People

Dr Brook Moyers in Folger's Marsh collecting plant specimens.

The Nantucket Field Station offers credited university courses taught by UMass Boston professors or visiting investigators. We rotate a list of immersive field courses every two or three years to offer students options. We are open year round and have many researchers from other educational institutions and agencies use the station to conduct research, visit with a group field trip or conduct a workshop. Courses, research and scholarly activity span disciplines.

Station Staff

station director yvonne vaillancourt standing outside

Director of the Nantucket Field Station, Yvonne Vaillancourt, photo by Dan Levesque

Yvonne Vaillancourt is the year-round, in-residence Director of the Nantucket Field Station. Yvonne has been managing the field station since 2016, she is a biologist with 30 years of experience working for UMass Boston. Student interns assist the director in managing operations, activities, courses and research at the station. Hybrid interns visit year-round to assist in a range of long-term monitoring studies of biodiversity and zonation in the marsh, on the beach and in the water. Interns are mostly from UMass Boston but could also be from Nantucket attending other schools, or visiting from other institutions. Station interns assist our many visiting faculty doing research, leading groups or teaching courses. You may see them working at the station, at field sites on the island or at outreach events like the high school Science Fest in March on Nantucket and on the Boston Campus.

Faculty

Luis DeLeon Reyna

Dr Luis DeLeon Reyna teaches field ornithology early in the summer. Luis is an associate professor in the Biology Department at UMass Boston. He is an evolutionary biologist with interests in how anthropogenic disturbances and global change could affect evolutionary processes in natural populations.

Dr Luis DeLeon Reyna

Elizabeth Boyle

Dr. Elizabeth Boyle teaches Marine and Coastal Ecological Research Methods every other summer on Nantucket. Her PhD is in Coastal Marine Ecology & Salt Marsh Biology. Beth is the Director of the Academic Achievement Service Center at UMass Boston, School for the Environment.

Helen Poynton

Dr. Helen Poynton is an associate professor ecotoxicology in the School for the Environment at UMass Boston and also serves as our Undergraduate Program Director. Helen just will be teaching ENVSCI 480 Biodiversity of Freshwater Invertebrates on Nantucket this summer and her students will continue to contribute to the local understanding of invertebrates between natural and farmed bogs.

Helen Poynton

John Dobyns

John Dobyns joins us from St. Norbert College and teaches the Spiders of Nantucket every other summer on Nantucket. John and his students collect and identify vast numbers of spiders from a variety of habitats on Nantucket. Frequently contributing new names to the species list and samples held at Maria Mitchell Association's Natural History Museum on Nantucket.

Juanita Urban-Rich

Dr. Juanita Urban Rich is a professor at UMass Boston, but visits Nantucket routinely with her graduate students to carryout research on on Microplastic in conjunction with the UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station. We are grateful for the local support and funding from the Nantucket Land and Water Council, ReMain Nantucket and the Great Harbor Yacht Club.

Juanita Urban Rich

Roberta Wollons

Dr Roberta Wollons is a professor of history at UMass Boston and teaches This Land is Your Land, a course on the environmental movement through the lens of the Cape and Islands. She also teaches the Whaling Women of Nantucket. Professor Wollons' research specializations are in American Progressive Era history, women's history, and the history of education.

Roberta Wollons

Stephanie Wood

Dr Stephanie Wood is a research assistant professor in the School for the Environment and instructor of Biology for the Biology Department at UMass Boston. Stephanie's expertise is on gray seal biology and she teaches our marine mammal biology course and a pinnipeds field trip course.

Mark Borrelli

Dr Mark Borrelli is a research fellow at UMass Boston, he runs multiple laboratories including one at the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies. Mark's specialty is Coastal Geology; Non-Cohesive Sediment Transport; Seafloor Mapping. He teaches our Coastal Mapping and Coastal Geology courses on Nantucket.

Mark Borrelli

Meet Our Interns

Year Round, Summer, Hybrid

Nantucket Field Station interns Lilly Pelton and Christina Murdock spent last summer here at the field station, assisting with eelgrass monitoring and marine invasives. In the fall, winter and spring they could be seen here when not in Boston at the main UMass Boston campus where they work as ambassadors to the world of field studies here on Nantucket, at the field station.

Last summer Lily worked on a bird vocalization study with Dr. Luis DeLeon Reyna. Christina is also part of Jesse Farmer's Marine-Paleo lab in Boston. All interns assist on a number of monitoring projects and interface with the public, leading walks and activities.

Kyrie Chung, a PACE apprentice has joined our team this fall and spring, looking forward to Kyrie joining us at Science Fest in March at the Nantucket High School where we will have two activity tables.

Student standing in a salt marsh holding a net.

We wish our former interns well in current and future endeavors:Anh Le, Pat Lillis, Connor Roth, Julia Fiske, Hannah Vered, Brooke Steadman, Adriana Voci, Alexa Lynn, Susan Fabijanic, Nick Lombardi and all previous!