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KELP is dedicated to filling its program with people from a variety of career paths, organizations, and backgrounds. All of which have an interest in the environment and leadership.
** Simply fill out the required application, and submit to become a candidate for the 2012 KELP Class.**
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The Kansas Environmental Leadership Program:
Recognized in 2003 for the CF Industries National Watershed Award, and The 2009 Excellence in Conservation and Environmental Education Awards by KACEE.
*****We would like to give a special thanks to retired KELP coordinator, Judy Willingham, for her generous donation to this year’s class. We are very thankful for her continued dedication to this program!*****
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KELP Spotlight: Tonya Richards, KELP Grad of 2011
“My spirituality is renewed through nature and the Earth on a daily basis,” says Tonya Richards, a 2011 KELP program graduate. “My place of worship is found boating down the river setting fish lines, feeding our garden with beneficial nutrients from our home-grown compost, collecting farm-fresh eggs from our hens, or just cooling off under a shade tree.” Richards says she feels best connected to nature when she steps outside her door. She realized this when she was a young child. Growing up a distance away from the nearest town, Tonya learned to reduce, reuse, and recycle at home.
“My parents were always resourceful and never wasted,” Tonya says. “We ate wild game my father hunted or fresh fish from the creek a stone’s throw away. My mother wrapped presents in newspaper, and washed and rewashed Ziploc bags.”
After a childhood of learning to make efficient use of environmental resources, she knew she wanted to keep it in her career. “Naturally, I think a career in environmental health chose me,” she says. “Even as a child, it is always where I have been happiest.”
Pursuing this calling she went to St. Martins University, in Lacey, Wash., where she earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration, with a minor in biology and management. Upon graduation Tonya began looking for possible careers that would suit her love for Mother Nature. She landed a job as the Planning and Zoning Director and County Sanitarian in Marion County, Kan., where she conducts environmental health inspections. Tonya loves what she does because it combines indoor and outdoor activities to keep things interesting each day. She is also a certified asbestos inspector and floodplain manager.
Now as a wife and mother, Tonya thanks her own mother, because “she instilled a core set of values and ethics within myself that I use daily.” These ethics taught her that she is able to make a difference in the world in whichever way she pleases, especially in the way she feels the most successful: “Helping educate citizens and keeping communities and the county safe.”
This vision keeps Tonya focused on ways to grow as an environmentalist. She recently completed the KELP program and says that it was “a great well-rounded experience. I have gained a lot of insight from the program and a useful set of leadership skills, skills that I will carry with me to inspire our community and move into forward thinking progress.”
Tonya also used KELP to her advantage to broaden her career by completing KELP for credit. It allowed her to finish the needed credits to be eligible for the Registered Sanitarian test at the national conference in June of 2012. In partial obtainment of the credits, Tonya is working with Dr. Lauri Baker of Kansas State University on a quantitative analysis study concerning water quality issues in Kansas. They have applied for a Communication Securities conference in April 2012 for their project.
KELP has helped her continue her successes within her career and as a lover of the natural world around her. Tonya tells the class of 2012, “Go into the class with an open mind and you will come out with a world full of resources, education, and great friends.”
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