Matt Webster is an AmeriCorps member serving with the Washington Service Corps in Issaquah, Washington, with members of the Lake Sammamish Urban Wildlife Refuge Partnership.

On a warm Alabama night, we waded carefully into the tepid Gulf, seines in hand. We set up our nets, swaying with the gentle ebb and flow, and quickly got to work. As we ended the pass, we lifted our haul to survey the bounties of the intertidal world at our feet. Wondrous incredulity swept over our fifth-grade faces, as we lifted our nets to find a galaxy of life illuminating the interwoven line of our seines. Bioluminescent dinoflagellates, and comb jellyfish were intermingled throughout an aquatic menagerie, and for those brief moments of exposure, reflected in our nets the beauties of the greater body of existence.

Matt’s service is focused on conservation and stewardship education and outreach, fisheries research, and habitat restoration.

Fast forward thirteen years, and you’ll find me nowhere near the Alabama Gulf Coast, and yet no less excited by the incredible grandeur hidden in the diverse complexities of our natural world.

My name is Matt Webster, and I am an AmeriCorps member serving with the Washington Service Corps, and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. My position is based out of Issaquah, Washington, with members of the Lake Sammamish Urban Wildlife Refuge Partnership (a collaborative group of partners working to connect people in urban places with nature). My service is focused on conservation and stewardship education and outreach, fisheries research, and habitat restoration.

As indicated above, I hail from Alabama. I grew up chasing lightning bugs through resilient pine woods, and probing the vastness of macroinvertebrate form, in the teaming creeks that cut deep the foundation of land at the cusp of Appalachia. It was in these early transformative experiences that the seeds of curiosity were sewn, and a deep love for our natural world took root. I eventually attended Birmingham-Southern College (BSC), and earned a Bachelor’s degree in Biology, with an academic distinction in Leadership Studies. My time at BSC nurtured and cultivated these curious seedlings into the framework for a veritable forest of inquiry and understanding. While at BSC, I conducted field research on topics ranging from the effects of fire suppression on montane Longleaf pine ecosystems, to the effects of chemical supplements on root growth in legumes. My capstone research experience focused on aquatic invertebrates and water quality monitoring of freshwater ecosystems. My experiences at BSC not only transformed my love for, and fascination with, nature but also sparked in me a passion for knowledge-sharing, through outdoor environmental education. In January of 2015, my passion for outdoor and environmental education was more fully realized, as I completed the Southwest Outdoor Educator course with the National Outdoor Leadership School. Since then, I have been excited to lead with several environmental centers and outdoor leadership programs in Alabama, New York, and Wyoming.

As a student of Leadership Studies, I often grapple with the question of how to define leadership. I think one of the most impactful lessons that I’ve learned, is that leadership can occur profoundly from a position of service. It is this concept of leadership through service that has brought me to Washington. I traveled over 2500 miles to engage in this community-level servant leadership by educating area residents, and providing them with opportunities to invest in the rehabilitation of, and care for their natural environment. Through stewardship-focused educational programming, my AmeriCorps service connects school children with processes and functions of their natural environment, and challenges their understanding of how we fit in to a larger ecological scheme. Through fisheries-based ecological research with the USFWS, my AmeriCorps service helps grow the collective body of human knowledge, and empower action through understanding. Through ongoing habitat restoration projects, my AmeriCorps service empowers community members to act, by providing opportunities for them to lead in their community, and improve their natural environment. Though I have only been in Washington for a few months, I have already begun to see the effects of my service taking shape in profound ways.

I am excited to be a part of this AmeriCorps family of service, and can’t wait to see what the next 8.5 months of service has in store.