Q: What was the focus of your work during your time as a Practitioner Fellow?
Before coming to UVA’s Environmental Institute, I had a twenty‑five‑year career with a nonprofit working to restore one of the most polluted rivers of the Chesapeake Bay (as Deputy Director of Education for the Elizabeth River Project) and recently completed post‑doctoral research on marine debris. My fellowship allowed me to take what I had learned through those experiences and create lessons for the next generation of leaders.
My connection with UVA spans 20 years. In 2006, I collaborated with UVA School of Architecture faculty Phoebe Crisman and Michael Petrus to develop the Learning Barge, a floating classroom often described as America’s Greenest Vessel. For three years, the professors, architecture students, and I worked together to design this innovative platform, which features an indoor classroom, an observation pool, solar panels, wind turbines, a rain‑capture system, and living wetlands. The goal was to provide a new approach to STEM education that took students out of the classroom to view the working and living river firsthand.
Since its christening on September 14, 2009, more than 115,000 students of all ages have come aboard the Learning Barge and left as committed environmental stewards. The project became a model of resilience education, earned dozens of awards, and led UVA’s architecture students to win the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s prestigious P3 Award at the National Sustainable Design Expo. In 2019, I was awarded the Presidential Award of Excellence in Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Mentoring from the White House and the National Science Foundation.
Daily, I would walk to the Learning Barge, seeing debris that had washed ashore, and it inspired me to develop an elementary STEM curriculum on marine debris. I also did a study, interviewing stakeholders across nine sectors to better understand the river’s evolving marine debris story. At the same time, the Learning Barge was nearing its fifteenth anniversary, and I realized I had shared very little of its story.
This fellowship finally gave me the space to design a scope of work that brought these threads together—time to write, to mentor, and to share the story I had carried for so long.
Q: What have you been able to learn and share from your work?
If you work in the environmental arena, you’re always searching for solutions. I want to pass solutions I have been discovering on to the next generation of environmental stewards, young leaders who will inherit a watershed facing a daunting set of challenges, including the highest rate of sea level rise on the U.S. East Coast. I’ve always valued education, and I truly love mentoring.
This fellowship created the space for me to share what I’ve learned through journal articles, conversations with students, presentations, and lectures for UVA’s Global Studies program.
You cannot understand the Elizabeth River’s marine debris story by standing on the shoreline. You have to talk with the community—across sectors, roles, and lived experiences—to see the full picture. That realization affirmed the strength of the Elizabeth River Project’s collaborative model as a national example for river restoration. I’ve come to believe that collaboration needs to play a role in every environmental challenge we face. The UVA Environmental Institute embodies this same truth: that a better future is built through collaboration and innovation.
Q: You worked with UVA students during your fellowship. What did they contribute and what was that experience like?
The UVA students brought thoughtful questions, strong work ethics, and fresh perspectives to my work. I cannot speak highly enough about how valuable—and essential—the experience was.
I am grateful to have worked with two exceptional UVA students who supported my scope of work. Amanda Benwire (Master of Architectural History, School of Architecture) helped organize an online archive of Learning Barge data in preparation for a book documenting how the vessel has become a sustainable model for resilience education. Phoebe Green (Global Environmental Sustainability, Global Studies Program), researched historical art depicting marine debris.
With the help of Erin Dickey, UVA’s Librarian for the Arts, we gained global access to online art collections that enriched this research. Phoebe also played a key role in shaping the marine debris teacher curriculum I developed during my master’s program. Together, we worked with Bethany Mickel, a UVA Librarian in Instructional Design, who introduced us to Pressbooks. Our goal was to make the curriculum accessible online so educators could adapt it to their own local waterways.
Q: What is next for you?
Until the UVA Environmental Institute fellowship, I had lived my entire life within the Elizabeth River watershed, but I now live in Charlottesville to be close to UVA. I still engage in many research and writing initiatives (including the Learning Barge book). Right now, I teach environmental policy and ethics as an adjunct at Old Dominion University and environmental program evaluation at Florida Gulf Coast University’s Water School.
Teaching in UVA classrooms highlights the value to students to connect with someone with many years of real-world experience. Students want to know what it’s like to work in the environmental field. They want to hear how I navigated graduate school while working full-time. We connect because I understand their journey—I just lived it myself!
