Alumni Spotlight: Chris Goforth

I spent a year at Cooper, working with the two-person staff to learn how to lead walks through the desert, work with live animals, schedule groups, inventory learning boxes, and reset the residential buildings between groups.  I got fantastic hands-on experiences in group management, developing new programs, keeping groups engaged, dealing with hazards and emergencies (I can’t tell you how many cholla encounters I dealt with!), and working with a variety of ages and group sizes.  As part of the CATTS fellowship, we were required to write journals detailing our experiences. I wrote mine as a sort of nature journal and still value the words of wisdom gleaned from the Cooper staff and all the amazing natural history I learned that year.  As an entomology graduate student, I’d had very limited opportunities to teach children or learn about species other than the aquatic insects I worked with, so I loved learning (and then teaching) about birds and desert plants, that javelina have digestive systems of steel designed to process cactus spines, and that my favorite smell in the world was wet creosote and not wet soil as I’d always thought.

I started looking for jobs toward the end of my time in graduate school, as all students eventually do. 

I had planned to go into entomology teaching of some sort and had mostly looked at jobs for aquatic entomologists with a high percentage of teaching time.  Then one fateful day, I saw a listing on Twitter for a job heading the citizen science program at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, NC.  The position was based at the museum’s outdoor education center/research field station, and if I was offered the job, I would be teaching mostly in an outdoor setting, developing programs, and managing and engaging groups of people of all ages in citizen science.  During my interview, I was asked to provide examples of experiences I’d had working with difficult groups, teaching outside, and leading programs, and I often fell back on stories from my time at Cooper as good examples of my experience. Happily, I was offered the position and am still loving my life as one of the world’s first full time, citizen science-focused staff at a museum.

I hadn’t ever intended to work at a museum, but I am so glad that I took a chance and applied as I find myself in a dream position.  Honestly, without my experience at Cooper, I never would have even considered applying for the job. I came into my position ready, able, and willing to start leading programs within a few weeks of my arrival because I’d done similar work at Cooper.  I was unfamiliar with nearly all the plants and animals (including the insects!) in my new home, but I knew I’d picked up that knowledge quickly at Cooper and would be able to do the same again. I felt entirely comfortable with the work from day one, due in a very large part to the things I learned at Cooper and the magical year I spent leading kids on hikes through the desert, holding snakes that I’m STILL scared of, and learning more about the desert I still consider home than I ever would have otherwise.

From my very first school field trip to working as a CATTS Fellow to using the skills I learned in my current position, Cooper is and always will be in my blood.  I am proud to tell people of my experiences at Cooper and all the things I learned there. I am also proud of TUSD for continuing to partner with Cooper to offer quality outdoor experiences for children throughout the Tucson.  I’ve come to understand just how important those sorts of experiences can be, both as a learner and an educator, as a child and as an adult. I will always hold Cooper in a very special place in my heart as it opened my eyes to a whole new world of wonder and possibility.  I hope it will continue to do the same for generations of Tucson’s children still to come.