Dr. Lydia Horne is the Associate Director of Sustainable Ecotourism and Recreation Programs. Originally from Maine, Lydia spent much of her childhood exploring the woods near her family home and hiking trails across the state. With this early exposure to the outdoors, she decided to major in conservation biology at St. Lawrence University. After several seasons of fieldwork that involved gathering snowshoe hare pellets, observing wasp foraging behavior, getting stung by fire ants, and tromping through wetlands to collect insects, she returned to graduate school. Lydia has her M.S. in Forest Resources and Ph.D. in Ecology and Environmental Sciences from the University of Maine. Her primary research question asked how tourism is being impacted by climate change along the coast of Maine. She was a postdoctoral researcher in STEM education at the University of Northern Colorado where she studied how students learn complex content and skills (e.g., Food-Energy-Water Nexus, systems thinking) and helped develop a concept inventory to assess learning. Lydia joins Unity with experience teaching courses on tourism and outdoor recreation, environmental studies, and human dimensions of climate change. She values an active, inclusive approach to teaching where learners of all identities can succeed. In her spare time, Lydia likes to read, go hiking, sew (poorly), travel, and hang out with her cat.