Volume CXXXIII, Number 4 September 28, 2001 f

Profile: Assistant Outing Club Director
HAI ANH VU
Staff Writer

This year, the Bowdoin Outing Club recruited a new Assistant Director, Stacy C. Kirschner. Coming from Lake Tahoe, Nevada, Kirschner graduated from Lake Forest College in Illinois.

Bowdoin Outing Club Assistant Director Stacy C. Kirschner. (Courtesy of Stacy C. Kirschner)

Before coming to Bowdoin, she worked for the Chewonki foundation in Wiscasset, Maine, for four years. She taught natural history and forest history in an environmental education school. Aside from that, she also helped to rehabilitate injured wildlife and leading wilderness trips.

Kirschner has always been actively engaged in a variety of outdoor activities. Her favorites include freshwater kayaking, sea kayaking, canoeing, rock climbing and snowboarding.

Her main interest, however, is teaching about the wilderness and improving awareness about the necessity to preserve the environment.

Kirschner started working at the BOC this summer. Her main tasks in BOC include teaching leadership courses and leading trips that involve higher risks such as white-water kayaking, and rock climbing.

So far, Kirschner said, she has a very positive impression of Bowdoin. She enjoys the fact that students at Bowdoin are very "upbeat, enthusiastic and really helpful". Working closely with Bowdoin students gives her a good opportunity to both teach and learn a lot from them.

Speaking about changes she would like to make at Bowdoin, Kirschner emphasizes that she would love to work on making Bowdoin become a more environment-friendly space. She intends to advocate the implementation of low-impact techniques that could preserve the environment in some ways.
Kirschner is also enthusiastic about teaching the Bowdoin community more on the history of nature and the earth. According to her, this knowledge is valuable because it helps people appreciate more extensively the wildlife that they ordinarily enjoy.

In addition, Kirschner hopes that as students learn more about nature, they will make more efforts to preserve the environment. She stated that the state of Maine has many political issues which involve the environment.

"College students at Bowdoin have the ability to preserve wild lands. We won't be able to have BOC trips without them!" concluded Kirschner.