Our team includes a diverse group of researchers with expertise in field station outreach programming, informal education, STEM education, data modeling, and the natural sciences.

	Dr. Rhonda Struminger, Principal Investigator, is currently a visiting researcher at the University of Padova. Prior, she was an Assistant Research Professor and Assistant Professor of the Practice in Ecology and Conservation Biology at Texas A&M University.  Struminger also co-directs CICHAZ A.C., a field station in Calnali, Hidalgo in Mexico, and brings to the team a familiarity with informal STEM learning opportunities inherent to the field station environment. Struminger also has an extensive background studying education in an academic context (Peña-Mora et al. 2004; Struminger 2013), managing the development of educational products for a major scholastic publisher, developing and evaluating curricula as a private consultant, and instructing at the university level. email: rhonda.struminger@unipd.it
	Dr. Jill Zarestky, Principal Investigator, is an Assistant Professor of Education at Colorado State University. Zarestky has extensive experience with STEM teaching and learning theory, including how these theories work in practice in informal environments and with a variety of learners (Zarestky 2015a, 2015b; Deer and Zarestky 2016; Zarestky and Collins 2016; Zarestky and Ruyle 2016). Her expertise includes both quantitative and qualitative research methods (Zarestky and Bangerth 2014; Ray and Zarestky 2016). Zarestky’s perspectives will help bridge the gaps among the various facets of the project, making connections between theory and practice, education perspectives and STEM content perspectives, and types of learners, including K-12, university, adult, and community groups. email: jill.zarestky@colostate.edu
	Dr. Michelle Lawing, Co-Principal Investigator, is an Associate Professor of Ecology and Conservation Biology at Texas A&M University and is a quantitative biologist who studies ecology and evolutionary biology at multiple spatial and temporal scales (Lawing et al. 2012; Lawing & Matzke 2014; Lawing et al. 2016). She has participated in many informal outreach activities and has visited over a dozen field stations to collect data for her ecological research. email: alawing@tamu.edu
	Dr. Rachel Short is a NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Texas A&M University and Georgia Institute of Technology. When this project started she was a PhD student in Ecosystem Science and Management at Texas A&M University. She has training in paleontology as well as science education and has developed an interest in how science is taught to public audiences. She has worked outreach events as an intern and volunteer with a number of natural history museums, and she spent one year as an AmeriCorps Volunteer at the Gray Fossil Site where she worked closely with the education and marketing directors. In addition to this project, her research includes and the morphological responses of ungulates to environmental change through time. email: rachel.a.short@tamu.edu
	Lauren Vilen is a PhD student in Adult Education and Training at Colorado State University. Her research interests include environmental education, professional development and identity of informal educators, and community partnerships. Prior to beginning graduate school, she served four years as an AmeriCorps volunteer with Conservation Corps MN & IA and was a recipient of the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Lauren has also worked professionally with Conservation Corps MN & IA as a program manager where she developed programs and service-learning partnerships, and provided young adults with training and education focused on environmental stewardship and job readiness in the natural resource field. email: lauren.vilen@colostate.edu
	Jadyn Sethna is a recent graduate from the School of Biological Sciences at Georgia Institute of Technology where she studied wildlife ecology and animal behavior. She is interested in studying sensory and behavioral biology to aid in conservation. Additionally, she would like to incorporate her research into sustainable community development projects. In her free time, she loves to run, hike, garden, cook, and hang out with sea turtles.
Alumni
	Emily O’Dea graduated from the Department of Computer Science at Texas A&M University in 2020. As an undergraduate volunteer, she assisted our team with the design and construction of the wiki. She now works as a software engineer.
	Minna Wong took Drs. Lawing and Struminger’s Spatial Project Management course in 2019 as a Wildlife and Fisheries major and Spatial Science minor at Texas A&M University. As part of that class, she (with James Pippin) conducted research on the geographic relationship between informal learning institutions and underrepresented groups in STEM. In 2020, she went on to contribute to the publication “Spatial Inequalities leave Micropolitan and Indigenous populations underserved by Informal STEM Learning Institutions” with the research team in Science Advances.
	During 2019 in his junior year at Texas A&M University, James Pippin took Spatial Project Management from Drs. Lawing and Struminger while enrolled in the Spatial Sciences degree program. During the course, James and Minna (Wong) gathered initial informal learning institutions location data along with population and poverty statistics, and U.S. county boundaries; they compiled the information using GIS. Their project helped lay the foundation for their contribution to the Science Advances article, “Spatial Inequalities leave Micropolitan and Indigenous populations underserved by Informal STEM Learning Institutions.” He is grateful for all the hard work of Minna Wong, the guidance of Drs. Lawing and Struminger, Dr. Rachel Short, and the further contributions of the rest of the team. He hopes this project will go on to serve underrepresented communities.
	Steven Kyle Brown worked with the research team in the fall of 2018 while majoring in Rangeland Ecology and Management in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management at Texas A&M University. He has experience working alongside Dr. Michelle Lawing and Rachel Short on their conservation paleontology research team. He has collected plants in numerous locations across Texas as part of his studies, and participated in prescribed burns on multiple occasions.
	Jeffrey Rodriguez worked with the research team in 2017 and 2018 while an M.S. Candidate in Human Dimensions of Natural Resources at Colorado State University. His research interests include collaborative conservation, science education, and the connection between social justice and conservation. Before starting graduate school he was an outreach practitioner for multiple government agencies at the state and federal levels (i.e. National Park Service, United States Geological Survey, and Colorado Parks and Wildlife). He also has worked in the private sector as an environmental educator, and a consultant.