Occidental educator bound for Galapagos after landing National Geographic fellowship

Rebecca “Bec” Detrich, the education director at Occidental’s Westminster Woods, has been named a 2015 Grosvenor Teacher Fellow by National Geographic and Lindblad Expeditions.

Their fellowships honor excellence in K-12 teaching by sponsoring 35 instructors on a trip to the Galapagos Islands each year.

The odds of Detrich being chosen were 100 to 1, and when she learned in February that she was selected, she was surprised - far more so than her friends and colleagues. They are aware of her impressive track record as a naturalist and her passion for sharing nature’s mysteries and wonders.

Detrich, 36, was chosen from 2,700 applicants, along with 34 others from several different U.S. states and three Canadian provinces. They’ll be shipping out in October aboard the National Geographic Endeavour, a 96-guest ship fully equipped with tools for exploration. Highlights of the trip will be close encounters with marine iguanas, blue-footed boobies and giant tortoises. To help Detrich acclimate to the Galapagos, her friends have gifted her with blue nail polish.

Detrich has always been interested in the environment and conservation. She earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental science from Willamette University in Oregon and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, where she focused on community-based and global conservation.

Her project work and speaking engagements have taken her around the world. In Tanzania, she met Jane Goodall and had her first opportunity to study elephants. One of her earliest projects focused on “musth,” a condition that affects mature bulls and camels and is characterized by a large rise in testosterone and highly aggressive behavior.

She also traveled to Namibia, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, Zambia and Angola, Botswana and South Africa. It is one of the few countries in the world with habitat and water resource conservation written into its constitution. There, she worked with the Cheetah Conservation Fund.

Detrich has an affinity for large mammals and marine animals. She has traveled to Borneo, the largest island in Asia, to study with the Hutan Asian Elephant Conservation Project in the Sabah region. Hutan also runs the Kinabatangan Orang-utan Conservation Program, which focuses on Orang survival rates and encourages reforestation.

Detrich has studied the world’s only fresh-water seals, the Nerpa, in 5,387-foot deep Lake Baikal, a rift lake in southern Siberia. It’s the world’s oldest (25 million years), and one of its clearest lakes, hosting 1,700 species of plants and animals, two-thirds of which are unique to this location.

Another fellowship took her to Royal National Park in Western Australia and a visit to the Ningaloo Reef, where some 500 “whale sharks” time their arrival to coincide with the spawning of their favored fish food. “Very little is known about this 40-foot-long fish,” said Detrich. Fortunately for naturalists, its six gills and spot pattern allow for tracking by NASA software otherwise used to study the stars.

In addition to her current job at Westminster Woods, Detrich leads the field science program at NatureBridge in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Its environmental science program in Yosemite National Park offers K-12 students an opportunity to learn hands-on science in one of the world’s most breathtaking geologic wonders.

“It’s a great organization,” Detrich said.

And, by the look of it, her life is a great adventure.