When Nancy selected Cornell for her Master’s degree, she and her husband Charlie intended to move back to Boston within a couple of years. Instead, both went on for PhDs and careers in Ithaca. After spending a good chunk of her life chipping away on her doctorate one course at a time through Cornell’s employee degree program, Nancy agrees with philosopher John Dewey that education is a process of living rather than a preparation for future living.

As Emerita Director of Education at the Lab of Ornithology, she continues to connect educators and students with the Lab’s remarkable array of initiatives that inspire people to care about the natural world. Each summer she serves on the faculty for the Educator Academy in the Amazon Rainforest, a 10-day professional development experience for teachers who travel to Peru. As an extension of this work, she cofounded the Morpho Institute, a nonprofit that partners with an indigenous community in the Peruvian Amazon to host conservation-oriented workshops for U.S. educators interested in ensuring that the forests, rivers, biodiversity, and people of the Amazon are treasured and protected for generations to come.