Melissa Mark
Director of Conservation Programming
Evaluation Team & Education Advisors
Previous Instructional Staff
DDCSP@UW is grateful to every staff member who has shaped and impacted the work we do today.
Melissa Mark spends a lot of time trying to understand the world through observation and interpretation. She has done this through studying many topics, including theater, primates in South America, birds in Central America, coffee farmers in Nicaragua, students in field ecology courses, and her niblings playing LEGO, among others. She has lived many lives in many places which has grown her ability to be simultaneously strong and vulnerable. She received her B.A. in Psychobiology from UC Santa Cruz, her Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolution from Stony Brook University as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, served as a Fulbright Scholar in Nicaragua, and was a National Science Foundation Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Columbia University. The list of things she applied for and didn’t receive is much longer. Most recently she led the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program at Northern Arizona University for four years. She currently leads holistic conservation programming at DDCSP@UW, where she strives to curate experiences that are supportive, engaging, and relevant to the multifaceted identities of students, staff, and partners.
