This year at the Spring AEOE Conference in Sonora, Pam Ivie and Kathe Hendrickson were awarded the Howard Bell award. This award shows recognition and appreciation for the contribution that an individual has made to AEOE, and to the field of environmental & outdoor education.
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Pam Ivie has been the driving force behind the development and continued excellence of the Foothill Horizons Outdoor School Program in Sonora, CA. The Director for over 25 years, she oversaw the development of each of the program’s core classes, the building of a Mi-Wuk village, development of an excellent staff/intern training program, and more. She has also been greatly supportive of AEOE throughout her career. While she is no longer as “directly” active as she once was, she supports her staff in their ongoing involvement with AEOE. Indeed, much of the Northern Board (newsletter, etc.) has been operating out of her site for more than a decade—involvement that would wane without such support. Pam continues to be active in COSA and has been the certification chair for the organization for approximately 10 years. Prior to this she has also served as Chair of the organization. She is a top professional in the business and a well respected (and listened to) voice within the statewide OE community. It should also be noted that she has done much to “raise the bar” for professionalism in OE as her staff is consistently well trained. Her program has also been a leader in providing a good living wage, 40 hour week, benefits, etc. (this dating back to at least the early 80’s when the author of this nomination was on her staff). |
Pam entered the world of Outdoor Education administration at a time when there were very few women in such positions of leadership. At that time Outdoor Schools were still largely considered “camps” where students looked at the outdoors through a recreation paradigm. She, along with many other notable educators (notably Pat Crocker, John Hendrickson, Steve VanZandt, Mark Nolan, Jim Hastings, etc.) worked diligently to reinvent “outdoor camps” so that they became schools. In doing so, an era of environmental and science education has become the theme of outdoor schools throughout the state.
Pam Ivie was also involved in the creation of the ROSS Guide for Residential Outdoor Schools (a “first of its kind” evaluation mechanism for Outdoor Schools), and was also part of the committee that first helped the passage of AB 1498, a bill that received a year of funding from the state for needy students to attend ROSS programs. It should be noted that this first successful bill has helped to generate additional legislative attempts and successes and was the first time AEOE, COSA and the Sierra Club started working closely together for such funding.
Kathe Hendrickson has been the lead teacher at Woodleaf Outdoor School for thirty-two years. Since the early 1970’s she has been one of the driving forces of the program along with her recently retired husband John Hendrickson. While John received a Howard Bell for his work in the late 1990’s, Kathe has remained somewhat anonymous in her work to guide the program and influence outdoor education in Northern California. While her husband was the front man and inspiration for much of the direction Woodleaf took during those three decades, Kathe worked tirelessly to help plan and carry out each initiative or piece of program development. Her good work can be seen in the Radin Raptor Center, a state of the art facility where students learn about birds of prey. Working with John she helped to define the vision, raise the funds, and develop the curriculum. Indeed, her close relationship to the curriculum development and training of all naturalist staff for the entire program has been one of the true driving forces behind the success of Woodleaf Outdoor School.
More recently Kathe has been the overseer of Woodleaf’s Student Naturalist Program. Within the program students who have just graduated from college (and have served as volunteer counselors at Woodleaf), have the opportunity to spend their first year of college working at Woodleaf. These students receive college credit for their work and are trained and supervised by Kathe as they learn the ins and outs of residential outdoor education. The groundbreaking program (originally funded via the Sierra Club’s Youth and Wilderness Project), is producing a new generation of well trained and motivated naturalists. The program also provides Woodleaf with additional trained staff without impact to the budget as well as adding to the staff a diversity that better matches the students served.
Beyond this, Kathe has been much of the heart and soul of the Woodleaf program for many years. That the staff refer to her as “Mama Condor” (her nature name is Kathe Condor) attests to her compassion for the staff and ease with which they take advice and direction from her.
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photo
courtesy of Michael Charnofsky