2019-2020 Program Information
Congratulations VMN South Burlington classes of 2019 and 2020!
VMN South Burlington naturalists explore the history of Bread and Butter Farm including stone walls, barbed wire, old buildings, and abandoned fields with Historical Preservationist, Sam Ford (photo by Roberta Nubile.)
Meet your Program Coordinator
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.
Roberta Nubile is the program coordinator for the South Burlington program. Bert grew up in a suburb of New York City where her fondest memories were of catching tadpoles and frogs in brooks, spotting jellyfish and mussels at the beach, trips to the Bronx Zoo, camping with her family, and fishing and crabbing off Long Island. In her early teens she read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring which first opened her eyes to ecology. Joanna Macy was the next strong influence. When it came to career choice, it was between environmental education and nursing. Fast forward to 35 years later, and she finally gets to focus on environmental education via the Vermont Master Naturalist program.
While a neophyte in all things nature, she took side trips from nursing to pay attention to the outdoor world: as an educator for school children at Shelburne Farms, a ropes course instructor, a bike tour leader, and a freelance writer on agricultural and environmental issues for local papers. She co-led the Charlotte Sustainable Living Network for five years, an action that grew out of one of the groups she led for the Vermont Earth Institute. As a land steward for the community she lived in, she helped educate about invasives management and the wisdom of late season brush hogging for preserving vital nests. She raised chickens and bees, and worked in the community garden. She has happy memories of bringing her children, Gianna and Christina, on outdoor adventures: camping in Cape Cod and Vermont, hiking Mt Philo, Snake Mt, and the Greens, and paddling on the LaPlatte River and Kettle Pond in Groton State Forest. She is currently a water sample collector for South Chittenden River Watch (a project of the Lewis Creek Association) on McCabe’s Brook in Shelburne. She is a nurse educator at Wake Robin and loves to play and learn outside any chance she can.
2018-2019 Program Information
Explore this program year
Meet your Program Coordinator
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.
Sophie Mazowita is the program coordinator for the Champlain Hills. She fell in love with nature on her first canoe camping trip, immediately prompting her to drop all plans to become a veterinarian and golden retriever breeder in favor of wildlife biology and wolves. She landed her dream job as a naturalist in Algonquin Park (the same spot where she first camped), but after four years sharing the stories of that land, she felt stirred by the conviction that people shouldn’t have to travel to a 3000 square mile wilderness to find connection with nature. She traded that wilderness for the urban wilds of Toronto, where she was exposed to the idea of forest schools and nature mentoring, and she found the magic of coyote trails and wild edibles growing right in the heart of Canada’s largest city.
UVM’s Field Naturalist Program drew her to Vermont, and this project-based Master’s program saw her writing a management study and subsequent management plan for Red Rocks Park in South Burlington. Seeing an opportunity to connect kids to South Burlington natural areas, she started the Red Rocks Nature Camp, then took a job leading summer camps and a forest preschool at Green Mountain Audubon Center, eventually becoming the Center’s Education Director. She moved to her current role as Youth Programs Director at Crow’s Path Field School in 2016. To balance all that time playing with kids in the woods, she manages the Burlington Mammal Tracking Project (trackingvt.org), serves on the board of the South Burlington Land Trust, and is now thrilled to be strengthening the naturalist community in South Burlington through the VMN program.
Vermont Master Naturalist Program 