Karen Oberhauser

Director, Monarchs in the Classroom Program; Adjunct Professor, Department of Ecology, University of Minnesota; President, Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary Foundation.

Karen has been studying monarch butterflies since 1984. She works with teachers and pre-college students in Minnesota and throughout the United States using monarchs to teach about biology, conservation, and the process of science.

"I am becoming more and more concerned with the impacts that humans have on monarchs and other organisms, and with the precarious balance between human needs and the needs of the species with which we share the planet. I'm convinced that learning as much as we can about our fellow earth-inhabitants and then sharing the amazing things that we discover will tip the balance in a direction that will be better for all of us."

Lis Young-Isebrand

Coordinator, Schoolyard Ecology Explorations

Elisabeth Young-Isebrand graduated from Macalester College in 1989 with a major in biology. She taught high school biology, chemistry, AP biology and environmental biology for seven years at Minneapolis Washburn High School. She left Minneapolis Washburn in 1999 to raise her son, work part-time in environmental education and finish her Masters degree. Elisabeth began working with Dr. Karen Oberhauser at Monarchs in the Classroom (MITC) as program coordinator in 2001. Working with Dr. Oberhauser exposed her to the powerful impact monarchs have on motivating students to ask questions and learn. In the spring of 2005 she began her current position as community program specialist for a new initiative called Schoolyards Ecology Explorations. She is interested in the ways students can learn science and other topics by studying the plants and animals in their schoolyard. She completed her M.Ed. in environmental education at the University of Minnesota in 2005.

Alma De Anda

Alma P. De Anda received her B.S in zoology from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona in 2005. Through various undergraduate research programs such as the Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program (California) and Life Science Summer Undergraduate Research Program (Minnesota), she became interested in plant-insect interactions and predator-prey dynamics. While a member of the LSSURP program in Minnesota, she worked with Karen Oberhauser and is now in graduate school in the Ecology, Evolution and Behavior program under Karen Oberhauser's advisement. Currently Alma is working on predator-prey dynamics using monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) as a model system.

"While researchers have studied how host plant defenses and temperature affect larval survival, there are few comprehensive studies of predators, and no studies of the relative importance of predators, host plant defenses and abiotic factors. I propose to identify predators across a wide range of monarch habitat to shed new light on the selective pressures exerted on the immature stages of monarchs by predators and to determine the life stage (egg or larval instar) at which predation is most important to this organism. In addition, I will study the relative importance of interactions with host plants and predators in regulating monarch population densities (other work in my lab is addressing abiotic factors). My work--involving observational field studies, empirical work, a cooperative network of volunteer citizen scientists, and modeling--will provide the first comprehensive study of monarch population regulation during the breeding portion of their annual migratory cycle."

Sarah Kempke

Program Coordinator, Monarchs in the Classroom

Sarah graduated from the U of MN in May 2005 with a BS in Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, and a minor in Technical Communication. Interested in ecology, insects, and human impacts on the environment - as well as in communicating these topics to the public - she jumped at the chance to coordinate programs at the Monarch Lab. She is constantly inspired by the hard work and dedication of the monarch students, teachers and volunteers that she interacts with every day - in whom she sees hope for future generations of monarchs, and for our world as a whole.

Sonia Altizer

Assistant Professor, Emory University

As a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, Sonia studied the interactions between a protozoan parasite and monarch butterflies. She is interested in how diseases affect natural populations of many organisms, and is currently teaching at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

"A fascinating array of parasites and diseases persist in insect hosts, and I would like to understand factors affecting parasite outbreaks in insect populations. I hope that my research on host-parasite interactions will aid in the preservation of threatened species and habitats."

Michelle Prysby

As a graduate student in the Department of Ecology, University of Minnesota and as the first Director of the Monarch Larval Monitoring Project, Michelle studied patterns of monarch distribution and abundance, and the many factors that influence these patterns. She is now the Master Naturalist Program Coordinator for the state of Virginia.

"I see a need for better communication between scientists and the public, and my passion is to help bridge this communication gap through both formal and informal education. The nationwide larval monarch monitoring program is just one example of the many possible partnerships between scientists and the public, and I intend to continue developing and promoting these partnerships throughout my career."

Athena Decker

Athena worked on the original design of this website. She now works for Americorps in the southern US, and continues to help with Monarchs in the Classroom technical work.

"I like working with monarch butterflies; they are fascinating creatures. Working in this lab has given me the opportunity to experience hands-on what research is like, something that you can't get in class."

Jolene Lushine

Jolene Lushine graduated from the U of MN with a Bachelor of Science in Biology in the Spring of 2002. She stepped into the monarch world in the summer of 2000 when she was hired as a field assistant and spent a majority of her summer monitoring monarchs in cornfields. She continued to contribute to monarch research by working on a summer Undergraduate Research Opportunity Project to determine if energy availability had an impact on male monarch mating success. She now works full time in the monarch lab assisting with the MLMP train-the-trainer sessions and volunteer correspondence. Jolene also coordinates the Monarchs in the Classroom program.

Brij Bhasin

He graduated with an Undergraduate degree in Computer Science in Dec 2003 and worked on the MITC website and Monarch Store.