Bristol 5 Towns

Program coordinators act as the core organizer of their local VMN program. They maintain contact with VMN participants and help organize volunteer projects.  They attend field trainings for free and also receive a stipend for the year.

Chris Runcie is the program coordinator for the Bristol 5-towns program. Chris is a Naturalist/Educator for Four Winds Nature Institute, teaching natural science programs to adult volunteers in elementary schools. Chris was a lead author of Nearby Nature, the book and website that support Four Winds’s Nature Program. She especially enjoyed writing the playful puppet shows that frame each unit and performing them for the children.

Chris has a BA in Environmental Studies from Middlebury College where she studied fruit fly mate selection, and a PhD in Zoology from the University of North Carolina where she did research on termite recruitment behavior. While at UNC, she also took part in spring birdsong surveys and developed a love of birds and an ear for identifying their songs and calls. Moving back to Vermont in the ‘80s, Chris joined the Forest & Field Club, gaining much local natural history knowledge from this avid group of naturalists. She has taken part in their biannual bird counts and organized their monthly nature programs for many years. She also joined the Lewis Creek Association, and through their educational programs she learned about wildlife tracking, benthic macroinvertebrates, mussels, mudpuppies, and more. Chris is thrilled to be a part of the VMN program, for she takes great delight in exploring, teaching, and learning about the natural world with students young and old.