Get Our Email Newsletter
300 Broadway, Suite 23
San Francisco, CA 94133
tel: 415-788-3666 x122
fax: 415-788-7324
E-mail
Bay Area Wilderness Training (BAWT) is a project of the Earth Island Institute a 501(c)3 corporation.
Thursday April 5th and Friday April 6th, 2007
San Francisco State University
Cesar Chavez Student Center
1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132
Redefining Wilderness Panelist Biographies
Kelly Bloom
In one walk of life, Kelly grew up as a nature lover, in another, a lover of knowledge. Exploring the out of doors, both above and below ground, strengthened her bond with wild places and inspired her to share her lessons with others. Exploring the world of education nurtured a love of questions and discovery. Kelly’s paths converged in a moment of insight, discovering that her two passions could be united into a career. She now finds herself navigating the world of academia, exploring questions about Wilderness and wild places: why we are drawn to them, how we experience them, and why we value them as sacred places and ideas.
Kenn Burrows, Core faculty, Institute for Holistic Health Studies and Founder, The SFSU Holistic Health Learning Center
Kenn Burrows has been a Holistic Health Studies faculty member since 1991. He is founder of The Holistic Health Learning Center
Areas of study and interest include:
- holistic thinking and practice: complexity, simplicity and creativity
- ecological literacy and wisdom of the natural world
- stress, self-care skills and health care alternatives
- wisdom traditions, narrative analysis and evolution of consciousness
- fostering peace, nonviolence and human virtues
- media, metaphor and new forms of activism
Neal Desai, Bay Area Program Manager, National Parks Conservation Association
Neal Desai, Bay Area Program Manager, National Parks Conservation Association
Neal joined NPCA's Pacific Regional office in October of 2004, and has been working on national park planning issues and threats from the Redwoods up north to Channel Islands down south. Recently, he has transitioned to organizing and building public and congressional support for national parks in the Bay Area. Prior to joining NPCA, Neal worked in Burlington, Vermont's non-profit sector via the AmeriCorps*VISTA program. There, he worked to promote the arts and small business communities, and later held a leadership role in the citywide program. An avid hiker, Neal has spent many vacations in the splendor of the national parks. He earned a B.S. in Management Information Systems and Marketing from the State University of New York, Albany School of Business.
Professional webpage: www.npca.org
Gregg Fauth, Wilderness Coordinator, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks
A native of South Dakota transplanted to California at a young age, Gregg has been an employee of the National Park Service for over 27 years. He has served in a wide variety of positions with subsequent varied duties.
Gregg is currently the Wilderness Coordinator at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. This position entails working with a diverse group of individuals and organizations on issues of wilderness use, stewardship and planning. These groups include other government agencies such as the US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Branches of the US Military, as well as state, county and local governments. Non government entities interested in wilderness issues include private and commercial packstock users, hiker groups, other public land advocates, and the general public. Greggs role within the organization of the parks is to work with the wilderness field managers to assure that the parks special wilderness resources and the publics ability to enjoy them are preserved.
In the absence of the parks Chief Ranger throughout 2003 and 2004, Gregg served as the Acting Chief Ranger, overseeing all aspects of the parks Fire and Visitor Management Division, including fire protection, law enforcement, and fee collection operations.
Greggs past experiences include those of education, resource management (natural and cultural), law enforcement, concessions management and fire protection. He has had the pleasure to work at some of this countrys premier national parks, including Yosemite, Yellowstone, Crater Lake, and two tours at Sequoia and Kings Canyon.
Gregg is a graduate of the University of California at Davis with a B.S. in Environmental Planning and Management and a minor in History of the Western U.S. He also attended Santa Monica College where he received an A.A in Zoology. He lives in the town of Three Rivers with his wife Jenny and enjoys travel, hiking, reading, watching and playing sports, and puttering around on his property.
Chelsea Griffie, Program Manager, Bay Area Wilderness Training
As a young woman, Chelsea dreamed of the mountains and going camping. Unfortunately, she lived in suburban Chicago and her family just did not do that sort of thing. Chelsea began rock climbing in 1993 and began doing backpacking trips as a means of getting to backcountry rock. She was soon hiking and climbing every weekend and before she knew it, Chelsea had amassed significant experience in both. Chelsea moved to Yosemite in 2001 to be close to that rock climbing Mecca. She was the Business Manager of Yosemite Guides, a local guiding service for hiking, bird watching, and fly-fishing and worked in the office of the Colorado Mountain School. She brings BAWT lots of enthusiasm for getting city kids outdoors. Photos of Chelsea periodically crop up in Patagonia catalogs, Essence Magazine, and Sports Illustrated Women. She is also proud to be included in Black & Brown Faces in America's Wild Places, a new book by Dudley Edmonson about Afro American outdoors enthusiasts. Chelsea is medically trained to the level of Wilderness First Responder (CPR-Professional Rescuer/Provider C).
Chelsea is the Program Manager for Bay Area Wilderness Training. She co-leads the organization’s flagship course, the Wilderness Leadership Training. Through this course and other BAWT Programs, Chelsea trains adults who are youth workers how to lead their groups on backpacking and camping trips. She also maintains the BAWT gear library. WLT alumni can borrow tents, sleeping bags, and other gear from the library for free. New for this year, BAWT co-led a Camping at the Presidio program (CAP), a program created with the Crissy Field Center, the Presidio Trust, and the National Park Service to increase use of the only campground in San Francisco by underprivileged youth.
Professional webpage: www.bawt.org
Steve Hagler, Youth Investment Manager, Pacific Forest and Watershed Lands Stewardship Council
Steve Hagler joined the Stewardship Council in June 2005. Mr. Hagler is responsible for supporting efforts to improve the lives of young Californians through connections with the outdoors. Mr. Hagler facilitates the Stewardship Council’s grant program for parks and youth organizations throughout Northern and Central California. Over the next ten years, the program will award $30 million in grants and other resources to enrich the lives of youth in both urban and rural areas. In 2006, the Youth Investment Program invested a total of $2.25 million in its first full year of funding.
Mr. Hagler brings a wealth of experience in education programming to his role. Prior to joining the Stewardship Council, Mr. Hagler spent 15 years with the San Francisco Unified School District, helping raise the level of academic achievement and personal growth of low performing youth in San Francisco schools. From 2004 to 2005, he served as a teacher on special assignment, teaching and developing experiential and outdoor education programs for the district’s county and continuation high schools. He also worked in the district’s Risk Management Office, where he helped create outdoor and experiential education field trip protocols. In 1991, Mr. Hagler founded the Galileo Outdoor Adventures Program (GOAPe) and utilized experiential education and intervention methodologies to teach and engage at-risk youth.
Mr. Hagler is an active member of his local community. He held leadership positions in many youth-focused organizations, including the San Francisco Police Wilderness Program Board, the West Region of the Association of Experiential Education and the Presidio Stewardship Program.
Mr. Hagler holds a Masters of Education degree and teaching credentials from San Francisco State University. He is credentialed in the social sciences and as a Language Development Specialist. He was awarded a Certificate of Completion from Headlands Institute's Environmental Educators Training Program. Mr. Hagler received a Bachelor of Arts degree in United States History from the University of California, Berkeley.
Jim Hasenauer, Professor of Communication Studies at California State University, Northridge
Jim Hasenauer is a Professor of Communication Studies at California State University, Northridge teaching courses in interpersonal communication, communication theory and public policy. As a mountain bicycle advocate, he has represented responsible mountain biking to land managers, politicians, and environmental and trail recreation groups for almost 20 years.
Jim was one of the founders of the Concerned Off Road Bicyclists Association in Los Angeles in 1987, served on the CORBA Steering Committee until '97 and is still an active CORBA volunteer. He has served on the Board of Directors of the International Mountain Bicycling Association from its founding in 1988 until 2004 and served as IMBA's president from '91 '96. On sabbatical from CSUN in '96 '97, Jim worked full time as IMBA's Director of Education, working with IMBA local clubs on issue analysis and advocacy skills. He has represented mountain bicyclists not only in the United States but at meetings in Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Australia and France.
Hasenauer has served as the land access representative to NORBA (National Off-Road Bicycle Association) Board of Trustees from 1991-2000 and on the USA Cycling Board of Directors from 1997-2000. He represents mountain bicyclists on the California Roundtable on Recreation, Parks and Tourism and is politically active in the campaign to revitalize the Land and Water Conservation Fund that takes offshore oil revenue to buy public land. He is the coauthor of a mountain bike guidebook to the Santa Monica Mountains, the author of several articles in bicycling magazines and papers on the recreational trail community for academic and professional conferences . In 1998, Jim was inducted into the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame for his long standing efforts on behalf of responsible mountain bicyclists.
Appointed by Governor Davis, Hasenauer served from 2001-2006 on the California Recreational Trails Committee which advises California State Parks on trail issues and provides local assistance to local trail managers and advocates. He has served on the California Advisory Committee for the federal Recreational Trails Program that allocates transportation dollars to trail projects and since 2004, he has been a Board Member of the California Trails and Greenways Foundation.
He writes and speaks extensively on mountain bike, public land, and trail community issues in a variety of academic and public policy contexts.
Paul Hughes, Executive Director, Forests Forever
Paul Hughes is the executive director of Forests Forever, a statewide forest-protection organization based in San Francisco.
Prior to coming to Forests Forever he was a program director with the San Francisco-based California League of Conservation Voters, where he received its Outstanding Leadership award in 1992. Before that he was the executive director of the Sonoma County Bar Association from 1985 to 1989. He has worked as development director for a regional group of the Sierra Club in Indiana, and extensively as a volunteer in the environmental movement since 1974.
In 1993 Forests Forever had no office or staff, and asked Hughes to set up its permanent operation. He is Forests Forever's first executive director, a post he had held with two nonprofits previously. He has served as Forests Forever's ED for almost 14 years.
Holder of a bachelor's degree in journalism, he has worked as an environment beat reporter, general assignment, feature, and sports writer for various newspapers in the Midwest, as well as magazine freelancer, legislative aide, and, as a youth, merchant marine.
Professional webpage: www.forestsforever.org
Dr. Joel J. Kassiola, Dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, San Francisco State University
Dr. Joel J. Kassiola received his B.A. with Honors in Political Science and election to PHI BETA KAPPA from Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the Political Philosophy Program at Princeton University. He was selected an American Council of Education Fellow and served this position at Haverford College in Haverford, PA. He has been Dean of Undergraduate Studies at Brooklyn College for 3 years and Dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences for 11 years at San Francisco State University.
His research program after several publications in various political theory themes: the conduct of normative inquiry, politics and literature, the justification for affirmative action, political violence, turned to the intersection of the environmental crisis, political theory and modernity about 25 years ago. He published one of the first books in the emerging field of environmental political theory in 1990: THE DEATH OF INDUSTRIAL CIVILIZATION (SUNY Press), and more recently, edited EXPLORATIONS IN ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICAL THEORY (2003, M.E.Sharpe). He has published several articles on the nature of environmental political theory and environmental ethics. Most recently, he has had accepted for publication an article in the flagship political science journal published by the American Political Science Association on the teaching of Introductory Political Theory courses, and an article on the need for M.A. Universities to have their faculty conduct research in order to be excellent teachers in the 21st century.
Ariana Katovich, Restoration Initiative Director, Earth Island Institute
Ariana Katovich manages Earth Island's involvement in the Southern California Wetlands Recovery Project (www.scwrp.org) by supporting projects that promote environmental restoration, social justice, and youth leadership initiatives.
Professional webpage: www.scwrp.org
Cyril Kormos, Vice President for Policy, The WILD Foundation
Growing up in California and enjoying the outdoors led to an interest in conservation. Internships in college on Capitol Hill, and in the Costa Rican National Parks Service confirmed the interest, which Cyril pursued in graduate school, and then professionally.
Gretchen Lebuhn, Professor, Department of Biology, San Francisco State University
Gretchen is a evolutionary ecologist interested in the ecology, population biology, evolution and conservation of plant populations. The broad focus of her research addresses the relationships between environmental and genetic variation, natural selection and fitness, with specific interest in gene flow, adaptation, speciation, demography, and plant-animal interactions. She works on a diversity of projects from field and greenhouse studies of how different ecological factors influence selection to studies of methods in conservation biology.
Her goal is understand the role of environmental variation at different spatial and temporal scales in determining ecological and evolutionary patterns and how this variation influences adaptation and patterns of evolutionary change. To do this, she uses both theory and field observations to motivate specific and testable hypotheses concerning mechanisms affecting patterns and changes in variability within and across populations. She then tests these hypotheses using short-term field or greenhouse experiments. Gretchen believes it is critical to test the generality of the experimental results by comparing the experimental results with long-term patterns of adaptation and change.
Kyle Macdonald, Founder and CEO, Bay Area Wilderness Training
Kyle's experience in the outdoors began as a youth, on family camping and ski trips in the Northeastern United States. This experience brought him to work in 1993 with the Appalachian Mountain Club. There he worked for five seasons, maintaining back country facilities and leading groups of youth and adults in the White Mountains of Maine and New Hampshire. In addition to his work as a backpacking instructor for (UC Berkeley's) Cal Adventures Program, Kyle has led trips involving high ropes challenge courses in Connecticut, canoeing retreats in Mississippi and camping skills training in Louisiana. He has worked with urban youth groups in Boston and Detroit and decided to start BAWT as a result of these experiences. He recently completed the Management Center's Executive Director 101 course. Kyle is medically trained to the level of Wilderness First Responder (CPR-Professional Rescuer/Provider C).
Professional webpage: www.bawt.org
Priscilla McKenney, Program Director, GirlVentures
For the past six years, Priscilla McKenney has been the Program Director of GirlVentures, an outdoor program for girls ages 11-14 based in San Francisco. She also serves as a Graduate Student Advisor for Prescott College. Priscilla has been involved with outdoor leadership, mountaineering and experiential education, as a guide, an instructor, an educator and director for over twenty years. She was co-founder of Lois Lane Expeditions, which offered mountaineering trips to the Himalayas and Andes for spunky, brave and curious women from 1993-1997. She has a Master's degree in experiential education from Prescott College. Since 1983, she has worked intermittently as an instructor and course director for Outward Bound in Alaska, Baja and the Northwest Cascade Mountains.
Professional webpage: www.girlventures.org
Terry Nail, CEO and Founder, Children Are Our Future
Terry integrates a wealth of experience in adventure-based learning, leadership and organizational development in her work with people from diverse backgrounds within schools, non-profit organizations and corporations throughout the U.S. and internationally. She began her career in wilderness therapy and leadership working with an organization called C. W Hog, Cooperative Wilderness Handicapped Outdoor Group, established in 1981 to provide recreational opportunities for people of all abilities. Her work with this group and the philosophy of the "Common Adventure" principle, where all participants share in the planning, decision-making, expense and execution of the adventure continues to influence and inspire her work with youth, adults and communities.
She has participated in several transformational “journeys of service” including a 400 mile canoe trip on the Yukon River in Alaska, in collaboration with several members of the Athabaskan villages and the Penobscot tribe from Maine. Her participation in an international Multi-cultural 8,000 mile run from above the artic circle in Alaska to Santa Fe, New Mexico helped to mark the 500-year recognition and survival of Indigenous peoples throughout the world. This run was a ceremony in the tradition of spiritual running to carry a message from village to village that “All life is sacred” and that we must take care of each other and the earth for future generations.
Terry has also traveled over 15,000 miles on a bicycle, including a solo 8,000 cross-country journey for a national youth advocacy project, meeting with the President, representatives, U.S. senators, governors, mayors and community leaders of over 24 states and 150 communities. She is CEO and founder of Children Are Our Future, a positive youth development organization with a focus on Leadership and Community Transformation for children, youth, and the adults in their lives.
Her work focuses on strength-based experiential curriculum and facilitated programs emphasizing participatory processes, performance, and teamwork in corporate and educational environments. Topics include: transformational leadership, communication, health & wellness, conflict resolution, cultural relevance/competence, collaborative group processes, group facilitation, and various youth provider staff development programs.
She is currently a candidate for a PhD in Leadership. Her doctoral studies began with several intensive international community studies and service projects with the Mayan people and their villages including a 40-mile trek through the backcountry of western Guatemala and climbing the highest peak in Central America.
Terry is a Wilderness First Responder with extensive experience backpacking, river rafting, and rock-climbing. She is also a WLT instructor with BAWT. Her vision is to share her gifts of service, enthusiasm, and joy in her work with youth and adults. She inspires and motivates people by providing creative and challenging opportunities for them to discover and share their gifts and talents to make a difference in their lives, families and in the communities they live.
Mike Painter, Coordinator, Californians for Western Wilderness
Mike Painter founded Californians for Western Wilderness in 1997 along with 2 other people who were concerned about the fate of Utah's wildlands. Before that he worked for 7 years at the Resource Renewal Institute, an environmental policy think tank in San Francisco, where he was assistant to the president and also worked on special projects. Those included the international arm of the Green Belt Movement of Kenya, the women's tree planting and pro-democracy organization whose founder, Wangari Maathai, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004. He is the translator of a German-language guidebook to Mono Lake. Mike is a geneticist and lawyer by training and has been camping since he was 6 months old.
Professional webpage: www.caluwild.org
Brent Plater, Golden Gate University, School of Law
Brent Plater is a Visiting Assistant Professor and Staff Attorney with the Environmental Law and Justice Clinic at Golden Gate University School of Law, and a Lecturer in Environmental Law at San Francisco State University. Before beginning his teaching career full time, he worked to defeat Richard Pombo (R-CA) during the 2006 Congressional election. From 2000-2006, Mr. Plater was the Bay Area Director of the Center for Biological Diversity, where he worked to conserve endangered species and wild places around the Bay Area and the world. Mr. Plater is a graduate of the University of Michigans School of Natural Resources and Environment, Harvard Universitys Kennedy School of Government, and U.C. Berkeleys Boalt Hall School of Law.
Nina S. Roberts, Assistant Professor in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies, San Francisco State University
Nina S. Roberts is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies at San Francisco State University. While she has a variety of responsibilities, her areas of emphasis are outdoor recreation, leadership, and youth development. She is also the Project Director of the Pacific Leadership Institute. Nina's connection to this new community continues to grow – She is on the Advisory Board of GirlVentures and is part of the Cultural Diversity Transition Planning Team with the US Forest Service, Region 5. Nina is pleased to continue her role as one of the Associate Editor's of Leisure Sciences and maintain her position on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Experiential Education.
She came to SFSU from the National Park Service where she was an Education and Outreach Specialist with the Natural Resource Program Center. One major experience included a 3-month detail (temporary assignment) with the NPS Director, Fran Mainella, in Washington, DC.
Nina is the former Research Associate for the Student Conservation Association (SCA). In her role at SCA, she was engaged in a myriad of projects from measuring program outcomes of youth experiences, to designing surveys relating to agency partnerships. Prior to her role in research and evaluation, Nina was the Assistant Director of SCAs National Urban Diversity Programs managing five regional programs and providing opportunities (including career exploration) in conservation, recreation, natural resources, and related fields, for primarily young people of color and women. Additionally, she was involved with recruitment and retention of diverse candidates for college internships.
In general, programs and facilities Nina has worked with throughout her career include community recreation, YMCA, outdoor recreation and adventure-based programs, park management (multi-use recreation/sports facility), and youth camp settings. While living on the East Coast, Nina was the Education Representative for the Massachusetts Recreation Park Association. After relocating to the mid-Atlantic region, she taught as an adjunct faculty member at both the University of Maryland at College Park and George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. In this region, she was a former member of the Executive Advisory Committee for Georgetown Universitys LIFE Adventure Outdoor Program where she volunteered with a team of professionals to oversee curriculum development and implementation of their Outdoor Leader Training Program. Additionally, she served as a volunteer consultant and trip leader for Expanding Horizons (outdoor adventure programs for women and adolescent girls) in the Metropolitan D.C. area.
Some of Ninas leadership training has been acquired through the National Outdoor Leadership School, Woodswomen, Project Adventure, Pro-Image, Washington Women Outdoors in D.C., and the Student Conservation Association.
Nina is a former Chairperson of the Publications Advisory Committee and Womens Professional Group Representative (WPG) to the Board of Directors for the Association for Experiential Education (AEE). She has been involved as a consultant with the AEE WPG, NAALA Professional Group (Natives, Africans, Asians, Latinos and Allies). She was also a consultant and volunteer leader with the Beckwourth Outdoor Education Center serving minority youth from Denver and Girls Outdoors, Inc. in Fort Collins, CO.
As a bi-racial woman, Nina's research has guided her to write about people of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and explore their connection to activities in the natural environment. Her research interests include outdoor programming and leadership, adventure education, youth development, recreation land management, wilderness studies, evaluation methods and techniques, race/culture, and gender issues. Her work has been published in numerous scholarly journals as well as books and magazines. She has presented her work at conferences regionally and nationally, as well as in Southeast Asia. Nina has received several honors and awards for her work and commitment to the field.
Nina is a graduate of Bridgewater State College (1983), Bridgewater, MA with a B.S. in Physical Education and Outdoor Recreation and the University of Maryland at College Park (1992) with an M.A. in Outdoor Recreation Resource Management. She completed her Ph.D. in the Department of Natural Resource Recreation and Tourism at Colorado State University (2003).
Enrique Salmon, Lecturer, American Indian Studies Department, San Francisco State University
Enrique Salmon is a Raramuri. He has dedicated his studies to biocultural diversity, ethnoecology, ethnobiology and Traditional Ecological Knowledge in order better understand his own and other cultural perceptions of plants, landscapes, and place. Enrique has a B.S. from Western New Mexico University, an MAT in Southwestern Studies from Colorado College, and PhD. in anthropology from Arizona State University. His dissertation is a study of how the bio-region of the Rarámuri people of the Sierra Madres of Chihuahua, Mexico influences their language and thought; poisonous plants used for medicine was the focus for the study. Enrique has published several articles on Indigenous ethnobotany and traditional knowledge. He currently is completing a manuscript on Traditional Indigenous farmers and their role in maintaining and enhancing biocultural diversity.
Leslie Saul, Co-Founder, The Center For Ecosystem Survival
Leslie Saul's field research has taken her around the world, studying katydids in the rainforests of Costa Rica and studying beetles and bees in the Mojave Desert of California and ants on a 2006 National Geographic Expedition. Her scientific research appears in the journal Nature (May 2000) and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Sept 2006). She has conducted field expeditions to India, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Ghana, Panama, Peru, Ecuador, Thailand, Trinidad, Borneo, Belize, Brazil, and Costa Rica. Her photographs of insects and plants have inspired thousands of people to care about insect diversity.
Leslie Saul is the co-creator of several conservation and education initiatives. In 1979, she put her energies into the development of the first public insectarium in the western United States and directed that facility for 19 years, focusing on teaching people about insects, biodiversity and conservation. In 1987, she co-founded the Center For Ecosystem Survival (SaveNature.Org), which enables children and public institutions to raise awareness and funds for ecosystem conservation around the world. CES has raised $3.4 million for wildlife habitat preservation and research and has worked with 2600 schools located in all 50 states in the U.S. In 1991, Saul co-founded the Leadership Institute for Teaching Elementary Science (LITES), a $4.2 million National Science Foundation funded program to enhance science literacy in public schools with a special focus on biodiversity and equity. This program trained and mentored 500 elementary teachers in a school district that serves 35,000 children from diverse backgrounds.
She has recently co-created the Insect Discovery Lab to inspire new legions of biodiversity enthusiasts. This new initiative of the Center for Ecosystem Survival has presents 700 programs annually on biodiversity conservation and stewardship to school children in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. The program has been highlighted on Bay Area Backroads, and Evening Magazine. In 1991, she was elected as the first woman president of the Pacific Coast Entomological Society (PCES) in its 91year history. Her latest research documents a new biological phenomenon: cooperative parasitic blister beetle larvae (Meloe franciscanus) which mimic a female bee to lure in male bees as an intermediary transport vehicle. This research was highlighted on David Attenborough's latest BBC documentary “Life in the Undergrowth.”
Dave Talamo, MFT, Founder of Wilderness Reflections
Dave Talamo, MFT is founder of Wilderness Reflections, a program offering wilderness rites of passage and other life-transforming journeys, as well as training in applied ecopsychology. He has over 25 years of experience guiding wilderness trips, works as a therapist with youth and adults in San Rafael, CA and is a certified Wilderness First Responder. He is committed to the expression of joy and authenticity through the body and to helping others experience their own embodied selves in an intimate relationship with Nature.
Kim S. Uhlik, Assistant Professor in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies at San Jose State University
Kim S. Uhlik is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Recreation and Leisure Studies at San Jose State University, and coordinator of its Leadership and Administration emphasis. His Ph.D. program in Higher Education Administration/Sports Administration was grounded in leadership and strategic planning, balanced by practical experience in leadership positions with a Visitors Convention Bureau, a commercial recreation S-Corporation, and several municipal Parks and Recreation departments.
Kim's research seeks to discover and develop a partnership-based philosophy and practice that promotes responsible entrepreneurship, stakeholder empowerment, proactive stewardship, sustainable development, and innovative pedagogy through the personal and organizational transformation that leads to life satisfaction and fulfillment for all.
He has published articles and presented on topics related to both partnership and leadership with respect to Nature, including the Journal of Adventure Education and Outdoor Leadership, and AORE. Currently, Kim is preparing a manuscript for the special issue of Leisure/Loisir on Nature and Spirituality.
Mandy Vance, WildLink, Yosemite Institute
After graduating from Mississippi State University with a B.A. in English, Mandy spent four years working (and playing) in the field of outdoor education in Yellowstone National Park. She taught people by foot, horseback and whitewater raft. Her passion for diversity and Wilderness led her to Yosemite, where she spent a year and a half as a field science instructor for the Yosemite Institute. She then took the lead in developing Yosemite Institutes community outreach program as the Outreach Coordinator for one year. After this transitional year, Yosemite Institute community outreach tied more and more into the WildLink program. The Program Manager position evolved into a full-time, interagency position, funded through the Yosemite Institute, the National Park Service, and the USDA Forest Service. The WildLink staff has tripled in the last year, adding a Program Coordinator, who is based with Mandy in the Yosemite National Park Service Wilderness office, and a Community Coordinator, who works out of the Sierra National Forest in Clovis, CA. Mandys present work as the WildLink Program Manager is divided between fundraising and development, administration and special event coordination.
Professional webpage: wildlink.wilderness.net
For more information:
Mike Yoshioka
Phone: (530) 277 – 5940
Email Mike
Symposium Information
>Home
>SpaceShare Forum: Join the Dialog Now!
Wilderness Leadership Training
Our core training is the WLT:
>Wilderness Leadership Training
Wilderness Skills Workshops
We offer a number of advanced courses as well: