Brian Wheeler: Helping young minds learn about the environment

	Brian Wheeler, Elm Fork Education Center assistant director, helps thousands of school-children learn about science and the environment every year.

Working out of the Environmental Education, Science and Technology Building, Brian Wheeler is the exhibit coordinator as well as assistant director of operations at the Elm Fork Education Center. Wheeler supervises the Elm Fork project's activities and programs, making sure that everything runs smoothly.

Elm Fork hosts some 15,000 children every year, mostly kindergarteners through fifth-graders, who visit the center on field trips to learn about science and the environment.

The center works to educate them about UNT's environmental programs, including environmental science, environmental ethics, environmental and community journalism, astronomy and geography. The program is also meant to foster an awareness of environmental responsibility.

"I love that it's something different every day," Wheeler says about his job.

He says he tends to be the behind-the-scenes man for the program, making sure all the details are taken care of — that the waterfall is running and the lights are turned on in an area where a class will visit. He also gets to "get his hands dirty," building and designing exhibits that thousands of people will interact with.

"He's indispensable; we can't get things done without him" says Wheeler's supervisor, Ken Dickson, Regents Professor of biological sciences and director of the center.

All through high school, Wheeler believed he would become an engineer and even wanted to attend MIT.

But after studying architecture for a year at Texas A&M University, he transferred to UNT in 1989. He was motivated partially by his older sister, who was a student at Texas Woman's University at the time, and partially by an A&M architecture professor who encouraged him to seek a background in visual art.

At first, Wheeler had been hesitant to take up art in school. His grandfather, a professional painter, showed him that many artists must struggle to make a living.

At UNT, he studied art for seven years, earning a bachelor of fine arts degree in ceramics. He was able to balance a full-time job at Eye Masters while maintaining the active life of a student.

"I was happy to take any class that they would let me in to," he says. "Ceramics was a huge challenge, and the program demanded a lot of work. The work ethic that I learned from the faculty was great."

In his spare time, Wheeler works on a new home that he recently bought with his wife. He also designs and constructs modernist furniture.

He has traveled all over the United States as well, he says, thanks to Diana Block, director of the UNT Art Gallery. Block gave Wheeler a chance to supervise and manage UNT's art exhibits, which then went on tour to cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Seattle. His knowledge of exhibit assembly and experience working with artists led, in part, to his current position with Elm Fork, and he continues working with the gallery.

BY BRYAN SHETTIG paiswri3@unt.edu

Other featured articles in this issue:

• Judy Shepard speaks about violence
• Ireland's former head of state to speak at UNT
• Hurleys honored at UNT Alumni Awards Banquet
• State cuts force May 1 benefit changes
• Spring means keeping an eye on the sky
• UNT leads Texas in number of Goldwater scholarship winners
• Staff Council gets campus development report
• New voice mail system to provide users with new and improved services
• UNT expert explains when, how parents should talk to their children about war

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