestry from Virginia Tech in 2002 (including 2001 at the Victorian School of Forestry in Australia) and a master's degree in Limnology at the University of Jyvaskyla in Finland in 2008. He began working with the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Lakes Program as a seasonal environmental technician from 2009 to 2012, then worked as a seasonal fisheries technician with the US Forest Service in California in 2013 and 2014, and spent a winter as a State of Alaska certified crab observer on fishing vessels in the Bering Sea. He returned to Vermont from 2015 to 2020 to work with the DEC Lakes Program again as an environmental scientist involved in volunteer monitoring, assessment, and permitting. After a year working as a water quality scientist with Horizons Regional Council on the North Island of New Zealand, Mark has returned to Vermont once more.

Originally from Connecticut, Sarah graduated from The George Washington University in 2020 with a B.A. in Environmental Studies. As an undergraduate she contributed to research on sea level rise in coastal forests and communities of the Chesapeake Bay. Following graduation, she continued this work as a research assistant and developed a community science initiative that engages people in documenting sea level rise. After her time on the coast, Sarah moved west to work as a Naturalist and Backcountry Interpretive Hiking Guide in Avon, Colorado. In these roles she wrote and implemented public programming on Rocky Mountain ecology and conservation.

Most recently, Sarah has spent long hours on Lake Champlain as University of Vermont’s Assistant Sailing Coach. She is excited to be a part of Lake Champlain Sea Grant and contribute to work that will make Lake Champlain basin communities more resilient to flooding.

As the Green Infrastructure Collaborative (GIC) Coordinator, Jill works with the Clean Water Initiative Program (CWIP) at the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation. She coordinates the statewide GI Roundtable and supports development of clean water project verification and operation and maintenance programs for projects funded under the Clean Water Service Delivery Act of 2019. Through this role, she provides outreach and coordinates educational programming to encourage the use of low impact development, green stormwater infrastructure (GSI), and nature-based solutions for managing stormwater runoff. 

For her master’s research, Jill evaluated the nutrient removal performance of bioretention cells and a denitrifying woodchip bioreactor treating agricultural runoff from dairy farm production areas and silage storage bunkers. After completing her MS degree, Jill was a lecturer in the UVM Plant and Soil Science Department, where she instructed environmental science and plant and soil science labs. She has also conducted stormwater management property site assessments to make suggestions to landowners. In her free time, Jill enjoys getting outside and exploring the mountains throughout all of Vermont's seasons, especially while skiing, biking, climbing, and hiking.

Alison grew up in Williston, Vermont and attended St. Lawrence University where she double-majored in Biology and Government. Since graduating, she completed two years of AmeriCorps service with Vermont Works for Women and the Friends of Northern Lake Champlain. She was then hired by Friends of Northern Lake Champlain as a project coordinator and she wrote grant proposals to state and federal programs to fund assessments, engineering designs, and implementation of projects for stormwater management, floodplain restoration, and shoreline protection. Alison has also been involved in numerous education and outreach initiatives focused on developing an appreciation for the Lake and teaching students and community members about what they can do to improve water quality.

This summer, as a graduate student with Dr. Kris Stepenuck at the University of Vermont, Alison also will begin her Master's research, for which she will evaluate the long-term programmatic outcomes of Watershed Alliance. In her free time, Alison likes to backcountry ski, run, and bike throughout Vermont.

Kris develops, implements, and oversees Lake Champlain Sea Grant Extension and outreach activities. Her current outreach efforts include using social marketing techniques to promote healthy soils through lawn care, community resilience to flooding, and clean boating and best winter maintenance practices. Her research endeavors include understanding outcomes and building credibility of volunteer water monitoring and citizen science programs, assessing impacts of land use on water quality, and understanding behavior changes that result from watershed outreach programming.

She helps to support a national network of volunteer water monitoring programs, maintaining volunteermonitoring.org, that includes a national jobs board for water outreach and volunteer water monitoring positions, and an associated listserv for Extension water professionals (ExtVolMonNetwork). She is appointed as the U.S. co-chair of the Public Advisory Group of the Lake Champlain-Richelieu River Flood Study and serves as a member of the Lake Champlain Basin Program Education and Outreach Committee, and the Watersheds United Vermont board of directors.

Chief Don Stevens of the Nulhegan Abenaki Tribe is well-known throughout the Lake Champlain basin and receives frequent invitations to participate at events where he shares his inspiring Abenaki stories and knowledge with school children and other groups. For many years, he has demonstrated Abenaki traditions and told campfire stories at festivals and family programs at Shelburne Farms. 

Through a partnership with Lake Champlain Sea Grant and Shelburne Farms, Chief Stevens and other educators will convey their Indigenous knowledge and cultural history of the basin with learning activities and events at Shelburne Farms and at area K-12 schools, colleges, nonprofit organizations, and other public venues. Chief Stevens will collaborate with other Indigenous educators to provide learning opportunities including the development of videos, books, and teaching materials and lessons to share Abenaki cultural history.

Julianna is the Research Program Coordinator for the Lake Champlain Sea Grant, the Vermont Water Resources and Lake Studies Center, and the Northeastern States Research Cooperative. Julianna is responsible for administration and budget management of the three research programs, competing and awarding research projects, and reporting. She also contributes to outreach and communications efforts.

Previously, Julianna was based at UVM’s Gund Institute for Environment, supporting and communicating research on low emissions agriculture in developing countries, a focus of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). Prior to joining UVM, Julianna managed projects and wrote and edited proposals, reports, and outreach materials for the USAID West Africa Trade Hub, CARE International and other international development organizations, and the US Peace Corps in Niger and Ghana; served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Niger; and taught middle and high school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Washington, DC.