The Inland Seas Education Association (ISEA) based in Suttons Bay has appointed a new Education Director and Chief Scientist.

Christine Diana holds a master’s degree from the University of Michigan’s department of natural resources, where she specialized in aquatic resource ecology and management. She also earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from St. Mary’s College in Indiana, with minors in American history and environmental studies.

Christine Diana

ISEA executive director Tom Kelly, who also serves as a skipper of the schoolship Inland Seas based in Suttons Bay, announced the appointment Friday.

“Christine comes to us with a rich background and practical experience in Great Lakes and Midwest fisheries research,” Kelly said. “Her recent interest and experience in teaching makes her a natural for this position.”

As Education Director and Chief Scientist, Diana will lead ISEA’s corps of 150 professionally trained volunteer instructors and will teach a new class of volunteers to serve aboard the schooners Inland Seas and the chartered Manitou in coming years.

In addition to her work as a graduate student instructor in U-M’s School of Natural Resources and Environment, Diana has been an adjunct instructor at Northwestern Michigan College, a fisheries technician with the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians, a research assistant with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Fisheries Division in Charlevoix, and a research assistant at the Michigan Department of Natural Resources Institute for Fisheries Research in Ann Arbor.

An avid SCUBA diver, Diana said, “My love for aquatic science began at an early age when my family used to travel all over Michigan helping my father complete his fisheries research.”

Her father, Dr. Jim Diana, is associate dean for academic programs at the School of Natural Resources and Environment at U-M.

Diana joins ISEA in its 19th season of operation. Some 70,000 students have participated in ISEA’s awarding-winning Great Lakes Schoolship program.

For more information about ISEA, call 271-3077 or visit its web site at www.schoolship.org.