Clemson and Ameris Alanis Ribeiro win TWS Diversity Awards

Clemson University’s online Master of Wildlife and Fisheries Resources program (MWFR) and Ameris Alanis Ribeiro are the recipients of the 2024 TWS Diversity Award.

Led by Thea Hagan, the MWFR is an innovative and successful online program that delivers graduate-level course work to those who would not normally have access to an advanced degree. Hagan recognized the need for such a program to provide additional education to already working natural resource professionals as well as underserved groups in the field.

Housed in Clemson’s Department of Forestry and Environmental Conservation, the non-thesis master’s degree consists of 30 credit hours with 15 credit hours of electives. Despite initial resistance from faculty, some of whom feared program graduates wouldn’t be competitive in the job market compared to traditional students, the MWFR launched in the fall of 2017 with 15 students. Since then, the program has grown significantly with an annual enrollment of over 100 students from across the country.

The MWFR program has increased graduate student enrollment in unrepresented minorities, including working women and veterans. With the coursework being delivered entirely online, the program attracts those who are place-bound, as well as those who must maintain a full-time job during their education.

“One of the greatest benefits is the added inclusivity of this teaching mode,” said Lillie Langlois, a professor in the MWFR program, in an award nomination letter. “I have many students who work full-time jobs and have families but are still able to take courses and work toward a graduate degree. Most of these students could have never gone back to school in-person with their current life responsibilities.”

She goes on to say that because of the online program, she is thrilled to see more members of the BIPOC community than ever before.  

Ameris Alania Ribeiro wins individual award

Ameris Alania Ribeiro is the director of Chicago’s North Park Village Nature Center. The public facility and urban preserve provides year-round nature educational programs to over 75,000 visitors per year.

Ribeiro incorporates diversity, equity, and inclusion in every initiative that she leads at the nature center. Of her many projects, she has led a grant-funded time-banking ecosystem project that invited community-based and social service agencies to the nature center for free use of the space.

“This project was more than the access to green space. It intentionally reframed the Nature Center as a social service agency, and shifted the idea that ecological knowledge exists in the community and that the relationships between environmental organizations and the community should be reciprocal,” said Ryan Vance in a nomination letter.

Vance, a current supervisor at the Belle Isle Nature Center of the Detroit Zoological Society, worked with Ribeiro for many years.

“Amaris thinks access through inclusion in everything that the Nature Center does,” Vance continued. She believes in intentional actions to invite visitors that have been historically excluded from conservation, such as teens of color, people of color, Latino communities, immigrant communities, and more.”

Ribeiro works tirelessly to ensure that bilingual programming is offered alongside many of the nature center’s activities including bird walks, a Little Naturalists program for children, and more. However, she recognizes that language is only one way of connecting with communities.

She has led efforts to work with Indigenous communities to decolonize land management and related narratives surrounding native species, prescribed burns, and maple tapping, among others. Additionally, Ribeiro often works to ensure revenue generated by the nature center goes back to the community it serves by contracting with people of color, women, and local artists.

Hagan, as a representative of Clemson’s MWFR program, and Ribeiro will be recognized at the 2024 TWS Conference in Baltimore, Maryland.