Ever since I was young, I have been fascinated with nature. I loved learning about how things worked, and how everything in the environment was connected. My dad taught me how to identify trees in our backyard starting at around age five, and I’ve been a naturalist ever since.
In middle school and high school, I participated in Envirothon – an environmental science competition that tests theoretical and practical knowledge about the natural world. There were five subject areas: Soils, Forestry, Aquatics, Wildlife, and Current Environmental Issues. I learned how to texture a soil with my bare hands, to calculate basal area using a Bitterlich prism, to determine water quality based on what macroinvertebrates are living in a stream, and to identify the tracks and scat of North Carolina wildlife species. I competed at the Area, State, and North American levels.
I followed my passion for nature throughout college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and it took me to some interesting places. I was fortunate to have experiential education in a wide variety of subjects at locations across the globe. I travelled to Montana, California, the Galapagos, Ecuador, the Caribbean, Italy, and the North Carolina coast to learn about geology, ecology, marine biology, conservation, and vulcanology.
I also participated in several research projects during my undergraduate career. I studied the Minerology of Bedrock and Underlying Soils in the Long Valley Caldera Area as a part of my field studies in Geology. I also contributed to a forest succession research project at Mason Farm Biological Reserve, comparing 1980s data to post-Hurricane Fran re-growth. The supervisor for this project was Dr. Peter White in the UNC Biology Department. I participated in a collaborative capstone research project at the UNC Institute for Marine Sciences on Water Quality in the Pine Knolls Shores canal. My honors thesis research was on Salinity Tolerance in Cyanobacteria and Its Implications for Expansion into Estuaries. My mentor for this project was Dr. Hans Paerl at the UNC Institute for Marine Sciences in Morehead City, NC.
I discovered my passion for Italian language and culture in the course of my undergraduate studies. This led me to study abroad in Italy twice. My first excursion was a self-designed summer internship at Italy’s Institute of Marine Sciences in Venice, including fieldwork in Southern Italy at the Lesina lagoon. I applied for and received the Hogan Fellowship through the James M. Johnston Scholars Program to fund my travel and living expenses. I returned to Italy to spend a semester at the University of Bologna through the Bologna Consortial Studies Program, where I took classes entirely in Italian with Italian university students. I also travelled to France and Greece during my time abroad. I received the Kimberly Keyser Award for Excellence in Italian in the spring of 2014, and was inducted into the Gamma Kappa Alpha Italian Honor Society in 2012.
During my time as a graduate student at Duke University, I took courses in Environmental Education, Landscape Ecology, Science Communication, Biogeochemistry, Ecological Genomics, Forest Measurements, and Teaching Biology. I completed independent and guided studies in lichen biology, plant systematics, forest succession and land use histories, invasive species, and adult environmental education.
I have worked in a variety of environmental education positions in my career. My most recent role was as the NCF-Envirothon Education Specialist, where I acted as a project manager, curriculum developer, collaborator, writer, and editor for the educational materials for our annual international scholastic competition for high school students, including study resources, student trainings, and assessments testing both theoretical knowledge and field skills in five different environmental science disciplines: Aquatic Ecology, Forestry, Soils and Land Use, Wildlife, and a Current Environmental Issue that changes each year. I managed deliverables for multiple competitions at a time with overlapping deadlines with different groups of collaborators. I worked on long-term educational projects for the international program to support and supplement the annual competition. I also managed the NCF-Envirothon Diversity Enhancement and Underserved Audience Grant Program, offered in conjunction with the USDA Forest Service. I worked with grantees to help them design impactful projects and to solve challenges that come up during the administration of their projects.
Stephanie Tolar 