Co-Manager of PARC Listening Lab
mcc5901@psu.edu
Morgan (she/her) comes to Happy Valley from Huntsville, Alabama. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology and Environmental Affairs from Colorado State University in 2020, and later a M.S. in Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management from Penn State. She is currently a dual-degree PhD student in the Department of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management and Social Data Analytics at Penn State.
Her academic and research interests focus on the human dimension of natural resources and the environment, specifically the effects of light and noise pollution on visitor experience and the environment in parks and protected areas.
Morgan came to Penn State after working with the National Park Service- Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division in collaboration with Colorado State’s Sound and Light Ecology Team. Her early career exposure to the impacts of light and noise on the natural environment inspired her to seek a social science graduate education to better understand anthropogenic light and noise in national parks and protected areas.
Shari Edelson (they / them) joined the PARC lab after a two-decade career in the field of public gardens and arboreta, most recently as Director of Operations with the Arboretum at Penn State. Shari has also worked with a number of other horticultural institutions in the mid-Atlantic region, including Reeves-Reed Arboretum, the Delaware Center for Horticulture, the Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College, and the Baltimore Parks and People Foundation.
Shari has long been fascinated by the interactions between people and landscape, and is focusing their PhD research on human impacts in parks and protected areas. Their current work examines the impacts of human fecal waste contamination in natural landscapes, focusing on strategies to effect behavior change.
Shari earned a BA in Philosophy from Goucher College, an MS in Public Horticulture Administration from the University of Delaware and Longwood Gardens, and a Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies from the University of Delaware.
Born and raised in rural Western Alaska, Elizabeth (she/her) has a strong appreciation for the connection between environmental health, wildlife, and human health. She earned her B.S. in Bi
ology from the University of Alaska – Fairbanks and a Master in Environmental Management from Yale School of the Environment. While at Yale Elizabeth worked with the New Haven Nature and Health Initiative, a collaboration of researchers, healthcare workers, and employers in New Haven promoting community health through time outdoors.
Her current academic and research interests focus on understanding the perceived and actual health benefits people receive by spending time in parks.
Molly is a first-year master’s students in the Recreation, Park, and Tourism Management program at Penn State. Molly (she/they) was born and raised in California. She received ecology and environmental degrees from UC
Santa Cruz. Molly spent the last year in Yosemite National Park, where they have gotten to see the impact nature has on people and people have on nature firsthand. Her passion for outreach and experiential learning has pushed her into working with middle schoolers as an environmental educator, where she has gotten to see amazing changes in students. Molly is looking forward to diving deeper into our impacts on protected areas, and what we can do to minimize them. Her goal is to work with NPS to continue to provide life changing outdoor experiences, while also reducing impact on the land via leave no trace principles and decreased sound pollution.
Rachel was born and raised in rural southwestern Virginia where she grew up on the Creeper Trail in Abingdon and later explored the Appalachian Trail as a college student.
She graduated from Emory & Henry College in 2010 with a B.A. in Pu
blic Policy and Community Service and again from E&H in 2013 with an M.A. in Community and Organizational Leadership. She also completed a Graduate Certificate in Wilderness Management from the University of Montana in 2022. Rachel recently moved to Happy Valley from Waco, Texas where she was a Park Ranger (Interpretation) with the National Park Service at Waco Mammoth National Monument.
As a PhD student, Rachel’s research interests focus on human dimensions of natural resources, specifically people’s views of wildlife in Yellowstone National Park, and on evaluating Leave No Trace programming to understand how people are integrating LNT principles into their work and daily lives.
Co-Manager of PARC Listening Lab
Carter Paprocki is from a small farming town in Northern Illinois where he spent most of his time outdoors.
Being an avid outdoorsman, he pursued his B.S. and M.S. is mechanical engineering from Michigan Technological University in the upper peninsula of Michigan. During this time, he began doing acoustic research focusing on structural vibration for Dr. Andrew Barnard. Dr. Barnard ended up moving back to
Penn State in 2022 to be the director of the acoustics department. Currently Carter is also at Penn State pursuing his PhD and his research focuses on machine learning applications for large acoustics datasets.
