Kelly Stettner
It is a vision of families immersing themselves in the natural world, understanding it, and protecting it. This vision includes herself – and in the words of novelist Norman F. Maclean, a river runs through it.
The river in Kelly's vision is Vermont's Black River, which wends its way through Springfield, where Kelly lives and works, on its way to the lovely Connecticut. While crossing a bridge over the Black with her husband one day in 2000, Kelly, who was then 30, looked at the shopping carts and debris in the water below and complained, "Somebody ought to do something about that." Her husband replied, "Well, you're somebody."
"It was as if a previously unseen door had been flung open," Kelly recalls. Inspired by her husband's challenge, and by an ethic of community service she had learned from her parents, Kelly founded the Black River Action Team and inaugurated annual river cleanup days. Their work grew to include other watershed protection campaigns, making Kelly and the team integral members of the conservation community in southeastern Vermont. As a result, Kelly received a Community People Award in September 2003 from the Springfield Savings & Loan Association.
Kelly accomplished all of this while maintaining an administrative job at a Springfield company and starting a family with her husband, who home-schools their two children. Still, she knew she could be more effective if she earned a degree in environmental studies. Financially, the idea seemed preposterous, as she was the family's breadwinner, but in 2006 Kelly was admitted to Union Institute & University, where she was able to attend weekend classes in Brattleboro and later study online. The financial component was solved when, through VSAC's Vermont Scholarship Fund, Kelly was awarded an environmentally oriented scholarship for Windsor County residents.
Although Kelly, now 38, expects to graduate in 2009, her goals do not include a lab coat. "There’s a huge gap between the 'ologists' and the lay people they’re supposed to be helping," Kelly explains. That is why she may end up applying her expanded knowledge and skills to what she has been doing all along – educating people about their river and their watershed, and inspiring them to love and safeguard both.
"I want to help people – families – to get in the water, on the water, around the water, and to discover nature together. No instruments involved, just organic learning and enjoyment."