Katie Lynch, co-director of the Environmental Leadership Program at the University of Oregon, has been invited to join the Oregon Environmental Literacy Plan Program Council.

The council strives to "ensure that Oregon students become lifelong stewards of their environment and community.” The council’s goals run parallel to the “No Oregon Child Left Inside Act,” a bill signed into law in 2009 that encourages students from kindergarten to college to have hands-on learning in Oregon biomes.

Lynch has worked at the UO since 2005 and, along with her work in the Environmental Leadership Program, she is an undergraduate adviser in the Environmental Studies program. She said that her goal while advising is “making sure students understand the physical and biological world and the relation we have with it.”

Lynch began promoting environmental literacy when she had a realization that “people are disconnected from the places they live in and a lack of knowledge leads to a lack of care. They have to have a personal stake.”

An environmental anthropologist, Lynch has worked in Peru, Ecuador, Indonesia and the United States examining issues of community-based natural resource management. This has included examining the role of medicinal plants in Amazonian conservation efforts and the potential for engaged environmental education to promote conservation.

Before joining the UO she was a researcher at the Institute for Culture and Ecology, where her research focused on the relationships between forest policy and management, conservation of biodiversity and nontimber forest products. She has also facilitated various courses and workshops that examine the nexus between environmental and cultural issues.