Climate Issues on the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers Bike Ride and Talk

Don Baugh is a national leader in environmental education programs and policies. Don’s hallmark is connecting students, educators, and leaders to nature through life-changing field experiences. His career includes 38 years directing education programs at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, founding the No Child Left Inside Coalition, and leading the consulting firm Environmental Leadership Strategies.

The impacts of Don’s work are far-reaching. He directed 19 education centers, providing field investigation experiences to over 1,000,000 students. The No Child Left Inside coalition Don founded brought together 2,250 environmental groups, reaching 50,000,000 constituents. The partnership begot the first-ever statewide high school graduation requirement for environmental literacy. It produced historic funding advances for outdoor environmental education.

Carol Collier served for more than 15 years as executive director of the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) before joining the Academy. Before joining DRBC, she was executive director of Pennsylvania’s 21st Century Environment Commission and regional director of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) Southeast Region. Prior to PADEP, Collier served 19 years with BCM Environmental Engineers, Inc., beginning as a student intern and ultimately becoming vice president of environmental planning, science, and risk. She has a B.A. in biology from Smith College and a master’s in regional planning from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a professional planner licensed in the State of New Jersey, a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP), and a certified senior ecologist. In 1997 she was presented the Touchstone Award from the Society of Women Environmental Professionals and in 1998 the Woman of Distinction Award from the Philadelphia Business Journal. In 2007 the American Water Resources Association (AWRA) presented her with the Mary H. Marsh Medal for exemplary contributions to the protection and wise use of the nation’s water resources. In 2014, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded her the Bronze Order of the DeFleury Medal. She is a member of her township’s environmental protection advisory board, on the Boards of the American Water Resources Association (AWRA) (President, 2013), the U.S. Water Alliance, and recent past chair of the Board for the Pinchot Institute for Conservation. She teaches environmental management courses at the University of Pennsylvania and has published on environmental and water-related topics. She has testified before the House of Representatives and the Pennsylvania Legislature. In 2004 she was a member of a nine-person U.S./China/Japan team to assist the People’s Republic of China with river basin management. She has also participated in water management and sustainable forest practice events along the Yangtze River in China and in the rain forests of Ecuador.

Andrew Kricun is a Senior Advisor at the Water Center at Penn working on various projects related to the Delaware River watershed. He is also a Senior Fellow with the US Water Alliance and a Senior Director with Moonshot Missions. Previously Andy was the Executive Director and Chief Engineer of the Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority, overseeing an 80 million gallon per day wastewater treatment plant in Camden, NJ. He graduated with honors from Princeton University with a degree in chemical engineering, holds a professional engineer’s license in civil engineering and is a board-certified environmental engineer. Andy serves on the New Jersey Environmental Justice Advisory Council and served on the board of the National Association of Clean Water Agencies as the chair of its Utility of the Future and Environmental Justice committees.

Since 2004, Ellen Freedman Schultz has developed, and managed environmental education programs related to water quality, watershed management, and the history of Philadelphia’s municipal water system for the Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center. In 2012, she developed and published a comprehensive curriculum framework and activity guide called Understanding the Urban Watershed for Philadelphia. Subsequently, she wrote a companion Regional Guide for Wilmington, Reading and Camden and one for New York City (pending publication by NYDEP). The Guide became the foundation for her more recent project started in 2014, the development of a middle-years watershed curriculum, which was supported in large part by the William Penn Foundation. The completed project is a comprehensive 6-unit, cross-disciplinary, hands-on curriculum for students in grades 6,7 and 8th grade. In 2018, the District agreed to make this a partnership project and to support teacher training for full implementation in District schools, starting Fall 2019. Since 2015, she has served as Co-chair of Curriculum Committee of the School District of Philadelphia’s GreenFutures Plan for Sustainability and is currently a member of the Network Development Team of the Alliance for Watershed Education, a network of 23 watershed education centers in the Delaware River Watershed.

Schultz has applied her broad and varied non-formal education experiences to program development, teacher training, hands-on lesson and program design and implementation throughout her career. In addition to her extensive work in utility education, she also has a varied and broad background in built environment education. She has a Master of Science Degree from the University of Pennsylvania in Historic Preservation, and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in American History from Vassar College. She has been an adjunct professor at Bucks County Community College in the Historic Preservation Certificate Program for nearly 20 years. Although she has taught a variety of courses at the College, she currently teaches the History of American Architecture online. In 2012, she was given the Outstanding Part-time Faculty award from the College. She also served as Director of Education at the former Philadelphia non-profit organization, the Foundation for Architecture, and led their K-12 built environment education program called “Architecture in Education.