Meet our new Environmental Educator, Emma Hughen

Hey there! I am so excited to join the IRWA team as a year-round Environmental Educator. This role is a dream job for me. I can’t imagine anything more fulfilling than spending my days soaking up information from stakeholders, discovering new things about our watershed’s ecology, and then sharing all of that knowledge with you.

This morning as I pulled into IRWA’s headquarters at Riverbend, I was mesmerized by the networks of squirrel and deer tracks stitching the powdery snow.  I began my day tumbling down the steep path to the water’s edge, on the lookout for other wintry signs of life. New teeth marks from a local beaver and other “chew clues” dotted the path’s edge. Holes for voles and other mysterious rodents were plentiful underfoot. I saw as-yet-unidentified (by me, at least) tracks of bounders, hoppers, and waddlers down in the floodplain forest. Riverbend is one corner of the Ipswich River – and just a parcel of the watershed – and it is home to a raucous bunch of animals, not to mention the plants and the people!

We’re all connected, everywhere. The Ipswich River is a home for plant and animal life, a site of wonder and recreation, and a source of drinking water for communities in and around the watershed. Our actions have an impact on the health of the river, and the river in turn supports us and our environment. My goal as an educator is to emphasize these connections; to help folks understand that our every action is part of a network, and that the important resources we use are part of many interconnecting systems, natural and human-made.

I am coming from a background of K-12 outdoor and farm-based education in the nonprofit sector. As a part of that work, I ran a summer farm camp, and in that role I enjoyed discovering new things alongside young campers, volunteers, and passionate college-age educators making their first steps into environmental education.

I look forward to managing IRWA’s Floating Classroom program providing educational and paddling experiences to groups in the watershed, running our portion of the Greenscapes Keeping Water Clean fifth grade classroom initiative, and collaborating with youth advocates at local schools and colleges to increase awareness about the Ipswich and the challenges it faces. I can’t wait to get started. See you around the river!