Wild Alabama Symposium
November 15 – 17, 2021

Thanks to a grant from the F. Allen and Louise K. Turner Foundation, OLLI at Auburn offers the Wild Alabama Symposium from November 15 – 17, 2021 at the Solon Dixon Forestry Education Center in Andalusia, Alabama. Exciting programming, delicious meals, and restful lodging are all available. This event is open to OLLI members and the public. Space is limited.

Event Details:
  • Dates: November 15-17, 2021
  • Location: Solon Dixon Forestry Educational Center, 12130 Dixon Center Rd. Andalusia, AL 36420
  • Cost: (see registration tab for more information)
    • Full package: $160
    • Partial package: $90
Speakers

Anne Markham Bailey is a writer based in Birmingham, Alabama. A graduate of Barnard College at Columbia University in New York, Bailey majored in East Asian Studies with a concentration in Chinese language and literature.

Senior Biologist Mark Bailey at Conservation Southeast, Inc. has over 20 years of field experience in the Southeast. For almost 10 years prior to his work with CSI, Mark was Terrestrial Zoologist for The Nature Conservancy’s Alabama Natural Heritage Program. He has extensive experience with rare, threatened, and endangered amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.

Janice Barrett first volunteered as an artist and writer at the Bankhead Monitor in 1992, continuing when it became Wild Alabama in 1994, and Wild South in 2004. She joined the staff in 2002, and has since created a variety of National Forest programs for Alabama communities, families, children, and Native American youth. Janice helped create Wild South’s volunteer wilderness ranger program for the Cheaha, Dugger Mountain, and Sipsey Wilderness Areas, and continues to coordinate Bankhead National Forest volunteers in stewardship and biodiversity conservation.

Tina Mozelle Braziel is the author of Known by Salt (Anhinga Press), winner of the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry, and Rooted by Thirst (Porkbelly Press). She has been awarded an Alabama State Council on the Arts fellowship and an artist residency at Hot Springs National Park. As the Magic City Poetry Festival’s 2019 Eco Poet, she collaborated with the Cahaba River Society to develop eco-poetry curriculum and videos.

Jim Brown, professor emeritus Samford University, is a native of Tennessee. He earned a PhD from European History Vanderbilt. Jim taught history and occasionally folklore at Samford for 45 years. Jim has been an avid canoe and wade fisherman for over 60 years. He now serves on the Alabama Humanities Alliance Project Scholar for Smithsonian Museum on Mainstreet "Water/Ways" exhibit currently touring Alabama.

Curtis Hansen is the Plants Collections Manager at The Freeman Herbarium at Auburn University. The Herbarium contains approximately 75,000 vascular plants, over 3,000 fungi, 2000 lichens and 1,500 bryophytes. The herbarium is the largest in the state and has been designated the state herbarium. The specimen holdings are richest from Alabama and the southeastern United States though collections also exist from every state in the US and every continent in the world except Antarctica.

Maggie Johnston lived near the Talladega National Forest and taught science at the Alabama School for the Deaf in Talladega for many years. She "retired" from teaching and moved to live near the Bankhead National Forest and work at Camp McDowell as the director of McDowell Environmental Center and later Dean of Education at McDowell where she helped start the McDowell Farm School and Magnolia Nature Preschool. She "retired" ... again unsuccessfully and is now the Executive Director of Wild Alabama.

James Stiles is a PhD candidate in Wildlife Sciences in the School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences. He leads educational programs at the Solon Dixon Forestry Education Center.

Sierra Stiles is a COSAM alumna who received a master’s in biology. She is currently pursuing a second master’s in science education in the College of Education at Auburn. From early childhood, she has devoted a tremendous amount of time and resources to the outdoors.

Registration
  • Full package includes programming, meals, and lodging. Cost $160
  • Partial package includes programming and meals (lodging on your own, possible hotels listed below). Cost $90
Registration for the Wild Alabama Symposium begins August 16. Check back.

Register Now

Hotels near Solon Dixon Forestry Educational Center, Andalusia, AL
  • Holiday Inn Express & Suites Andalusia, an IHG Hotel (26 miles from Solon Dixon Center)
    16727 US-84, Andalusia, AL 36421
    (334) 427-2740
  • Best Western Andalusia Inn (22 miles from Solon Dixon Center)
    305 Western Bypass, Andalusia, AL 36420
    (334) 222-9999
  • Days Inn by Wyndham Andalusia (26 miles from Solon Dixon Center)
    1604 Dr, M.L.K. Jr Expy, Andalusia, AL 36420
    (334) 539-8269
  • Quality Inn Express (22 miles from Solon Dixon Center)
    1311 M.L.K. Jr Expy, Andalusia, AL 36420
    (334) 222-8891

Last Updated: August 16, 2021