MILT THOMAS

After 25 years, the Environmental Learning Center has only its second executive director, Molly Steinwald. She replaces Holly Dill, who has retired after starting the Center from the ground up to where it is today a major attraction to residents and newcomers, young and old.

Steinwald has an outstanding background and a personal mission that is ideally suited for her new position. “My background includes both science and education, but my concern is how the two intersect.”

Her resume reflects that concern. At age 37, she already has a lifetime of experiences to prepare her for this new role. “I remember as a kid watching ants on the sidewalk, looking at patterns and designs in their behavior. I loved the outdoors. I had a camera but couldn’t afford the film, so I bought a Sony digital and published photos online.”

Her talents were first noticed by the organizers of the Sundance Film Festival and her reputation grew from there. She has experience as an educator, researcher, speaker and of course a photographer. Today she is a member of the International League of Conservation Photographers. She has taught biology at a college level, studied at Carnegie Mellon and served as director of science education at the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh, hardly a natural, rural environment to make her job easier. “Nature is all around us everyday and everywhere. We just have to notice it and then marvel at it.”

While the emphasis at ELC has been on educating children to grow up and become advocates for our environment and preserving our way of life, recent developments regarding the survival of the Indian River Lagoon itself has created a groundswell of concern among adults. Steinwald hopes to capitalize on that concern through the facilities and assets of the ELC, making it a keystone of environmental concern to the general public.

Steinwald’s background has prepared her for this formidable task. She grew up in New Hampshire, the third of 12 children in a house built for four people, a free lunch kid who all learned from an early age the importance of creating a symbiotic relationship between humans and the natural world around them. “I did my undergraduate workin biology at the University of Dallas and spent a summer on Alcatraz in San Francisco studying how birds cared for their young. I also went to the Chiricahua Mountains in Arizona for my master’s and decided I needed to know the needs of people as well as natural life.”

Those experiences helped lead her to learn how science is taught and how it relates to stewardship by humans of the environment we live in and sustainability of that environment. She took up photography and won awards for her nature photos. She married her husband, Walter, who home schools their two children with an emphasis on science and nature. We have a broken TV and no video games in our household, but an all-consuming love of the natural world and our place in it.”

Steinwald has a master’s degree in ecology from Purdue and is working on her doctorate from Miami University in Ohio. She had been recommended by the ELC search committee and called in for an interview. Her first day on the job was November 10 and has big plans for the future. “I was impressed by the fact concern about the Indian River Lagoon is such an issue for people of all ages and backgrounds. There isn’t the resistance to concern about nature as in so many other communities. It is a real concern among people who live here. While educating children from an early age about the importance of the world around us, it is gratifying to see that concern throughout the community and I hope to build on it.

With a Master’s Degree in Ecology from Purdue University, she is currently working on her doctorate from Miami University of Ohio. But this is the perfect environment to put into practice her longtime goal of bringing science and nature to the masses in a way we as humans can relate to it and more importantly, to care about it. “I want to reduce my global footprint and show others how to do the same naturally without having to tell them.”

She is looking for a permanent home where her children will be next to nature all the time and where she can bicycle to work every day. Most of all, she wants to communicate her passion for science, education and sustaining the environment that is such an important quality of life issue here in Indian River County.