Laura Meyer is the Vermont Master Naturalist Coordinator for the Champlain Valley chapter. She grew up in upstate New York, collecting fossils, looking at pond plankton under an old microscope, and thinking about the evolution of various forms of life.  After graduating with a degree in biology from Wells College in Aurora, New York she decided to pursue a graduate degree.  When she drove up the Vermont side of Lake Champlain to visit the Department of Zoology at the University of Vermont she was struck by the beauty of the state.  She stayed and received her Master’s degree where she studied the colony structure of a local ant, Myrmica punctiventris. After becoming enamored with her study organism, Laura went on to get her doctoral degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder investigating the genetics of social behavior using a local ant species from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.  She spent part of that time abroad in Costa Rica immersed in the natural history of that country through the Organization for Tropical Studies, and conducted independent research there on, of course, ants.

Laura, and her soon to be husband, Stuart, decided that since they thought Vermont was the most beautiful place in the world they would move there, get married, and figure out jobs so that they could stay in Vermont forever.  After a stint as a biology professor at Connecticut College and then SUNY Plattsburgh, Laura shifted focus to raising, and adventuring with, her two children Greg and Kate. With Williston as their home base they hiked, biked, paddled, sailed, skied and horse-backed through their childhood.  Laura recently completed the first draft of a book about outdoor family adventures in the Champlain Valley.