Camps Staff
Our staff team for 2026 will be developing over the coming months. New team members will be posted here as well as announced on our social media platforms as hires are made.
Our camps staff are professional scientists and science educators, graduate students, undergraduates, and select program alumni. We value a wide range of professional skills and career paths, in order to provide a broad set of skills training and perspective to our students. All of our staff are deeply passionate about science outreach and education in addition to their professional specializations.
Each field-based program includes at least one staff member with a Wilderness First Responder certification, ensuring quick, decisive action when dealing with any kind of injury or health concern in the field.
David Levering – Camps Director, Instructor
Museum Assistant Director, Camps Operations Director, Science Educator, Paleobiologist
Social media: @BioGeoVerse on Instagram and Bluesky
Email: DALevering@FHSU.edu
David joined the Museum staff in 2013. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a bachelors degree in geology in 2007. He also worked as a teaching assistant in the Zoology department at Oklahoma State University from 2010 to 2013, where he graduated with a Master’s of Science. Before coming to the Sternberg, David spent seven summers working in the youth science camp industry. He also worked three summers with the National Park Service at Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument in southern Idaho. There, he carried out paleontology field and lab work and worked with kids showing them geology and paleontology. He is a published researcher, with past collaborations with professional academics studying mammal paleobiology and mechanics. More recently he has moved more into leadership rather roles, including Chair of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology External Communications Committee, and member of the Fundraising Development Committee. (Past SVP comittee work includes the Education and Diversity committee.) David manages the entire camps program, and oversees program logistics, curriculum design, and operational partnerships.
Casey Bennet - Operations Management Graduate Fellow
I'm Casey Bennett and this will be my third year with the Sternberg Science Camps! I am a third-year Ph.D. student at the University of Missouri. My research interests include the Ediacaran-Cambrian transition, taphonomy, and education/outreach. I have spent the past year as the Operations Management Graduate Fellow for the camps, developing staff training modules, organizing logistics information, and making sure each camp runs smoothly and efficiently! This year, I plan to continue my work behind-the-scenes as a Site Assistant for the camps, managing student travel and coordinating with camps all over the country.
Marjie Cone, MS - Development Co-Coordinator
Marjean "Marjie" Cone is the Curator of Education at the Georgia Southern Museum . Her prior academic stops include graduate school at University of Georgia and her undergraduate degree at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, both for geosciences. Marjean was a student in our second year of Camps programs in 2015. She has been a consistent member of our staff team since 2016 when she joined us as a teaching assistant. Since then she has also worked as a lead instructor, remote operations assistant, and now as one of our fundraising development co-coordinators.
Maggie Wolf, MS - Development Co-Coordinator
Margaret "Maggie" Wolf is a non-profits science education professional in the Denver/Boulder areas of Colorado. Her academics include undergrad at University of Evanston and grad school at UC Boulder where she studied biology, Spanish, and graduate work in museum operations respectively. Margaret started as a student in our 2015 programs, and has been a consistent member of our staff teams since 2017 as a teaching assistant, then instructor, and now fundraising development co-coordinator.
Alexandra Bonham, MS - Camps Instructor
Alexandra currently works as an assistant project paleontologist, helping to document and salvage fossils across the intermountain west. Prior to consulting, she worked with the National Park Service to inventory the diverse array of fossils at Bryce Canyon National Park. Alexandra studied paleoclimate and invertebrate paleontology in the US, New Zealand and Canada before moving to the Colorado Plateau. She spends her free time learning about the unique desert ecology, past and present, of Utah’s phenomenal public lands.
Max Scott, MS - Camps Teaching Assistant
Hi! I'm Max, and this will be my second year teaching for the Sternberg Science Camps. My research background is in the evolution of animal behavior, for which I've studied several lineages of tetrapods, but most notably the mosasaurs! I'm also well-known as an educator in online spaces under the pseudonym Notorious Naturalist Max. I can't wait to bring you up to speed on the wonderful world of Natural History!
Mattison Shreero, BS - Camps Teaching Assistant
Hi everyone! My name is Mattison Shreero, and I’m super excited to be returning to the Sternberg Camps team this summer! I grew up in North Carolina, and I’ve wanted to be a geologist and paleontologist basically my entire life. To pursue this dream, I attended Carleton College in Minnesota where I double majored in geology and studio art. Since then, I’ve primarily worked as a park ranger for the US Forest Service at the National Grasslands Visitor Center and for the National Park Service at Badlands National Park. I love doing this sort of work—I get to spend my days teaching people about earth science, exploring and looking for fossils, helping with paleontology in the park, and doing fossil preparation. Working at Badlands National Park has also given me the opportunity to do research on (and obsess over) the fossils of the White River Group. I helped publish a paper naming a new genus of tiny, adorable deer from the Oligocene (if you want to check it out, search “A Tiny Deer With Big Implications” and it should come up!), and, nowadays, I'm continuing my White River Group research by pursuing a PhD at Temple University.
Outside of research, a big goal of mine is making science fun and accessible for everyone by doing science communication on social media with my partner in crime and life, Max Scott (who is also a member of the Sternberg Camps team!). As Earth scientists and educators, Max and I want to help facilitate a society-wide understanding of the basics of Earth history in the hope that this will inspire a sense of loyalty to the planet and drive people towards bettering the environment and saving our planet. Want to join us? You can find us at @geosplore and @notoriousnaturalistmax!
More to come soon!