f a c u lt y p r o f i l e
Dawn knows the science behind pressing environment issues of our time. Her enthusiasm for environmental education and advocacy, for making a difference in the world, shines through everything she says and does.
Teacher o f the Year
Last June, as Dawn Murray took the podium at commencement to receive the honor of Teacher of the Year, the students of the BA graduating class hooted and hollered with unbridled affection. Most of them had taken Environmental Studies with Dawn and by the end of the quarter their eyes were opened to the natural world for the first time and their passions ignited. Her enthusiasm for the environment is unrestrained and infectious.
“I realized how much I love being a teacher and the influence my mentors had on my life. Twenty years later, there’s still a brain connection with all those who guided me. I have a continued reverence I feel for them. They were master teachers and they became life friends and people I respect enormously.”
Dawn is often seen sailing across the Antioch rooftop terrace like the Pied Piper, her students struggling to keep pace as they head for the ocean or an endangered wetlands. The seeds of this gifted teacher’s passion for the environment were sown during her own undergraduate studies at UC Santa Cruz on one of those life-changing study abroad experiences; Dawn’s was in Costa Rica. Her memories of those impressionable days recently drew her back to the town of Monteverde, the town where she had once lived.
Dawn Murray
Monteverde sits 4,600 feet above sea level with a population just under 7,000. In a word, it is beautiful – home to a handful of universities’ environmental study abroad programs. Because of its altitude above the coastline, the area is blanketed with clouds and abundant moisture. The fog settles on the branches of the trees and drips down below to feed a complex ecosystem, home to over 100 species of mammals, 400 species of birds, tens of thousands of insect species, and over 2,500 varieties of plants, 420 of which are orchids alone. This past summer, Dawn returned to Monteverde for the first time in 20 years, now with her two young sons in tow. She worried before the trip – as any single mother would – about traveling alone with her two boys. Would Monteverde
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