Utah Presenters

John C. Allen, Ph.D. is director of the Western Rural Development Center and professor of Sociology at Utah State University. Dr. Allen has spent over twenty years working with communities and conducting research on how communities create a positive future that balances economics, environmental integrity and quality of life. His primary areas of research and teaching are community sociology and environmental/natural resource sociology.

Anne J. Anderson is a Professor in the Department of Biology at Utah State University. Her research interests focus on the interaction of plants and microorganisms and the use of microorganisms in the biological control of plant disease.

Laura Ault is a Project Manager for the State and Local Planning Section of the Utah Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget. She works closely with the Utah Quality Growth Commission, the LeRay McAllister Critical Land Conservation Fund, and the Outdoor Recreation Economic Ecosystem Task Force on issues related to land use planning and conservation. Most recently, she has focused on the development and promotion of the Critical Lands Planning Toolkit and a Spatial Growth Model for the State of Utah. Laura graduated from Utah State University with a Bachelors of Landscape Architecture and a Masters of Science in Bioregional Planning.

Carl Austin, Ph.D., in his fifty years in the mineral business has evaluated over 700 geothermal prospects in the Western United States, managed the Coso geothermal project in Eastern California from inception to nine turbines producing 270 Mwe, received the Geothermal Sciences Research Council’s Geothermal Pioneer Award, and is one of the founders of Idatherm LLC, the majority owner of the Renaissance geothermal prospect in Northern Utah.

Sara Baldwin is the Community Programs Coordinator for Utah Clean Energy, a local public interest group working to advance renewable energy and energy efficiency. Ms. Baldwin is the community liaison and collaborates with diverse stakeholders to remove barriers to and increase the adoption of clean energy. She facilitates the efforts of the Utah Solar Working Group and the Utah Energy Efficiency Working Group, coordinates public relations and outreach, and assists with green marketing, state policy and regulatory activities. Ms. Baldwin graduated from the University of Utah with an Honors B.S. in Environmental Studies and a Bachelors of Arts in Spanish.

Boyd Beck has a B.S. in Chemistry from Brigham Young University and a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the University of Utah. He has wide experience in industrial research and consulting. He has also taught chemistry at Snow College for the past 30 years, where he has won awards for teaching excellence.

Todd Beutler is the General Manager for the Cache Valley Transit District. He originally hails from Dayton, Idaho and is a graduate from Utah State University. He has been in the transit industry for 15 years. Todd has managed various transit systems in California and Utah. Under Todd’s direction CVTD has seen impressive growth and continues to operate fare free.

Leo Bravo is founder and current director of the Multicultural Center of Cache Valley. He graduated in 1999 with a degree in Political Science from Utah State University, and has a Masters degree in Instructional Technology from USU as well.

Chih-Yao Chang is a doctoral student in Sociology at USU working closely with Western Rural Development Center. He comes from Taipei, Taiwan where he earned his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Sociology from National Taipei University. His research interest is to observe the macro-level development in a newly industrialized country, specifically about the issues of social inequality. Currently he extends his concerns to community-level analysis and intends to adopt an interactional field theory and network analysis to understand how rural communities, such as natural resource-dependent communities, develop collective capacity to cope with their external and internal change.

Peggy Chanson has been a member of the Executive Board of the MultiCultural Center for a year and a half. She has a B.S. in Accounting from USU and since 1973 has been a co-owner of The Italian Place. Additionally, she spends time attempting to keep up with two teenagers and being an advocate for k-12 education.

Marianne Christian earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in Elementary Education and has taught grades one through five. Currently, she teaches first and second grades at Edith Bowen Lab School at USU and works with pre-service teachers. She coordinated a brown bag lunch series in the spring of ‘07 on “Healthy Children, Healthy Planet” and wants to continue to promote these courses’ values in Cache Valley.

Robert Davies is a physicist, educator, and former meteorologist. He has worked for NASA as visiting professor of physics and as a project scientist with USU’s Space Dynamics Laboratory. Dr. Davies is currently a member of Logan’s newly formed Energy Advisory Board, an associate of the Utah State Climate Center, and a Utah fellow of the Climate Project, a national organization dedicated to public climate change education at the local level.

Susan E. Dawson, Ph.D., is a Professor of Social Work in the Department of Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology at Utah State University. Gary E. Madsen, Ph.D., is an Emeritus Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology at Utah State University. They have worked together professionally for 18 years in the area of occupational and environmental health studying the psychosocial impacts associated with toxic exposures to workers and their families.

Amy Defreese is a transplant to Utah from Michigan, where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Wildlife Ecology & Management from the University of Michigan. After several years as a wilderness ranger and hydrological technician with the Forest Service, she entered the policy arena to work for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, where she administered and enforced Section 404 of the Clean Water Act within the state of Utah. She completed a Masters in Engineering from the University of Arizona in 2005, with an emphasis in Water Resources and Planning. In August 2006, she joined the Utah Rivers Council and is now advocating for Utah’s threatened rivers in her position as River Defense Coordinator.

D. Drake has a B.S. in Plant Science from Utah State, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Agronomy from Purdue University. Since 2001, Dr. Drake has been associated with Utah State University, and now is an Extension Diversified Crops Specialist in Richfield.

Wendy Hellstern has been teaching for 15 years with 14 of those being in the fifth grade at Greenville Elementary. She earned her Bachelors and Masters degrees at Utah State University. Wendy has written several grants to aid in the development of an outdoor classroom at her school and has served on the Classroom Feederwatch Advisory Board for Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology. Over the years Wendy has accompanied many of her students to Teton Science School where they participated in the excellent outdoor programs offered there.

Ann M. Maes has worked closely with the Spanish speaking community for over 20 years. She has attended training in several areas. One of the most important trainings was in San Antonio, Texas where she attended MACC—the Mexican American Cultural Center—for intensive training in the culture of the Mexican people. She was there for four weeks and learned and walked with the people of Mexico to know what their needs were and why. She enjoys helping them integrate into the English-speaking community.

Sandra McIntyre helped start the Utah Vital Signs Sustainability Indicators Project in Fall 2006, along with Wayne Martinson of the Utah Population and Environment Coalition board, and she directs the research and outreach for the project. She has managed a number of projects in higher education and has served as an instructional designer of e-learning courseware for various corporate and educational clients. Her training includes a Bachelors degree from Swarthmore College and a Masters in Education from Georgia State University.

Eric Newell is in his tenth year of teaching, the last five of which were spent at Mount Logan Middle School teaching sixth grade science. Originally a Natural Resources major at USU, Eric switched to Elementary Education when he realized he could have a greater impact in and out of the classroom. Eric is the author of a handful of outdoor and educational articles, as well as one book about his true love: Idaho’s Salmon River: A River Runner’s Guide to the River of No Return.

Ann Peralta received her B.S. in Environmental Science from Minot State University, Master of Public Administration from University of Arkansas with emphasis in Natural Resource Administration, chair of Cache County Water Advisory Board, serves on Executive Committee of Utah Water Users Board. She is married to Dr. Richard Peralta, professor of Biological and Irrigation Engineering at USU, and partner of Peralta and Associates Inc.

S. Peterson received a double B.A. in English and Japanese at Brigham Young University and a Masters in ESL from the University of Hawaii. Peterson is Dean of Humanities at Snow College. His project work includes fund- raising and farm production model prototyping.

Dean Quayle was raised in the Logan area and graduated from Utah State University. An Air Force career followed with assignments in Europe, Vietnam, Thailand and various state side locations. Upon retirement from the Air Force he spent 15 years working for Thiokol in the Safety Department. Now happily retired, Dean gets involved in various community activities which include Cache Community Connections, Multi-Cultural Center Board of Directors, Cache Valley Transit Board of Directors and church service.

Edward H. Redd, MD, received his B.A. in Chemistry from Brigham Young University in 1982, and his Doctor of Medicine from the University of Utah Medical School in 1986. He completed Internship and Residency in Internal Medicine at Oregon Health Sciences University in 1989. From 1989–2005, he practiced Internal Medicine in Logan. He has been Deputy Director and Medical Officer for Bear River Health Department since 2005.

Christopher Sands, ASLA, AICP received his Masters Degree in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning (LAEP) from Utah State University in 1994 and his Bachelor of Landscape Architecture degree from the University of Georgia in 1991. He is a Licensed Landscape Architect in the State of Utah and a Certified Planner who serves as Principal and Planning Division Manager at BIO-WEST, Inc. in Logan, Utah. He possesses over 24 years of work experience, including 16 years with BIO-WEST. Mr. Sands is a founding member of the Cache County Agricultural Advisory Board (2002) and has served as Secretary of the LAEP Advisory Board since at Utah State University. He also serves as a member of the Board of Trustees for the Stokes Nature Center in Logan Canyon and as a commissioner on the Cache County Planning Commission.

Tim Watkins joined Cache County as a part-time Trails Coordinator in 2005 to help create a comprehensive trail and parkway plan for the region. He also works as a Senior Planner at Envision Utah in Salt Lake City, where he has worked with communities between Box Elder County and Utah County since 2002. Tim completed a Masters Degree from Utah State in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning in 2001.

D. Wendel has a B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering. Professor Wendel has been a research engineer for Conoco Production Research, a development manager for Petroleum Testing Service, Inc. and since 1990 has been a faculty member of Snow College.