2023 Nature Guardians

Christine Hirst Bernhardt
Christine Hirst Bernhardt is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Maryland. Christine brings nearly two decades of experience teaching STEM subjects to grades 7-14, with a passion for utilizing space to cultivate STEM identity. In 2021-2022, she served in Congress as an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow to advance STEM education initiatives at a national level. Her passion for all things space fostered the Excellence in Astronomy Teaching award and participation on NASA’s SOFIA mission. Christine identifies and addresses national needs in Earth and space education as the chair of the National Astronomy Education Coordinator team and U.S. member of the Global Leadership in Earth Science Education. Christine has developed programs and curricula such as a high-altitude balloon program, student space symposium and an international space camp. She holds master’s degrees in both space studies and science education. Her doctoral research centers on international astronomy education and teacher epistemologies for justice-oriented practice. She is interested in international science education and using Earth and space topics as a transdisciplinary gateway to STEM in early learning. As a retired professional mountain biker, Christine loves adventure; when she’s not setting records or recovering from knee surgery, she enjoys breaking gender boundaries in a male dominated sport and supporting women in sports.

Michelle Ferrara Peterson
After earning her Bachelor of Science in Fisheries and Wildlife, Conservation Management with a minor in physics from Michigan State University, Michelle began her career in research. This took her to many places, including Australia, Hawaii, Alaska and Antarctica. Throughout her adventures, she discovered her passion for sharing the natural world with others (especially children) and so began her love with informal science education. Michelle first worked at AstroCamp for five years in 1997 as an instructor and an assistant program director. Her zeal for education brought her to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry as the school partnership manager, where she was able to hone her skills of blending informal and formal education. In 2010, she returned to AstroCamp as program director. She feels that nothing can replace a clear night sky to spark the interest of students in astronomy.
She has been fortunate to participate in professional development training at JPL and with SOFIA. She oversaw the Research and Education Collaborative Occultation Network’s (RECON) Idyllwild Team. She is a member of the International Planetarium Society and Astronomical Society of the Pacific. She is an ACEAP Ambassador (2016 cohort) and part of the inaugural Mission Patagonia Expedition (2022) in collaboration with the MERI Foundation and Associated Universities Inc (AUI).
Currently, Michelle is exploring some new career paths and consulting when opportunities arise. She believes that the best part of science is that there is always more to discover.

Renae Kerrigan
Renae Kerrigan is the curator of science and planetarium director of the Peoria Riverfront Museum, the only multidisciplinary museum of art, science, history and achievement in the nation.
Named by Peoria Magazine as one of 40 Leaders Under Forty in 2022, she is the leading public science educator in central Illinois, a board member of Women in Leadership of Central Illinois, and a recognized leader in the national planetarium community. In her career, she has presented more than 5,000 planetarium shows and hosted online programs providing hundreds of thousands of student and visitor experiences.
She leads the museum’s science education staff and oversees planetarium, science collections and science exhibitions. She has curated four major gallery exhibitions on the Moon, Mars, and Insects, collaborating with NASA, NSF, and other agencies. She has thrice traveled to the global capital of astronomy, the Andes mountains in Chile, where she helped create “Big Astronomy,” an acclaimed international planetarium show.
A native of central Illinois, she holds a Bachelor of Arts from Bradley University. Her husband, Kyle, and she have two daughters and live in Kickapoo.

Diana Palardy
Diana is a volunteer manager and Hispanic outreach coordinator at Sight for All United, a non-profit organization that helps increase access to quality eye care. She was a professor of Spanish at Youngstown State University for 15 years and received several grants for academic projects. She collaborated with the Youngstown Historical Center of Industry and Labor to produce the Latino Voices of the Valley project, which is an oral history archive funded in part by Ohio Humanities Council. She really enjoyed Mission Patagonia and discovered her love of interpreting on that trip. Some of the most rewarding parts of the trip were getting to know the locals, hearing their stories and being immersed in nature.

Rebecca (Becky) Reid
Becky is a lifelong Californian, gardener, critter caretaker and amateur naturalist. In November 2022, she experienced the magic of Mission Patagonia, which she considers the most significant travel experience of her life and certainly the most unique. Career-wise, she identifies as a freelance educator with a portfolio career of educational projects and multiple part-time jobs. She currently teaches career planning at Cuesta Community College and coordinates National Park Service volunteer guides aboard Amtrak’s Coast Starlight train. Previously, she taught biology and Earth science for two charter schools and volunteers on the education committee for ESIP, Earth Science Information Partners.

Shannon Schmoll
Dr. Shannon Schmoll is the director of the Abrams Planetarium at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, United States. At Abrams Planetarium, she has worked on finding new ways of utilizing the immersive planetarium theater with her team and through collaborations with partners on and off campus. She holds a joint Ph.D. in astronomy and science education from the University of Michigan, where she researched integrating field trips into formal curriculum. More recently, she was the research lead on the “Big Astronomy” Project that created a planetarium show, activities and online content around astronomy in Chile. On that project she studied how people engaged in content after planetarium visits and during virtual shows. She is currently the president-elect of the International Planetarium Society (IPS) and will assume the role of president in January 2025.

Gretchen Stahlman
Gretchen Stahlman is an assistant professor in the School of Information at Florida State University. She previously served as assistant professor of library and information science at Rutgers University. Gretchen earned her doctoral degree from the University of Arizona School of Information in 2020. Her current research interests broadly include scholarly and science communication, scientific information lifecycles, and the sociotechnical systems supporting research infrastructures, resources and data management. The overall purpose of Gretchen’s present and future work is to inform open science and scholarly communication initiatives, as well as development of methods, services and infrastructures for long-term information management and responsible data science. With more than 10 years of prior professional experience related to librarianship and information management, she has also worked in an academic library, and as a documentation specialist for the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope construction project.