John Shepard

John Shepard (MA Anthropology, Indiana University) is an associate professor and assistant director at Hamline University’s Center for Global Environmental Education (CGEE) and president of Cascade Communications, Inc. For more than 30 years he has worked as a media producer, writer, editor, and educator. At CGEE he directs the Center’s extensive media productions, many of which concern watershed and river education. Shepard developed CGEE’s Rivers of Life and Thousand Friends of Frogs Internet-based learning programs in the 1990s and has produced dozens of award-winning educational videos, documentaries, and interactive multimedia programs. The latter include Waters to the Sea®, a multimedia program series on watershed regions throughout North America.

In 2004 Waters to the Sea was awarded an Interactive Panda award, the top honor at Bristol, England’s Wildscreen festival, the world’s largest and most prestigious environmental media festival. CGEE’s Big Foot: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle program was an Interactive Panda finalist at Wildscreen in 2006. Shepard is producer and writer of the acclaimed public television documentary, Chased by the Light: A Photographic Journey with Jim Brandenburg, which has been broadcast throughout the U.S., Canada, Finland, and Sweden. Chased by the Light has won more than 20 national and international awards, including a regional Emmy nomination and a Gold Jury Award at the Houston International Film Festival (the world’s largest film festival). He also is the author of three books, has written and produced radio programs for Minnesota Public Radio and the Children’s Radio Network, has served as a contributing editor of Canoe Magazine, and has published numerous articles on the environment, cultural history, and outdoor recreation for newspapers and magazines nationwide.