Karlyn Haas has been named the new Marketing and & Communications Specialist for The Watershed Center.
Haas brings more than 10 years of experience in marketing and communications for education and non-profits, as well fundraising experience. She most recently served as the Grants Officer for Yavapai College in Prescott, Ariz., after serving as their Communications Manager. Since relocating to Traverse City in 2010, she has continued as a freelance grant writer, copy writer, editor and designer.
“We are so excited to have Karlyn on board with us at The Watershed Center,” said Executive Director Christine Crissman. “We feel she is a great fit and are excited to begin working with her.”
Haas holds a master’s degree in Environmental Journalism from Michigan State University and a bachelor’s degree in Geology from Hartwick College in New York. Her writing has been published regionally and nationally, including Arizona Tech Connect, Community College Times, The Great Lakes Reporter, The Lansing State Journal, MI-AWRA Michigan Water Resources, GreenPrint and The Arizona Solar Center.
“One of the reasons we moved our family back to Traverse City was to be close to the bay,” said Haas. “I’m very excited and proud to be part of an organization doing such important work in our community advocating for the protection of our greatest natural resource.”
Category Archives: Alumni
Check out this Nova National Geographic special
Anisa Abid Peters
Knight Center graduate Anisa Abid Peters worked on this Nova special about Florence’s great cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, also known as the Duomo.
It airs 9 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2014 on PBS.
Knight Center grad gets northern Michigan reporting post
Carol Thompson
Knight Center alum and 2012 MSU graduate Carol Thompson has just picked up a new gig as a business reporter for the Traverse City Record Eagle.
Carol, who reported for the center’s Great Lakes Echo from 2011 to 2012, will cover northern Michigan industry, business trends and the people who make the community tick.
And while not an environmental beat, she says that commerce takes resources, and business reporting will lead to stories on environmental impacts of local industries and some businesses’ sustainable efforts.
Carol spent two years at the Peninsula Pulse newspaper in Door County, Wis., where she wrote for all sections of the weekly paper. She reported on environmental issues, local government, health care, music and just about everything that goes on in a tight-knit, tourist community.
While at Great Lakes Echo, she covered such issues as Avian botulism, cottage food industries and the unique environmental challenges faced by islands.
Knight Center graduate wins national environmental journalism recognition
Brian Bienkowski accepts national award for environmental reporting given by the Society of Environmental Journalists
By Marte Skaara
The Society of Environmental Journalists has recognized an alumnus of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism for excellence in reporting.
Brian Bienkowski, a 2012 Knight Center graduate and former reporter for the center’s Great Lakes Echo environmental news service, received second place in the beat reporting category.
Now a staff writer at Environmental Health News, Bienkowski was recognized Wednesday for five stories under the heading of Environmental Health in the Great Lakes Region. In March his work had been recognized by the national John B. Oakes Award for environmental writing.
When he picked up his award Bienkowski talked about how our MSU professor David Poulson taught him how the area that journalists cover does not have to be a political one, but can be a watershed.
This is what the judges said about the entry: “Brian Bienkowski’s work is a study in environmental-justice reporting. Whether it is a Michigan Indian tribe fighting a new copper mine for fear that sulfuric acid will contaminate sacred waters, or tribes whose culture has been contaminated by industry, or low-income, minority communities of East Chicago where blood samples show three times the normal level of PCBs, he makes the reader understand both the scientific and human dimensions of pollution. And when it comes to more purely scientific concerns, like the role of Great Lake Trout as barometers for the wider pollution of lake ecosystems, he shows deftness and grace in explaining how the tissues of these fish can be read as a history text of the decades of pollution that have soiled these waters.”
Knight Center student Marte Skaara is attending this week’s Society of Environmental Journalists’ national conference in Chattanooga, Tenn.