The year was 1972, and I had recently settled into the central Wisconsin university community of Stevens Point. Young and eager to learn, I enrolled in the nationally acclaimed College of Natural Resources and selected wildlife management as my major. I set forth to earn a degree and pursue a lifelong career in the natural resources field and found it was all I expected and much, much more.

Professors Weivel, Trainer, Englehart, Heaton, Lee, Callicott, Payne, Sylvester and several others are among the list of educators that influenced my environmental-thought process. They taught me well, and to this day, I can close my eyes and hear their voices and see them standing behind lecture hall podiums.

From the classroom to the field, they exposed their students to all things wild and free. Our lessons outdoors ranged from green spaces around campus buildings, to a summer camp at the Clam Lake Field Station, to the Sandhill Wildlife Area near Babcock and of course, the nearby Buena Vista and Paul Carson Marshlands. It was there I came to know face-to-face, the greater prairie chicken.

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