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About the Instructors, Spring-Summer 2008
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Rick Adams has studied bats in the West since 1984. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Northern Colorado and is founder and president of the Colorado Bat Society. Rick is also the author of Bats of the Rocky Mountain West: Natural History, Ecology and Conservation, published in 2003 by the University Press of Colorado.

Steve Bouricius is a licensed master hummingbird bander engaged in a broad range of banding studies of breeding and migrant hummingbirds in Colorado. With banding stations on both sides of the Continental Divide, Steve and his wife, Debbie, have banded more than 6000 hummingbirds of nine species in the state since 1999. Some interesting new discoveries about hummingbirds have resulted from their work. Steve is a past president of the Colorado Field Ornithologists and has conducted field trips and other programs for thousands of birders in the state.

Jan Chu has organized Fourth of July Butterfly Counts at the High Line Canal, Aurora, and the Cal-Wood Education Center, Jamestown, for many years. She volunteers as a Boulder County Parks and Open Space Naturalist and has participated for five years in the survey of butterflies in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Andrew Cowell is an Associate Professor in linguistics at the University of Colorado. He has worked with the Northern Arapaho Tribe for several years, and engages in research on the language, literature, and culture of Native North America, including ethnozoology and ethnobotany. Andy speaks Arapaho, and has published many articles on Arapaho language and culture, often in collaboration with Native Arapaho scholars.

Janice Forbis, a botanist and horticulturis, is currently the assistant greenhouse manager at the University of Colorado. She worked as a plant ecologist for Boulder County and enjoys identifying plants from the prairie to the alpine. She joins Joyce Gellhorn in teaching the “Identification of Spring Wildflowers” class.

Joyce Gellhorn is the author of Song of the Alpine, a book that portrays the Rocky Mountain tundra through all seasons, and White-tailed Ptarmigan, a month-by-month photographic essay of birds that live year-round in the alpine. Joyce has taught field classes in Boulder County for 26 years to students ranging in age from four to eighty-four.

Paula Hansley has been fascinated by birds since the age of six, when she first helped band a cardinal. She was also intrigued by bird songs in the woods around her home in southeastern Ohio. She has taught classes for BCNA: “Watching Warblers,” “Montane Birds,” and “Geology of the Colorado Front Range.” Paula participates in bird monitoring studies and leads bird trips groups.

Steve Jones is author/co-author of The Last Prairie, The Shortgrass Prairie, Colorado Nature Almanac, Peterson Field Guide to the North American Prairie, and Owls of Boulder County.  Steve organized the BCNA small owl and wintering raptor studies and helped carry out the Colorado Breeding Bird Atlas project.  He has taught nature classes in Boulder County for 24 years.  His consulting work includes more than a dozen breeding bird studies for parks and open space agencies. 

Susie Mottashed is the author of the award-winning book, Who Lives In Your Backyard? In her book, Susie teaches her readers how to create their own nature journal. She shows how easy it is to observe, sketch and record what's going on outside. She demonstrates that field sketching can be fun, quick and easy. Susie enjoys encouraging others on their journey of creative expression. A new companion DVD of Who Lives In Your Backyard? has recently been released.

Chris Ray is a researcher at the University of Colorado studying threatened plants and animals. The author of many scientific papers, she has studied pikas throughout the western United States for over 20 years. She has taught field studies centered on the pika almost every summer since 1989. Chris has been interviewed about the plight of the pika for national and international news broadcasts, and her knowledge of pika behavior helped the producers of David Attenborough’s Life of Mammals film their wonderful sequence on pikas.

Scott Severs has been observing and teaching about birds most of his life. He especially enjoys bird song, field ecology, entomology, and digital photography. Last summer, he did field research in the shortgrass prairie for the Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory. He has taught “Watching Warblers,” “Bird Migration” and “Dazzling Dragonflies” classes for BCNA. He has a degree in Wildlife Biology from Colorado State University.

Calvin Whitehall, a free-lance photographer whose images of wildflowers and ptarmigan have been widely display throughout Boulder County, joins Joyce Gellhorn in the “Ptarmigan of Boulder County” class. One of his ptarmigan images won “Best of the Show” in the Louisville Art Show.

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