In December, amidst the holiday Zoom parties and anticipation of the end of a rough year, we said "Happy Retirement" to one of the California Naturalist Program's favorite colleagues, environmental educators and mentors, Sandy Derby. To mark this milestone, the CalNat team held a small but meaningful surprise Zoom celebration, attended by some of Sandy's colleagues spanning decades. A quiet, "very 2020" way to celebrate a kind and generous person with a wide-reaching, impactful career. 

Sandy came to UC ANR in 2013 as an academic coordinator within the Youth, Families, and Communities Initiative to lead California Project Learning Tree (PLT). PLT is a long-running international environmental education program that provides professional development and curriculum to formal and informal environmental educators alike. PLT uses trees and forests as windows on the world to increase students' understanding of the environment and actions they can take to conserve it. PLT in California consists of a network of educators, scientists, forestry professionals, naturalist, and community stewards that work together to educate and take action to build a strong and sustainable California future.

Sandy focused her entire career on creating innovative environmental education curricula and programs while building effective partnerships sharing the vision of high quality ecological learning for all students. She earned her B.A. in Environmental Studies/Biology from UC Santa Cruz and an M.S. in Ecological Teaching and Learning from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She worked for a decade as a science resource teacher and 15 years in non-formal inquiry-based science education as the environmental education manager and BioSITE (Students Investigating Their Environment) program director for Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose. She spent almost eight years with UC ANR in her roll as California PLT State Coordinator, training hundreds of educators in pedagogy and best practices in experiential environmental education.

Happy retirement to our friend Sandy. We miss you already and we wish you endless days of relaxation and fun adventures. You can retire from your day job, but you can't retire from being amazing! 

PS: Don't worry, California PLT is now in the capable hands of Cynthia (Cyndi) Chavez, California PLT State Coordinator, based in Los Angeles. You can find her contact info here.