Staff Migrations
We find quite a lot of hustle and bustle here in the office as we prepare for the summer season. In the same breath that we bid farewell to staff members we find ourselves welcoming some new faces and some returning friends.
With great regret, we wish Membership Coordinator Rebecca Dobert farewell this summer. Rebecca has spent three years with the Committee and has taken the membership program to a new level of excellence. Only the most important plans could take her away from Mono Lake—and convince us to let her leave. So we congratulate her on her marriage to Sam Jackson, commend her commitment to helping her family through tough times, and sadly send her off to New York with tufa posters, Committee T-shirts, and years of Mono Lake memories that we will all hold dear.
Also departing—but only for a few months—is Web Graphics Specialist Mike Klapp. After a winter of hard, and excellent, work on the Mono Lake and Living Lakes websites, Mike will be roaming the backcountry of Utah this summer, leading special wilderness education programs. Happily, he’ll be back in the fall to head up an exciting new community science grant program.
New to the Mono Lake Committee Board of Directors is Mammoth Lakes resident Andrea Lawrence. A 16-year member of the Mono County Board of Supervisors and a member of the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District since 1984, Andrea has been a lifelong advocate of Mono Lake. Andrea founded Friends of Mammoth and co-founded the Sierra Nevada Alliance. The Mono Lake Committee Board is strengthened by Andrea’s strong environmental commitment and a deep knowledge of the county. We can’t help but mention that she is also a two-time Olympic gold medal winner in Slalom and Giant Slalom.
Former intern Anna Christensen has just graduated from Scripps College in Claremont and we are excited to welcome her home to the Mono Basin as the Committee’s new Membership Coordinator. With her energy and enthusiasm for Mono Lake, we know she’ll be making sure members’ donations and records are handled smoothly, efficiently, and with a good dose of friendly humor. Anna has a major in Biology and a minor in Economics and will immediately become our staff expert on botany.
Santiago Escruceria and Betsy Forsyth are sure to be hard to find this summer as they will be out in the field with the Outdoor Experiences program. Santiago has just graduated in Anthropology with a minor in Environmental Studies from Sonoma State University. He brings with him lots of experience in environmental education as well as an interest in canoeing, gardening, and birding. Betsy Forsyth is back in the Mono Basin after volunteering for the Forest Service earlier this winter. She is coming right up after interning with the Boojum Institute in Idyllwild doing outdoor education. Betsy loves to travel, so we’re lucky she’s decided to stick around here for the summer.
Echo Hall is our new Retail Assistant. She graduated from University of Texas at San Antonio in 1997 with a BA in Anthropology. She has experience in the basin because she worked last summer and fall for the Forest Service down at South Tufa. Echo knows a lot about this area, and can often be found down by the lake birding in the morning.
And last but not least, five brave souls join us as interns this summer! Wendy Stanford is migrating back to the Committee just in time for potluck season. She graduated from Scripps College this past December with a degree in biology after doing her thesis work on correlations between weight and mortality in the young of the California gull colony at Mono Lake.
Lisa Cutting will be joining us in-between studying Environmental Analysis and Design at UC Irvine and working on her masters in Community Development and Environmental Planning at UC Davis. Don’t be surprised if you find her out on the creeks this summer as she is interested both stream restoration and monitoring as well fly-fishing.
Kristen Drake is returning to the Committee after volunteering for the Peace Corps in Niger where she worked on everything from introducing sustainable methods in farming practices to environmental education with children. We’re excited to have her back after her worldly travels.
Sharon Foley is coming to join us from Waterbury CT. She is a junior at Southern Connecticut State University where she is majoring in Outdoor Recreation and Elementary Education. She loves to be outside and is always up for a game of soccer.
Laura Silver visited Mono Lake for the first time last summer, though she has known about Mono Lake for some time now. She is into botany and Native American History so the Mono Basin should give her plenty to think about before she attends the College of Biological Sciences at the University of Minnesota in the fall.
Return to Summer 1999 Newsletter
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