Mark Bergstrom, Director
Mark Bergstrom is an accomplished scholar and award winning teacher in the Department of Communication; he has extensive administrative experience here at the U, he served 11 years as Senior Associate Dean as well as Acting and Interim Dean in the College of Humanities. Mark was the founding Director of the Environmental Humanities Masters Degree program, and was actively involved in the University’s acquisition of the Taft-Nicholson Environmental Humanities Education Center. He knows and understands the Center and has watched its growth and development from the earliest stages; he is a passionate environmentalist who has a deep understanding of the landscape of the American West and Montana.
Melissa Parks, Associate Director of Programming and Public Outreach
Melissa is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and the Environmental Humanities Program at the University of Utah. Her teaching and research interests span the areas of environmental and science communication, place-based pedagogy, and ecoculture. As the Taft-Nicholson Center Associate Director for Programming and Public Outreach, she is committed to providing impactful experiential learning experiences in Montana’s unique Centennial Valley. She is vastly grateful for the ongoing opportunity to contribute to the Center’s mission to bridge the environmental humanities, sciences, and arts.
M.A. Russell, Associate Director of Field Education
My fascination with the natural world began at a very young age and eventually led me to the coastal redwood forest where I received my degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California in Santa Cruz. Since then, I have had the privilege of living and working as a naturalist in spectacular landscapes across the country, including the Eastern Sierra Nevada of California, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and the Colorado Plateau in Southeastern Utah. Throughout my career as a naturalist, I have become very passionate about bridging the gap between the natural sciences and other disciplines, and I am specifically interested in merging ecology with the arts and humanities.