By Rose Mercer, Vice President

Perhaps you are weary of my bragging on our 2018 Fall Class. Yet, when you encounter just one of our Fall Class members, or their work, I know you too will find yourself wowed. Surrounding myself with this remarkable group of individuals proves to be a major highlight of my life. Much gratitude to all who contributed to pulling this off!

Our Fall Class field trip coordinators, Kate Whidden and Charles Cathcart, ventured out with me on November 3^rd to see Kim Cadmus Owens’ installation during the light show AURORA and learned that an element of Kim’s art was inspired by our Fall Class forest field trip along the Trinity Strand Trail near Trinity River Audubon Center led by Jake Calvitt and Bruce Ballengee.

One of our goals for this fall class was to reverse the plummeting volunteer hours at our southern Dallas county projects. In twelve weeks, on top of intense classroom time, a heavy textbook, three different ecosystem field trips, our fall class contributed time, energy and effort to a class project at Cedar Ridge Preserve, Dogwood Canyon Audubon Center, Trinity River Audubon Center, Twelve Hills Nature Center, the pilot Junior Naturalist Program expansion in Cedar Hill and the walkSTEM collaboration with Mountain View College.

For more information about two of the class projects, please go here:

• Junior Master Naturalist Program Expansion in Cedar Hill by Madeline Yzaguirre
• Mountain View WalkSTEM Project by Katelyn Miller

 Our fall class represents us well in our community. Over the past 12 weeks we’ve side by side learned much together and from each other. We know what we can accomplish, how important our impact can be and who we can work with to see this obligation through. Mary Pearl says we are the stewards of wild places and wild things. Our responsibility is great. This fall class is not over. We’ve only just begun.