The Skokie Park District’s Lee Hansen, manager of the Emily Oaks Nature Center since 1988, last week was named one of 31 winners of the ‘George B. Rabb Force of Nature Award’ by the Chicago Wilderness Alliance (CWA), honoring exceptional efforts across a four-state area by individuals, organizations, and projects across the region.

The Alliance wrote the following about Hansen:

“A tireless and trailblazing leader, Lee Hansen continues her lifetime commitment to building connections to the natural world, lighting a generational fire in others from tots to the oldest in our community. She began her work 37 years ago, before the 13-acre site was dedicated as a nature center and has been instrumental in entrepreneurially guiding the development of nature education, sustainable land management philosophies and practice and recreational programming, all aligned with encouraging our connection to nature toward creating stakeholders. She has grown Emily Oaks from its modest beginning to a beloved community center with a distinct sense of place that welcomes and nurtures hundreds of visitors and volunteers each month.”

When Hansen started her work at Emily Oaks in 1988, it was her belief that a traditional scientific approach to the Nature Center’s programming needed to be bolstered by emotional connections, especially among children. To that end, Lee became involved in meetings of the Institute for Earth Education (IEE), alongside Steve Van Matre, founder of earth education. (IEE currently has participating institutions throughout the United States and around the world, including Canada, Great Britain, Japan, Australia, and Italy.)

Over the decades, Lee introduced dozens of earth education programs based on a wide range of education models that she created, along with her staff and even her family. She introduced the ‘earth education’ philosophy by implementing the Earthkeepers school program and also outlined a plan of development for tots that now includes the Growing Sprouts preschool program.

Hansen’s nomination was submitted by Robert Kusel. The CWA panel that evaluated the nominations was impressed with the scope and caliber of Hansen’s conservation efforts on behalf of people and nature. The awards ceremony will be held on October 22 at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum.

Hansen also won the Illinois Park and Recreation Association’s ‘2012 Excellence in Environmental Leadership Award,’ for her efforts at Emily Oaks, and was named the Skokie Park District’s employee of the year in 2009.

The Chicago Wilderness Alliance is a regional collaborative of hundreds of partner organizations and individuals working to implement landscape-scale approaches to conservation in and around the southern shores of Lake Michigan including members from Southeast Wisconsin, Northeast Illinois, Northwest Indiana, and Southwest Michigan. The Alliance brings together leaders, experts, and conservation professionals at all stages of their careers to share diverse voices and perspectives, and to work toward a common vision: creating and protecting a vibrant, accessible region where people and nature thrive.