Margaret
Carruthers (lecturer)
Margaret
Carruthers is a geologist whose work has taken her to many parts of
North America and the Pacific and South Atlantic Ocean. For more than
10 years, Margaret was a teacher and consulted in the development of a wide
range of science-related materials. Currently, she is the Supervising
Editor for Science at Words and Numbers in Baltimore, Maryland and the
author of seven science books for children and young adults. She is
also the co-author with Josie Iselin of Beach Stones. Her
awards
include runner-up for The Daily Telegraph/BASF Young Science Writer
Awards 2000, and overall winner of the 2000 Geologists’
Association Earth Alert Rockwriters’ Essay Competition for
Exploring the Longest Volcano on Earth. Carruthers received her BS
degree from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee and an MS
degree from the University of Massachusetts. For more information on
her books, visit: www.allbookstores.com/author/Margaret_W_Carruthers.html
Drew
Ferrier (panelist)
Drew Ferrier, Founder and Director of the Society
of Ocean Sciences and a professor of Biology at Hood College in
Frederick, MD, has over 25 years of experience teaching biology and
ecology in classrooms, laboratories, and a variety of field locations
from Chesapeake Bay to South Florida and the Caribbean. After
graduating from Washington and Jefferson College, he obtained a masters
degree at Miami University. His career began as a faculty member of a
small college in western Maryland, followed by years of teaching and
leading field excursions to field stations in the Caribbean. This
provided a practical introduction to marine science which he formalized
by completing a Ph.D. degree at the University of Maryland in Marine,
Estuarine, and Environmental Science. Since that time, Dr. Ferrier has
been a faculty member at Hood College where he also serves as the
Director of the Graduate Program in Environmental Biology. Ferrier
continues to combine his interests in marine science, research, and
teaching by introducing students of all ages to ocean environments.
Stephen
J. Godfrey (lecturer)
Stephen Godfrey
grew up in the Province of Quebec, Canada, the middle of five children.
He received his B.Sc. in Biology from Bishop’s University and
completed his Ph.D. (1986) in paleontology under Dr. Robert L. Carroll
at the Redpath Museum, McGill University. Following a two-year
Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Toronto, he moved to
Drumheller, Alberta, the “Dinosaur Capital of
Canada,” where he became involved in paleontological exhibits
work for museums around the world. In 1998, Dr. Godfrey became the
Curator
of Paleontology at the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, Maryland. His
diverse research interests include work on extinct dolphins and whale,
and sharks and stingrays. He is the author with Christopher R. Smith of
Paradigms on Pilgrimage: Creationism, Paleontology and
Biblical Interpretation. For more information, visit:
www.vertpaleo.org/education/profiles/sgodfrey.cfm
Dave Harp (panelist)
Dave Harp operates a corporate and editorial photography business from
Cambridge, MD. A graduate of Ohio University with a degree in English
literature, Dave was staff photographer for the Hagerstown Morning
Herald and a photographer for The Baltimore Sun Magazine before
establishing his own business in 1990. Harp's photos have been
extensively published in magazines such as Coastal Living, Audubon, New
York Times, Natural History, and Smithsonian. In 2006, he was awarded
the Grand Prize by North American Travel Journalists Association for
magazine photo journalism and in 2007, won First Place by The Society
for Professional Journalists for the same. He is a past president of
the American Society of Media Photographers and has collaborated on
several books with environmental writer Tom Horton, including Swanfall;
Water’s Way;
The Great March;
and The Nanticoke.
Tom
Horton (panelist)
Nationally
known
journalist, environmentalist and award-winning author, Tom Horton
covered the Chesapeake Bay region for 32 years for The Baltimore Sun.
He has also written for the New York Times magazine, National
Geographic, Smithsonian and the Rolling Stone. An avid kayaker and
beach explorer, Horton has called media attention to the detrimental
pressures of population on Bay ecosystems and the impact of rising sea
levels to the many islands in the Chesapeake region. Horton is the
author of six books about Chesapeake Bay including Turning the Tide:
Saving the Chesapeake Bay, An Island Out of Time, Chesapeake Bay of
Light with Ian J. Plant, Water Ways and The Nanticoke
with David Harp,
and Bay Country
which won the John Burroughs Award, given
annually for
the best book on nature writing in the U.S. For more information on his
books:
visit: http://www.amazon.com/Tom-Horton/e/B000AQ48IO
Richard
LaMotte (lecturer)
Richard LaMotte
has been at the forefront of sea glass
research since presenting his first lecture on the topic back in 2002.
Sometimes referred to as “The Dean of Sea Glass,”
LaMotte is the author of the master reference book, Pure Sea Glass,
which was awarded a gold medal from Writer’s Digest for 2004
non-fiction Book of the Year. Co-founder and Vice President of the
North American Sea Glass Association (NASGA), he has lectured at each
of the NASGA Sea Glass Festivals and served as Chairman of the 2008
Festival in Lewes, Delaware. This past summer, he was the featured
speaker at the inaugural Mermaid Tears Sea Glass Festival on Prince
Edward Island. LaMotte has a B.S. degree in Business Admin/Marketing
from St. Andrews College (Laurinburg, NC.) For more info, visit:
www.seaglasspublishing.com
Megan
Elyse Lloyd (photography workshop)
Megan Elyse
Lloyd
is a multi-talented artist, musician and photographer skilled at
photographing beach treasures in fresh, mesmerizing and often amusing
ways. Her recent artistic collaboration with Deacon Ritterbush in A
Beachcomber's Odyssey resulted in the book being short-listed
for the 2009 Eric Hoffer Award for Cover of the Year. Lloyd
is in the Fine Arts program at the University of Maryland.
Selma
Manizade (beach jewels
workshop)
A native of
Annapolis, Selma Manizade is a graphic
designer and jewelry designer who has worked with glass since 2002. A
graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University, Manizade is currently the
Art Director for Chesapeake Family Magazine and Vice President of the
Annapolis Arts Alliance. As an artist, she specializes in fused glass
panels and glass jewelry, much of which is made of sea glass collected
on beacombing forays to Maryland's eastern shore.
Lisa McCue
(shell
art
workshop)
Lisa McCue is
one
of today's most prolific and sought after illustrators. In the past 30
years she has illustrated over 175 children’s books including
the Corduroy Bear
series. (She will be selling and signing her book,
Corduroy at the Beach,
at the conference.) Her work also appears on
fabrics, tins, greeting cards, wrapping papers and clothing. Along with
her mother, Emiline, McCue creates amazing art work from shells
gathered along the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and Chesapeake Bay.
Their specialties include stylized flowers (iris, gardenia, magnolias)
from oyster shells and decorative topiary-style balls and candle
holders. She received her BFA from the University of Mass. For more
information on her books, visit:
http://www.allbookstores.com/author/Lisa_Mccue.html
Scott Neiman
(fossil field trip)
Amatuer fossil hunter extraordinaire, Scott Neiman
has
been hunting
and collecting fossils since the age of 6 and has done so in all but
two states in the United States. For the last 20 years, he has
concentrated his search in the mid-Atlantic region, especially fossil
deposits located along Calvert Cliffs, the Patuxtent and Potomac
Rivers, and throughout coastal Virginia. Neiman lectures to fossil
clubs
throughout the east coast and on weekends is a field specialist for
Flag Pond Nature Center.
S.
Deacon Ritterbush (lecturer, Chesapeake Bay
field trip)
Deacon
Ritterbush (aka "Dr. Beachcomb") is an anthropologist and political
economist who spent 25 years working as an international development
strategist in the Pacific Island region consulting for organizations
such as Save the Children, USAID and The World Bank. Her articles and
photographs have been published in books, scholarly compendiums,
newspapers, and magazines such as Country
Living and La
Vie Claire.
Currently an eco-educator and a Senior Research Associate for the Society for Ocean
Sciences. Dr.
Ritterbush writes, holds workshops, and gives lectures on topics
related to the beachcombing experience. In 2008 and 2009, she was a
featured speaker at the North American Sea Glass Festivals. Her first
book, A
Beachcomber’s Odyssey, Vol. I: Treasures from a
Collected Past, received a "Books for Better Living" Gold
Medal for
Collecting/Hobby Book for 2009 (Independent Publishers) and Honorable
Mention for Most Inspirational/Self-Help Book of 2009 (Eric Hoffer
Awards). Ritterbush received a Ph.D. from the University of
Hawaii at Manoa. For more information, visit www.drbeachcomb.com
Chuck
and Debbie Robinson (lecturers,
panelist)
Chuck and
Debbie
Robinson have been interested in
seashells and the
seashore since childhood. They grew up on the New Jersey shore and
together they have been combing beaches since 1984. Their love of the
seashore and interest in sharing it with others resulted in their first
book The Art of Shelling:
A Complete Guide to Finding Shells and Other
Beach Collectibles at Shelling Locations from Florida to Maine,
published in 1995 (now in a completely revised third edition.) They
are also authors of a children's book, Treasure For Our Sand Castle.
The Robinson's have searched for seashells on beaches from Florida to
Maine and from California to Oregon. They have also been
shelling in the Bahamas, Bermuda, St. Martin, Hawaii, Canada, and in
the United States Virgin Islands. They lecture extensively, presenting
to schools, libraries, reading conferences, community organizations,
and nature groups. Chuck studied photography and journalism
and Debbie has an MA in Psychology and an MS
in Education. For more info, visit:
http://www.theartofshelling.com/
Kevin Sellner (panelist)
Kevin is the Executive Director of the Chesapeake Research
Consortium (CRC), visiting Professor, UMCES-UMD and a Research Associate with
the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.
Kevin is a plankton ecologist, with a primary focus on harmful algal
blooms. As Consortium Executive Director, his primary role is to
encourage active research programs across the six Consortium member
institutions (www.chesapeake.org) and their extended partners. Sellner and
CRC also administer the Chesapeake Bay Program’s Scientific
and Technical Advisory Committee to provide scientific guidance for the
Program’s restoration activities. Kevin serves as an
Associate Editor for Estuaries and Coasts, review editor for Aquatic
Microbial Ecology, and Board member for the non-profit Water
Stewardship, Inc. He strives to insure that the Consortium is
considered a source of unbiased scientific information, providing topic-specific
workshops, conferences, fora, and reviews on critical regional issues.
Kevin also teaches in the UMD Marine Estuarine Environmental Science
program.
John Wilson
(panelist)
A "product" of
the
East Coast having lived in
Florida, Pennsylvania,
Maryland and Delaware, John Wilson is the Associate Director for
Stewardship for Land Acquisition and Planning for Maryland's Department
of Natural Resources. One of his job responsibilities is to oversee the
acquisition of public lands and then determine how best to mange
such resources once acquired. Wilson is knowledgeable about
laws
affecting beach access in MD and in surrounding states. Formerly with
the Rivers and Trails section of the National Park Service, Wilson has
a BS degree in Biology from the U. of Delaware and an MA in Planning
from the U Penn.
Pam
Wilson
(Driftwood field trip)
A lifelong
beachcomber, Pam has ‘combed shorelines in
Australia, Jamaica, Hawaii, Southern California, throughout the
Mediterranean, and up and down the U.S. East Coast seeking shells,
stones and beach glass. Her favorite beach treasures at the moment
are bones, skulls and pieces of vertebrae that she comes across while 'combing shoelines along
Calvert Cliffs and on various other regional beaches. A graduate of
Wilmington College in Ohio, Wilson is currently the Director of
Corporate
and Foundation Relations for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.