A children’s nature center that canceled its summer camps this year because offinancial problems will welcome a new leader before its regular program year begins in the fall, officials announced Thursday.
Matthew Miller is expected to join the Ozark Natural Science Center on Aug. 1as its executive director, said the president of its board of directors, Jenny Garrett.
Miller will come to Arkansas from The Living River Environmental Center inBrierfield, Ala., she said.
He also has worked with the Crow’s Neck Environmental Education and Conference Center inTishomingo, Miss., and the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Townsend, Tenn., according to a news release the Ozark Natural Science Center issued Thursday. Healso worked on rebuilding the Nature Conservancy’s coastal programs in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Garrett said Miller’s career experience is on-point with the science center’s mission. He will come at a perfect time as the center reflects on its vision for “experiential” science education, she said.
“We’re about 20 years old, and we’re looking forward to the next 20 years,” she said Wednesday.
The nonprofit field-science and environmental-education center is nestled on 500 acres of Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission land. The campus is in the Bear Hollow Natural Area, about 3 miles east of Arkansas 23 between Eureka Springs and Huntsville.
Its regular program year typically runs from September through May, Garrett said. In addition, it operates summer camps and other programs, including an overnight science camp that has hosted thousands of fifth-graders over the past 20 years.
In February, the center announced it would suspend its summer-camp program and a residential environmental-education program in May because of a lackof funding.
In April, the commission’s representative on the board, Doug Fletcher, clarified that the board had never decided to close the center. The plan had always been to suspend the summer programs and to resume the programming connected with schools’ academic calendars in the fall. That was about the time the center commenced a fundraising drive, saying it was responding to a “groundswell” of public support.
Garrett explained Thursday that when officials originally considered suspending operations, they decided to not offer the camps this summer. They also considered whether to resume programs in the fall and decided that they would. As the program year progresses, they will decide whether to hold camps in summer 2014, she said.
The heart of the center’s campus includes three lodges, an education building, guest housing, faculty housing, an observation deck, nearly 8 miles of maintained hiking trails and the Stewart Springfield Memorial Outdoor Classroom.
Jenny Harmon has be acting as the Ozark Natural Science Center’s interim executive director.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 06/07/2013