Dan Spencer
Dan is Director of the Environmental Studies program at the University of Montana where he focuses on issues of environmental ethics and climate change, globalization, community participation in ecological restoration, and development and climate change issues in Latin America and SE Asia. Dan’s undergraduate degree is in geology from Carleton College, which also included three summers teaching geology field camp in the Tobacco Root mountains of SW Montana, and three summers working and climbing in Glacier Park. He has graduate degrees in theology and ethics from Union Theological Seminary in New York, and spent 10 years teaching in a Religion and Philosophy program at Drake University in Iowa before moving to Montana just in time for the fires of 2000. Dan grew up on the West Coast and in Colorado, and spent most of his adult life trying to find a way to get back to the West from Minnesota, New York, and Iowa. He’s been teaching at the University of Montana since 2002, and now that he’s back in Montana, he hopes to never move again. He lives with his partner and fellow WRFI instructor, Pat Burke, in Missoula, and has had the privilege of teaching on three WRFI coures: Restoration Ecology in the Greater Yellowstone, Wild Rockies: Conservation Across Boundaries, and Colorado Plateau: Desert Canyons and Cultures. He’s delighted to be back on the WRFI Board after a 7-year stint 2006-2013.