Faculty Profiles

Bio: For students - My teaching here at Paul Smiths College is founded upon a diversity of experiences in fisheries and aquatic sciences. As an assistant fisheries research biologist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (in the early 90s), I became aware of the profound effect of landuse on rivers, streams and lakes and quickly understood that much of fisheries management and the quality of our water resources begins at the ridge line. After a visit to Coon Creek watershed in southwest Wisconsin, the watershed Aldo Leopold wrote about as a case study of integrated resource management, I became convinced that this type of management, interdisciplinary in scope, was still emerging as a way of conservation. As I began to understand the task of conservation was largely about people working together, my interest in teaching increased and I went “back to school”. While completing my dissertation at South Dakota State University, I became employed with the East Dakota Water Development District as a watershed ecologist and project coordinator for watershed assessment projects. The purpose of the assessment projects was to determine how landuse was affecting water quality, physical habitat, fish communities and invertebrates. During this work, we found Topeka shiners, a federally endangered species, in streams not previously known to harbor this species. During this time, I learned that fish, small and obscure, have a story to tell and a biologists, in many ways, is a translator of their stories. I hope this bio-sketch reveals some of the sources of my inspiration for teaching and advising, and for student-based, long-term resource monitoring projects established in the greater Paul Smith’s College “field station”.