Instructor

Ms. Ruby currently serves as a faculty member at Lawrence Academy. There she teaches AP Environmental Science and heads up the school’s sustainability committee. She attended Williams College, graduating in 2002, and worked at Boston University’s Sargent Center for Outdoor Education in Peterborough, New Hampshire. At Sargent Center, she taught environmental lessons and facilitated high-ropes courses. A lover of the outdoors, Ms. Ruby has gone on several backpacking trips in the Southwest and completed a 100-mile bike ride along the coasts of Maine, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts.

Instructor

I teach Nature Journaling and Drawing in Year 1. As a maker of objects, I have kept research journals most of my life. Recently, my journals have formed a substantive part of my work. Other work includes ceramic sculpture, drawing and painting. I have an MA Ceramics from the University of Wales in Cardiff and have studied Fine Art and Education at the Universities of kwaZulu-Natal and Cape Town in South Africa and St. Martins College, Lancaster in England. I was born in South Africa and have lived and worked there and in Botswana, England, Wales and the United States. I have worked at the Maru a Pula School in Gaborone, Botswana; Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts; Atlantic College in Wales; and the Hotchkiss School, where I lived from 2007-2013. I have taught on the Summer Portals program for the last four years.

Place is fundamental to my work; local, community and ecological politics absorb me and I am acutely aware of my immediate natural environment, weather conditions and issues of conservation and sustainability. As a young student in Cape Town, I lived and worked on a communal organic farm and, later, my family and I spent many of our holidays in Botswana camping in the wilds of the Kgalagadi desert and the Okavango Delta, where you have to take with you all your water, food and fuel. Nowadays, I keep bees and protect them from bears. I run and hike and, last summer, I walked Offa’s Dyke—a 200 mile trail that follows the border between England and Wales. I plan to walk parts of the Appalachian Trail this spring. Much of my time is consumed by my work as a director on the board of Women’s Support Services, the local organization that addresses domestic violence. The practice of keeping a journal is a discipline that allows me to thread a daily narrative of enquiry and reflection through the various adventures of my life.

Instructor

Ms. Krieger has her Masters in Education, Curriculum and Teaching from Boston University and her B.A. in Environmental Studies and Biology from Hamilton College. A lover of all things outdoors, Ms. Krieger is happiest when she is outside and enjoys yoga, hiking, and discovering new restaurants.

Dr. Heather York is an animal ecologist whose research specialty lies with tropical bats.  A native of Wisconsin, she developed a love of nature, especially of mammals, birds, and insects, that led her to the University of Minnesota.  There, she conducted field seasons at the north woods Lake Itasca Biological Station, completed thesis research on monarch butterflies and honeybees, and graduated with degrees in Biology and Spanish linguistics.  Having fallen in love with tropical biology during an undergraduate summer abroad, she then pursued her Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Kansas, where she was awarded two competitive fellowships and was recognized with an award for excellence in teaching.  Her research into the feeding habits of fruit bats made use of the collections of natural history museums and took her to the forests of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, and Peru.  After having taught zoology, ecology, and evolution for 10 years at two liberal arts colleges, Dr. York now teaches biology and environmental science at Choate Rosemary Hall in Connecticut.  Hands-on experiences for students, including extensive field and lab work and a focus on research design, make up significant portions of all her courses.  Outside of her teaching, Dr. York remains active in research and scientific publication, and she is a serious nature photographer.  She looks forward to her fourth year with the Hotchkiss Summer Portals program in Environmental Science.