In the Charlottesville area, a group attending the Natural History Roundtable at Ivy Creek heard about a new program for training naturalists in 2005 from Virginia Tech’s Michelle Prysby. Dede Smith chaired and hosted the gathering in her role as Ivy Creek Natural Area’s Executive Director (1993-2007). Michelle shared a vision of a statewide cadre of volunteers conducting citizen science, outreach and stewardship under the oversight of the Virginia Master Naturalist movement, Virginia Cooperative Extension, and four other state agencies in Virginia. Although many training programs of this type have existed in the past, the Master Naturalist program as we know it began in 1997, in Texas, providing a chapter-based model that the VMN and many other states subsequently adopted. Michelle Prysby continues to serve as the VMN’s director, but also completes her certification hours every year as an RMN member; she contributed her indispensable skills as Web Manager in the chapter’s early years.
Enticed by the challenges and benefits of this prospect, a small but resourceful group of acquaintances agreed to tackle the process of creating a new local VMN chapter in 2005. This core group included Dede Smith, Peter Warren (Horticultural Agent for the Albemarle County Cooperative Extension), LoriAnne Barnett, Susan Pleiss, Mary Lee Epps (Ivy Creek Natural Area supporter), Anne Mallek (Virginia Museum of Natural History), Ida Swenson (Rivanna Conservation Society educator) Carol Franda and Ruth Douglas, an educator who teaches us about botany, ephemerals and invasives to this very day. In May, Susan and Ruth attended the VMN Chapter Coordinators Training at Douthat State Park to learn the basics of building a chapter. The founding crew then reviewed the VMN’s recommended organizational model, certification process, by-laws, and operating handbook, as well as a syllabus of required topics for the training class. From this point on, Ida Swenson recalled, “The heavy lifting began!” Five months later, the committee submitted the RMN’s application with a list of prospective participants and approved projects. Susan Pleiss momentarily brightened up one postal clerk’s attention when she submitted the USPS form for our post office box, prompting the hopeful exclamation, “Oh! Are you nudists?” We still draw a firm line between naturists and naturalists to this very day. As Ida said: we don’t want to scare off the wildlife!
Receiving an official charter as a VMN chapter required the completion and graduation of one training class, with 40 classroom hours and 15 field observation hours. Fortunately, the inaugural group could count on their own strengths as experienced educators. Michelle Prysby (VT/VCE/VMN), Lou Verner (DWR), Peter Warren (DWR), Ruth Douglas (university administrator), Sam Austin, Tom Biggs and John Murphy all contributed in stellar ways to teaching the first training class. Forester Tom Dierauf (DOF) and Dan Bieker (Field Ornithology and Appalachian Ecology instructor) coordinated field trips, and like many of our teachers, remained active in the chapter for many years. Compiling a reading list from scratch in the pre-digital era, Mary Lee Epps (UVA Economics professor) ordered books, articles, maps and guides for each class member, noting that “the closest thing we had to a ‘text’” was the Peterson Guide to Eastern Forests, which we still give to trainees today. In the days of photocopying and snail mail, assembling the foundation literature for the initial class demanded monumental effort, culminating in copying, collating and assembling The Notebook, an essential resource initially distributed as a thick looseleaf binder. This extensive tool finally went online in 2019, under the leadership of Curriculum Chair Sandy Finley ’16 and the tech savvy of Brigitte Hogan ‘15.
While the founding members prepared the class and The Notebook, they simultaneously reviewed applications, mailed typewritten acceptance letters, and compiled a substantial list of local volunteer projects. Eighteen students, including the organizers who needed to complete the class to gain their own certifications, kicked off the inaugural Class of 2006 on September 12th at Ivy Creek’s Education Building, where we still meet today. By graduation, committee members Mary Lee Epps, Frank Wilczek, and Ida Swenson (who all took the class) tallied enough volunteer hours to be certified.
The first Timekeeper, Carole Franda, tallied up reported hours by hand. At least half of the inaugural class took chair or volunteer positions on various committees that still keep things rolling today.
Presidents: LoriAnne Barnett and Dede Smith
Treasurer: Mary Lee Epps
Secretaries: Reba Peck (Corresponding), Ida Swenson (Recording)
Curriculum: Ruth Douglas
Outreach/Recruitment: Staci England, Frank Wilczek
Projects: Susan Pleiss
Hospitality: Helen Gordon, Laura Dollard, Rachel Bush Floyd
To see a list of RMN leaders from 2006 to 2026, click here.
Class of 2006 graduates like Frances Lee Vandell, Mary Spears and Dorothy Tompkins remained active right up to 2025 and hopefully beyond. Other inaugural trainees included Stephen Botts, Lucy Cocke, Anne Eisenhardt, Bill Feeney, Jeffrey Hoskin, Marjorie Maxey, Daniel Montgomery, Jessica Rowlan, and Michelle Whitlock.
Energized once the class ended, and successful in their bid to earn the VMN charter, the ambitious founding group decided to organize a second training class for the Spring of 2007 while still developing, delivering, and grading the 2006 class. Many of them had full time jobs, families to raise, or community commitments in other areas, but devoted their time with awesome generosity. Finding themselves downright exhausted by the end of the Class of 2007 training, they ultimately concluded that one class prep per year stretched the chapter’s volunteer mojo quite enough, thank you very much. The enduring popularity and solid reputation of the class, affirmed each year by an abundance of applicants and gobs of positive feedback from our grateful graduates, continues to make acceptance into the RMN program quite competitive.
Along the way, Carol Wise ’11 (Nature Conservancy and UVA fundraiser) instituted a regular speakers’ series on Thursday nights for Continuing Ed, which Mary Tillman ’10 (school principal and psychologist) continued until 2022, when Karen Mulder ’15 (architectural historian) stepped in to chair the CE talks, as well as field trips by our many talented members (epitomized by John Holden ’09 and his stellar jaunts to see salamanders, ephemerals, ferns, butterflies, and other wonderments). Go to the Presentations menu to see a list of relatively recent CE speakers.
In 2009, VMN switched from paper tallies to an online service for volunteer management. The chapter’s transition to digital resources, web communications, and email connectivity took time to take root, as did the move to a new system, Better Impact, in 2021. COVID’19 forced us all to begin Zoom committee meetings, class and continuing education events. Fortunately, some of us knew how to manage that transition, earning our Curriculum committee the VMN Basic Training Adaptation Award. Amazingly, the pandemic interrupted the chapter’s uptrend in volunteer hours only slightly, since many members pivoted to home-based citizen science projects (e.g., bird, butterfly, bud and rainfall counts). The pandemic also taught the training class organizers an important lesson: smaller field trips, in groups of six or so, or self-guided field trips provided far better learning experiences than hitting the trail with all 24 students.
The chapter’s energy remains encouragingly vital and active. Nowadays, 20 to 30 Curriculum committee members help organize and run the training class. Each year, as many as 50 individuals overall contribute to RMN committees, leadership, or behind the scenes projects. According to our statistics, this is about one-third of our active membership! As of 2025, the training class has prepared over 460 individuals, volunteering on more than 95 listed projects. Direct contacts at public events or for schools range from 14,000 to 20,000 during any given year. RMN volunteer hours annually add up to about 14,500 hours—roughly $481,000 in monetary value—and those are just the hours our 175± active members remember to report!
So the RMN’s work provides quite a complement to the other 29 chapters that contribute to VMN’s statewide impact. In 2024, the VMN reported 3,481 volunteers providing 259,000 hours, which adds up to about $8.35 million dollars’ worth of effort benefiting Virginia’s natural resources. Michelle Prysby’s initial vision, designed with the collaboration of the sponsoring agencies, has certainly resulted in a hugely fruitful enterprise.
Co-founding member Ida Swenson, one of the RMN’s most indefatigable volunteers until her retirement in 2023, joined the VMN’s Golden Circle after she accrued more than 5500 hours. As she wrote: “Being part of establishing the Rivanna Master Naturalists has been one of the most constructive things I have ever done….We have a wonderful sense of giving back, and of preserving the natural heritage we all love.” Well said.
–Ida Swenson ’06 and Karen Mulder ‘15