Monday, June 1, 2009

Meet the On Campus Leaders

2009 On Campus Monterey Bay A Leaders, left to right: Kim McCabe, Brianna McCoy Chapman, Peter Robbins, Stephen Brown, Alex Verrron



Photography

Alex Verron. St. Lawrence University, B.A. Alex majored in Fine Arts and Asian Studies at St. Lawrence, where he received the Jean Scribner Cashin Endowment for Fine Art Students. He spent a semester of his junior year at Rajasthan University in Jaipur, India, where he studied Hindi language and the Devinagri script. His six-month photo documentary on textile production in India was a featured exhibition in the Brush Art Gallery. Alex has worked as an events coordinator for Save the Whales in Connecticut; as a corporate photographer shooting conditions in textile mills for the Nissho Iwai Corporation in Shanghai, China; in New York City as a studio assistant for the Coastal Group, a Manhattan/Hong Kong based advertising agency; and as a sports photographer in Aspen, Colorado. His work has been published by several international outdoor magazines. Alex spent two summers teaching Intro and Advanced Photography at Putney Student Travel’s Excel at Amherst College Program. He co-led the National Geographic Student Expedition to India in 2008. He is currently based in Brooklyn, NY, where he is building his commercial portfolio.


Photography

Peter Robbins. Kenyon College, B.A. Pete majored in Chinese Language and minored in Religious Studies at Kenyon, where he also took numerous courses in film and digital photography. His interest in Mandarin brought him to Middlebury for the Middlebury College Summer Language School intensive Chinese program, and to Beijing and Hangzhou where he studied abroad at the CET and Middlebury programs. After leaving Hangzhou, Pete backpacked through rural parts of China in Guangxi, Guizhou, and Sichuan provinces, taking photographs, living with farmers, and learning about their way of life. His landscapes and portraits of life in rural China have been featured in several exhibitions at his alma mater, Kenyon College. In 2007 Pete worked as a journalist and photographer for a Chinese language newspaper in Portland, Oregon, and in 2008 he taught Chinese language in Putney Student Travel’s Excel China program. In his spare time he enjoys hiking, skiing, sailing, playing frisbee, and experimenting with odd films, filters, and homemade cameras. Among other things, Pete constructs and sells his very own pinhole camera kits.


Marine Biology

Brianna McCoy Chapman. University of California, Berkeley. B.A.; B.S. Brianna received simultaneous degrees in Integrative Biology and Conservation & Resource Studies at Berkeley. She was an undergraduate instructor in a marine mammals course and a volunteer at the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, where she dissected and prepared reptile skeletons. Brianna completed a Wildland Studies field course in Big Sur, California, where she conducted an otter census and a steelhead stream survey. She participated in a semester-long field project in fall 2008 on the island of Mo’orea, French Polynesia, where she completed a research project on Himantura fai, the pink whipray. Brianna is a certified SCUBA diver and has been diving in Polynesia, the Mexican Caribbean, and Australia. She is passionate about marine biology and is intimately familiar with the ecology and resources of the Monterey coast.


Marine Biology

Kimberly McCabe. Connecticut College. B.S. Kim graduated cum laude from Connecticut, where she majored in Biological Sciences. She participated in the Sea Semester program based in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where she researched population dynamics and ecological relationships within the Atlantic Ocean’s Sargassum seaweed ecosystem. She spent a summer as an ordinary seaman on the U.S. Brig Niagara, in Erie, Pennsylvania, and another summer as a deckhand on the Ocean Classroom Foundation’s vessel, the Harvey Gamage. In the fall of 2007 Kim returned to the Ocean Classroom Foundation, where she spent three semesters teaching marine science, leading hiking and snorkeling expeditions, and chaperoning and managing students as a marine educator. Kim worked on an organic coffee farm in Costa Rica and taught snowboarding at the Breckenridge Ski Resort in Colorado. She is an active member of the Pembroke Watershed Association, helping to preserve and restore the ponds near her hometown in Massachusetts. Next fall Kim will return to the Ocean Classroom Foundation as head educator and science educator for the foundation’s semester at sea program.


Journalism

Stephen Brown. University of North Carolina, Wilmington; New York University, M.A. Stephen recently completed a Master's in Journalism and Latin American Studies at NYU and is now working for The Daily Beast, a Web-site run by magazine maven Tina Brown. He has reported from indigenous communities in Ecuador, and written for the New York Post and The New York Times. Stephen majored in Spanish at U.N.C. and spent a summer in Quito, Ecuador. A year later he was abroad again, this time in Curitiba, Brazil, studying history and literature. Stephen worked for UNC-EP, a statewide university exchange program in North Carolina, and has traveled extensively throughout southern Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Costa Rica. He led Putney Student Travel Community Service programs to Ecuador (2007) and Costa Rica (2008).