Meet the ELI Leadership Team

Jason BreMiller, Institute Director

Phillips Exeter Academy

Jason BreMiller teaches English and serves on the Environmental Stewardship Committee at Phillips Exeter Academy. He has taught extensively within the scope of field-based environmental humanities courses, including courses in environmental literature and adventure literature. Jason previously served as PEA's sustainability coordinator, supporting student environmental groups on campus, developing sustainability curriculum and teaching a project-based design thinking class. A former National Outdoor Leadership School instructor, Jason continues to develop curriculum for and lead place-based field excursion, most recently to Iceland and Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. He has presented and written on the intersection of Harkness pedagogy and experiential education, and his primary professional and intellectual interests involve the relationship between indoor and outdoor classrooms and orienting his students to the challenges and opportunities presented by climate change. His essays have appeared in NAIS, The Leader, and Terrain.org (forthcoming).

Stephen Siperstein, Assistant Director

Choate Rosemary Hall

Dr. Stephen Siperstein has been teaching English and Environmental Studies for over a decade at various secondary and higher education institutions, including the University of Oregon, Stonehill College and Vail Valley Academy. He currently lives and teaches at the Environmental Immersion Program at Choate Rosemary Hall, where he designs place-based curricula in the environmental humanities, co-teaches courses with educators from other disciplines, and organizes extra-curricular environmental programming. He also teaches in the English Department and directs the school’s Writing Center. His research and publications focus on developing effective strategies for interdisciplinary climate change education, and he is co-editor of the 2016 volume Teaching Climate Change in the Humanities. Stephen is also a poet and photographer, and his work has appeared in publications such as The Hopper, Saltfront, Poecology, and Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. A central goal across Stephen’s writing, teaching, and advocacy work is to bring attention to the personal and emotional dimensions of climate change and to empower young people to take action in their communities. His current joys include tagging monarch butterflies and exploring the forests and coastlines of New England with his family.

Susee Witt, Workshop Leader

The College Preparatory School

Dr. Susee Witt teaches English at The College Preparatory School in Oakland, California. For nearly 20 years, she has been a teacher and teacher coach in the Bay Area. Raised in Philadelphia and trained in Art History and American Studies at Stanford University and Middlebury College, Susee brings an interdisciplinary approach to her teaching, always looking at art, literature, history, and culture in context, and examining how race and gender operate in culture and inform our experiences in nature. Recent pedagogical activities include redesigning writing programs and developing interdisciplinary courses on the environment and climate change with colleagues in science. She finds joy in coaching both new and veteran teachers, and partnering with educators to include climate literacy in their courses and to work toward more equitable classrooms and curricula. Susee was a participant in the very first ELI, and is eager to help this year’s participants discover the shared sense of purpose, critical knowledge, and camaraderie that she has found there.

Charley Mull, Workshop Leader

Worcester Academy

Charley Mull teaches English at Worcester Academy, where he runs courses on wilderness literature and the coming-of-age novel. He writes about nature and skateboarding, and his work has appeared in Thrasher Magazine and the Kenyon Review. He coaches soccer and ultimate frisbee and in between classes skateboards with his students.

Christie Beveridge Howell, Workshop Leader

UP for Learning

Christie Beveridge Howell works as a facilitator for a non-profit organization that helps foster youth/adult partnership in schools, focusing on making positive change in the areas of wellness, sustainability, and equity. She holds her B.A. from Colby College and her M.A. from the Bread Loaf School of English at Middlebury College, and was a middle, high school and community college English teacher for 18 years. She is passionate about Shakespeare, African American literature, environmental writing, and experiential education, and her adventures with students include backpacking, canoeing, and backcountry skiing throughout New England, hiking along the coast of Ireland, and exploring Panama's rainforests. Her book reviews and nonfiction have been published in the Lawrence Academy Journal, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, and the Stonecoast Review. She lives in beautiful Burlington, Vermont, where she gets outside as much as she can. Christie participated in the first Environmental Literature Institute, and is thrilled to be a part of designing and leading it this year.

Camille Dungy, Featured Speaker

Colorado State University

Camille T. Dungy is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan UP, 2017), winner of the Colorado Book Award. She is also the author of the essay collections Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden (Simon & Schuster, 2023) and Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History (W.W. Norton, 2017), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Dungy has also edited anthologies including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry and From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great. A 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, her honors include NEA Fellowships in poetry (2003) and prose (2018), an American Book Award, two NAACP Image Award nominations, and two Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominations. Dungy’s poems have been published in Best American Poetry, The 100 Best African American Poems, the Pushcart Anthology, Best American Travel Writing, and over 30 other anthologies. She is University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University.

Ben Sollee, Guest Artist and Speaker

Ben Sollee holds a BFA in cello performance from the University of Louisville School of Music. He has released multiple studio records and EPs garnering praise from The New York Times and NPR. His music has been featured in TV shows such as "Weeds" and "Parenthood" and his score for the ABC special “Base Ballet” earned an Emmy Award in 2018.

Ben is also known for his social and environmental advocacy. Growing up in Kentucky, he developed a deep affection for the land and its people and he has collaborated on projects with Appalachian Voices, The Nature Conservancy, and Oxfam America. Currently, he works as media and production lead for Canopy, a nonprofit helping Kentucky businesses incorporate, measure and grow their social and environmental good.