ECC’s Environmental Educator

We recently welcomed Julia Gloninger as our new Environmental Educator. 

Julia graduated from Bard College with a degree in Environmental and Urban Studies and stayed on to earn her Master’s in Environmental Policy through Bard’s Center for Environmental Policy. She currently serves as the Co-Director of a local non-profit called The Underground Center (UGC), which explores alternative methods of meeting our community’s needs based on principles of mutual aid and interconnectedness with the land. In addition to being our Environmental Educator, Julia teaches gardening, cooking, and natural building programs at the Saugerties Boys & Girls Club through a collaboration with the UGC. Julia also lives on an off-grid farm in West Saugerties. 

“My goal as Environmental Educator is to help youth in my community create deep connections to nature through experiential learning. In addition to recreational trips like fishing and kayaking on the Esopus Creek, hiking in the Catskill mountains, and swimming in the nearby lakes, we also learn about the Esopus Creek watershed and its nonhuman inhabitants through bird watching, plant identification, and animal tracking. We make artwork from natural materials found on our trips. We discuss important issues facing the environment, like pollution and climate change, and how we can address these issues in our community. Through these lessons, the children can begin to recognize our reliance on nature and develop a sense of responsibility to protect the environment. I believe that this is the first step in raising the next generation of environmental stewards.”