Maureen Brooks named outstanding alumnus

Allegany College of Maryland named Maureen Brooks, who has devoted 20 enthusiastic years to forestry and greater appreciation for natural resources, its outstanding alumnus for 1999.

As a regional education specialist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Brooks’ Forest Service job puts her enthusiasm to great advantage – right where she can reach others about the importance of trees and forests in the environment.

The former Maureen Lancaster of LaVale, Brooks was presented AC’s outstanding alumnus award at the college’s 37th commencement exercises, May 16, 1999. She graduated magna cum laude (with high honors) from the college in 1978, earning AC’s forest technology degree at age 19.

After a year in South Carolina with Westvaco and 4 ½ years in West Virginia with the U.S. Forest Service, working as a technician in the Monongahela National Forest, Brooks returned to Maryland in 1984.

She and her husband, Stephan, whom she met in AC forestry classes, relocated to his home county, Baltimore, and Brooks began employment with the state agency.

She worked as a forest technician for five years, then assumed a new position that was itself new for DNR; education specialist. Later, she took a DNR job title new for her: fire prevention specialist.

Brooks then returned to her prior area with DNR, but with expanded responsibilities. As regional education specialist, she covers six Central Maryland counties and Baltimore City, working to raise public awareness of the value of trees and forests.

She coordinates the Big Trees Program, an effort to identify old trees across the state. This recognition-and-education program is approaching its 75th anniversary, having been founded by the state’s first forester.

“We’ve always had visionary forestry in Maryland,” Brooks explains. “This program recognizes owners for their appreciation of trees and for their stewardship.”

Another major component of Brooks’ job is teacher education. She devises and conducts professional development courses for classroom teachers in the summer. This train-the-trainer approach enables Brooks to extend her reach by providing information that teachers can use with their students.

Her work here, Brooks explains, is all about “the importance of forests and trees and their role in the environment. It’s really important that kids understand our place in the environment and what our responsibilities are.”

She also coordinates the state’s Smokey Bear program, the well-known effort to head off unwanted, human-caused fires. Brooks has a role in fire education nationwide through her service on the Wildland Fire Education Working Team.

This interagency team, whose members are drawn from state and federal agencies nationwide, is charged with coordinating wildfire education training throughout the United States.

“I do enjoy my work,” Brooks explains. “I’ve been very fortunate. In the realm of a forest technician, I’ve been able to go further than I had imagined. And it’s been very satisfying.”

Others have taken notice. She was selected by DNR for an outstanding employee award. Among other awards, she won national commendation for her fire prevention activities.

More recently, Brooks was among the first five recipients of a Graduate Forestry Technician Achievement Award from the Council of Eastern Forestry Technician Schools, which covers the Eastern U.S. and Canada.

The awards are presented to forestry technician school alumni who have made a significant contribution to the forestry profession or to the education of technicians. Brooks was the only American to receive the award in 1995, its inaugural year.

Brooks contributes toward the education of future technicians through service on a panel of outside advisors who help guide AC forestry curricula. She has served on the Forestry Advisory Committee for more than a half-dozen years and been its chair at least half that time.

Brooks, who entered college right after her 1976 graduation from Bishop Walsh Middle-High School, values the education she received at AC and appreciates her continuing involvement with the college.

“It was an experience I’ve never forgotten,” Brook explains. “The commitment that the faculty had, how they trained you and the expectations they had of you, are some of the things I look for in new technicians.”

In addition, she appreciates the school on a personal level. “I met so many kinds of people there. We (with her husband, Steve) have many close friends from there. I’m very grateful for what AC has meant to me.”

Over the past seven years in part-time study, Brooks has continued her own education for personal growth and professional development. She was to receive a bachelor’s degree in biology from Towson University one week after being presented the outstanding alumnus award of her alma mater.

The daughter of Joan Lancaster of LaVale and the late C.A. “Soupy” Lancaster, Brooks and her husband, a Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. employee, are the parents of two children, Christopher, 6, and Eva, 5. They reside in Reisterstown.