Mentors

The Carson Scholars Program is administered by the Arizona Institute for Resilience (AIR)

CARSON SCHOLAR PROGRAM FOUNDER 

Diana Liverman, Ph.D.
Regents’ Professor, School of Geography, Development and Environment

Diana Liverman is the founder of the Carson Scholars program. Her research focuses on the human dimensions of global environmental change, particularly climate impacts, vulnerability and adaptation, and climate governance. She also works on the political ecology of environmental management in the Americas. Her current projects include work on climate justice including the role of women in climate science, climate and poverty in Tucson, and earth system boundaries. She has been an IPCC lead author, an Earth Commissioner, advisor to the mayor of Tucson on climate justice, and is an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences.

Listen to Dr. Liverman's long podcast interview with UA student news about her career here.
High Country News journalist Maya Kapoor interviews Diana Liverman on climate justice here.

CARSON SCHOLAR PROGRAM FACULTY MENTORS

Throughout the scholarship year, Carson Scholars work closely with several UArizona Faculty Mentors who provide hands-on training and other resources to develop skills, strategies, and products to effectively convey the value of their research and enhance their skills in communicating science to a variety of audiences.

Kevin Bonine, Ph.D.
Director, Education Initiatives, Arizona Institute for Resilience
Professor, School of Natural Resources and the Environment

Kevin studied economics, ecology, and evolution during college. His Ph.D. research focused on evolutionary physiology in lizards. Recent research on reptiles and amphibians includes Gila monsters and canyon treefrogs, with emphasis on natural history, ecology, population genetics, and conservation. Kevin has taught many well-regarded UA courses and works to facilitate scientific communication and understanding broadly – including at Biosphere 2 which receives about 100,000 annual visitors. A believer in experiential education, Kevin teaches a popular three-week field course that explores our region from atop our sky-island mountains down to the Gulf of California. Other efforts are focused on equitably scaling undergraduate research engagement across the UArizona campus, including via the Vertically Integrated Projects program. Kevin has served on the boards of directors of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and Friends of Saguaro National Park.

Rachel Gallery, Ph.D. 
Joint Associate Professor, School of Natural Resources and the Environment and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Rachel Gallery is an Ecologist and an Associate Professor in the School of Natural Resources and the Environment and Ecology and Evolutionary Department at the University of Arizona. Rachel earned a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a B.S. from American University. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow of Wolfson College at Oxford University and a Staff Scientist at the National Ecological Observatory Network before joining the UA faculty in 2011. She leads a research group that has published 25 papers on the ecology of plants and soils in response to fires, land use change, and climate change. Rachel is an Associate Editor for the journal Functional Ecology and regularly speaks at local outreach events and international conferences. A 2017 Tucson Public Voices Fellow, Rachel is learning how to write and pitch ideas through the OpEd Project. She serves on the Leadership Team of the 500 Women Scientists, a not-for-profit organization whose mission aligns with her personal mission to serve society by making science open, inclusive, and accessible.

Hea-Ream Lee (Lead Mentor 2023-2024)
Lecturer, Department of English

Hea-Ream Lee, MFA, is a writer interested in science and the natural world and the ways they transect human experiences. She has a background in biology and received an MFA in creative nonfiction at the University of Arizona, where she edited fiction for Sonora Review. She currently teaches in the English department as a lecturer at the UA. Hea-Ream’s work has appeared in Shenandoah, Terrain.org, Popula, Hobart, and others, and she has received fellowships from Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference and the Wormfarm Institute. Her current project is a book about seed banks and longing. As a former Carson Scholar, Hea-Ream understands the value of an interdisciplinary space dedicated to teaching the art of science communication. She is thrilled to be returning to the program as a mentor to the next generation of Carson Scholars.