Mona Ellerbrock Intro to Conference

[Aimee Houghton <aimeeh@igc.org>]

Introduction by Mona Ellerbro

My name is Mona Ellerbrock, and I have two positions: Director of
Environmental Hazard Management (EHM) Unit of University Extension, UC Davis,
and as the team leader for the UC Davis Mare Island (MI) Iniative, reporting
to the Office of Research at UC Davis. I have directed the EHM Program for
eight years. My environmental contamination work began over 13 years ago
working as a Peace Corps volunteer on a water project in Togo, West Africa.

We have been working extensively over the last year with a large group of
educators, and shipyard civilian employees retraining Mare Island workers to
do their own environmental remediation. Working with labor groups, the
private industry councils, community colleges and the faculty of UC
Davis we
have succeeded in securing some grant money to continue our retraining and
research efforts. We are one of the 16 recipients of the DoD Environmental
Education Partnership Awards. Also, MINSY and UC Davis will team up to
perform the phase I ecological Risk Assessment (ERA) for the shipyard.
We are also working with McClellan Air Force Base, in retraining/education
and in "green technology" development.

As one institutional member of the MI Education Consortium, I wrote and
submitted a joint OEA/EDA draft planning proposal on behalf of both UC Davis
and the consortium to continue the role of educational institutions in the
defense conversion process in Vallejo. This consortium consists of 13
institutions including 5 CSU campuses, UC Davis, and the Vallejo Unified
School District.