Current Apprentices

Hilary Burt, Wilderness Apprentice, is psyched to be back in Leadville after being a student in RMS XVI. She grew up romping around the forests of Killingworth, Connecticut and spent her summers exploring the Thousand Islands region of the St. Lawrence River. In 2011 she graduated from St. Lawrence University as an Environmental Studies major. During those marvelous four years, Hilary led hiking and biking trips for the SLU Outing Club, co-captained the Ultimate Frisbee team, traveled abroad to Kenya, and got incredibly seasick on the SSV Corwith Cramer with SEA Semester. The mountains called to her in the summer months, which she spent working on hut crews in the Appalachian Mountain Club’s backcountry huts in the White Mountains. Post college, she sought out slightly bigger mountains in Jackson, Wyoming where she spent a winter working as an assistant pastry chef and skiing every chance she got. Her summer entailed rowing a drift boat down the Snake River, managing a campsite for one of Jackson’s rafting companies, and disappearing into the Tetons as much as possible. She returned to Colorado this fall as a teacher for High Trails Outdoor Education Center where she worked with sixth graders and led them on thematic day hikes. Hilary is thrilled to settle into the West for a while and to learn from the apprentices, faculty and students that make up the vibrant community of HMI.

Vanessa Matos, Math Apprentice, is a native of Arlington, Massachusetts, which was a pleasant enough place to grow up. Still unaware of her affinity for high-altitude sport and culture, she attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and received a BSPH in Environmental Health Science in 2011. While at UNC, Vanessa spent all of her time at rowing practice, lamenting her school’s defunct outdoor club, and listening to local bluegrass bands. She has worked for five years for Farm and Wilderness Foundation summer camps in Plymouth, Vermont and for New Hampshire’s Appalachian Mountain Club for three seasons. She prefers to spend her free time reading, daydreaming, playing music, exercising, or knitting. When she grows up, Vanessa wants to be a surfer. If for some outrageous reason her surfing career doesn’t pan out, she’d be as happy as a clam to be a math teacher and a mountain woman, which she supposes explains how she found her way to HMI!

Catherine Klem, Math Apprentice, grew up just west of Boston in the little town of Lincoln, Massachusetts. Despite a brief interest in marine biology and all things tropical, Catherine couldn’t pull her heart from the mountains and so she headed off to Middlebury College to pursue a Geology major and Math minor. At Middlebury, she spent most of her time leading trips in the Green and Adirondack Mountains, teaching skiing and snowboarding at the local ski mountain, racing bikes, coaching youth soccer and hopelessly searching for her inner musical talent (mandolin, bagpipes, clarinet—no luck). A highlight of her college career was a semester abroad in Chile where Catherine adventured in the mountains of Patagonia, played on the University soccer team and taught English. After graduating in 2010, Catherine headed to Western Massachusetts where she led hiking and biking trips for Overland in the Pacific Northwest, the High Sierra and the Southwest, and spent the offseason working in the Overland office on marketing, logistics, leader recruiting and all things nerdy. Catherine is excited to be a part of the HMI community this spring and to get back into the classroom.

Caroline Lowe, History Apprentice, was born in New York City, and grew up just over the border in Connecticut. The wilds of her backyard provided her with at least a handful of four leaf clovers, and the occasional nesting cardinal or Carolina wren. After high school she forewent college for a year to discover the decided wonderfulness of photography, New Zealand, becoming a Wilderness EMT, cooking for yoga hippies, American Sign Language and Deaf culture – all things she continued to revel in in college. She was then dropped onto Harvard’s campus for college in the sticky Cambridge heat and thus began a wonderful relationship with Harvard’s First-Year Outdoor Program (FOP). She led backpacking and canoeing orientation trips for 3 years in New Hampshire and Maine, and frolicked in the woods with other likeminded individuals.  This past summer she hiked the John Muir Trail and discovered the beauty of Californian hiking. In college Caroline also found time to study more academic things – like folklore and mythology (really!) and biology, writing her thesis on whales in Maori folklore in New Zealand, focusing on its connection to place. She can, and will, talk your ear off about this, other mythologies (including Native American), random trivia of all sorts, and the crazy spectacular things that can be found in American history. She’s also a lefty.    

Matt Dooley, English Apprentice, was born in Minneapolis and grew up playing all kinds of sports with his two younger brothers Kip and Tim, cooking (but mostly eating) great food with his mother and food writer Beth, and taking an epic kayaking trip on Lake Superior with his dad Kevin on the occasion of his 13th birthday. Matt was a religion major at Haverford College where he was also a defender on the Black Squirrel's national quarter finalist squad in 2010.  Following graduation Matt worked on a farm in California and was a community organizer in Boston. He has led canoeing and hiking trips for five summers at YMCA Camp Menogyn in Minnesota and is a nationally registered EMT. Matt plays guitar and his band The Big Carry released their first album in November 2012. Favorite things include pond hockey, open mic nights, knowledge bowls, and wilderness trips.  Matt feels lucky to be here and is looking forward to teaching and learning from everyone this semester.

Andrea Foote, Science Apprentice, grew up searching for crabs, singing to periwinkles, and exploring her natural habitat of mid-coast Maine. After a high school semester at HMI, Andrea found the Rocky Mountains as enticing as the ocean and repotted herself in Colorado Springs where she earned her B.A. in Biology, and minored in Chemistry at Colorado College. During her time at CC, she studied Russian in Saint Petersburg and Moscow, TA'ed for Biochemistry, and received a Merck award to research cyanide metabolizing soil bacteria for bioremediation of contaminated ground water. After graduating from CC she moved to Boston to join the vibrant scientific community and researched in a regenerative medicine and tissue engineering lab at Tufts University Medical School. She also worked at Dana Hall School as a House Assistant where she found a passion for working with high school students. In her free time, she enjoys playing piano, running, listening to books on tape while doing puzzles, telemark skiing, climbing, and has a severe addiction to ice cream. She embraces sustainability, having furnished her entire apartment from the dump. She is thrilled to share her excitement for science and the natural world with the HMI community.

Jack Fields, Spanish Apprentice, was born and raised in Wilton, Connecticut.  He attended Wilton High School and came to HMI for the fall semester of his junior year.  After high school, Jack attended Colorado College, where he majored in Southwest Studies.  In college, Jack explored much of Colorado and Southern Utah on rock climbing trips.  At CC, Jack led backpacking, canyoneering, and backcountry skiing trips for the outdoor recreation club.  For Jack’s undergrad thesis, he studied agro-biodiversity and conducted field research in Mexico.  After graduation, Jack worked with several other students and a professor at Colorado College on a project to install remote solar panels coupled to water pumps for livestock on the Kewa Pueblo Reservation in New Mexico.  Jack spent this past fall building furniture with his uncle in Northern California and riding down the California coast via Route 1 on his bicycle.  In addition to most outdoor activities, Jack enjoys woodworking, bowling, and singing the wrong words to songs.