The Pecos River:
Past, Present, and Future

March 9, 2007
Aquarena Center / Texas Rivers Center
at Texas State University-San Marcos

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Speaker Biographies

Timothy H. Bonner is an assistant professor in the Department of Biology at Texas State University. He received a B.S. in wildlife and fisheries science from Texas A&M University in 1992, M.S. in biology from Texas State University in 1996, and a Ph.D. in fisheries science from Texas Tech University in 2000. He has authored or co-authored over 20 publications related to native fish ecology, distribution, and conservation, including an upcoming book titled Freshwater Fishes of Texas: A Field Guide. Dr. Bonner has conducted research in the Rio Grande and Pecos River drainages since 2001.

Brock Brown first visited the village of El Cerrito in the heart of the Hispano Homeland on the upper Pecos in 1981 with Dr. Richard Nostrand as part of a graduate student seminar. Over the past 25 years he has returned often and is currently involved in a project to historically reconstruct a 1880s adobe school house in the village.  Currently he is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at Texas State University. He teaches cultural, economic, and urban geography and is an avid wildscaper, a practice that he promotes as a way to reduce the negative impacts urban sprawl.

Mark Busby, a native of Ennis, Texas, is Director of the Center for the Study of the Southwest and the Southwest Regional Humanities Center and professor of English at Texas State University-San Marcos. He is author of the novel Fort Benning Blues (2001); Larry McMurtry and the West: An Ambivalent Relationship (1995); Ralph Ellison (1991); and is editor or coeditor of John Graves, Writer (2007); The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Regional American Culture: The Southwest; From Texas to the World and Back: Essays on the Journeys of Katherine Anne Porter (2001); New Growth/2: Short Stories of Contemporary Texas (1993); and The Frontier Experience and the American Dream (1989).

Lucas Gregory is currently a project manager for the Texas Water Resources Institute in College Station where he is in charge of managing the activities and finances of various projects across the state, including the project to develop a watershed protection plan for the Texas portion of the Pecos. He received his B.S. in ag management and M.S. in water management and Hydrology from Texas A&M in May, 2006.

Kelly Hendrick is a project manager with Remme Corporation, a GIS consultancy. He has focused on aerial salt cedar mapping during recent years and completed a mapping project of the Pecos River in 2003. He graduated from Texas State University with majors in biology and geography. He is married, has a four year old daughter, and lives in San Marcos.

Jim Kimmel is a geographer and is the Jesse H. and Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Southwestern Studies. He is the Director of the Research Center for River Recreation & Tourism and is an Associate of the River Systems Institute. His professional focus is the interpretation of rivers. Texas A&M University Press published his book, The San Marcos: A River’s Story, in 2006. He is currently working on a book about the Brazos River. Kimmel earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in biology and limnology from Baylor University, an M.Phil. from Yale University in resource management, and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in geography.

Dr. John Miller Morris is an Associate Professor at UTSA specializing in cultural geography, interdisciplinary regional studies, and historical geography. He was born in the Texas Panhandle and entered school on the Navajo Reservation. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate from the honors program at UT-Austin, he completed graduate degrees in Russian and Slavic Studies (M.A.) and Community & Regional Planning (M.S.). He finished a joint-Ph.D. program at UT-Austin between the Graduate School of Architecture and the Geography Department. Dr. Morris has taught at UTSA since 1992 and he has lectured at UT-Austin, Auburn University, and Pacific Lutheran University. Dr. Morris’ thematic research interests include environmental perception, cultural geography, global issues, and especially historical geography. Regional interests include Texas, the Greater Southwest, Mexico, and Eurasia. Elected to membership in the Texas Institute of Letters, he is the author of three books: A Private in the Texas Rangers (Texas A&M University Press 2001); El Llano Estacado: Exploration and Imagination on the High Plains of Texas and New Mexico (Texas State Historical Association 1997); and From Coronado to Escalante: The Explorers of the Spanish Southwest (Chelsea House 1992). His El Llano Estacado book was honored with seven state and national book awards. Most recently he served as editor for the 2002 Lakeside Classics Centennial Volume, an annotated Spanish-English edition of Pedro de Castaneda’s Narrative of the Coronado Expedition /Relacion de la Jornada a Cibola (R. R. Donnelley & Sons 2002).

Rollo K. Newsom is a fifth-generation and nearly lifelong Texan. He was born in Sweetwater in the first third of the previous century. After graduating from Austin High School he spent three years in the U.S. Marine Corps and returned to Austin for a degree in education administration from The University of Texas. Then he earned a M.S. degree in sociology from The University of North Texas, taught two years at Memphis State University in Tennessee, and returned to UT-Austin for his doctorate, also in sociology. In 1966, while in graduate school, he accepted a faculty position at (then) Southwest Texas State College and has been there (now Texas State University) as a member of the faculty and sometimes administrator ever since. In 1995 he retired as a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Folklore but continues to teach one course (Texas Folklore) and provide academic advising in the sociology department.

Elton Prewitt holds a B.A. in anthropology and an M.A. in geography from the University of Texas at Austin. He served two years in the U.S. Army, leaving active duty in August 1967. He worked with the Texas Archeological Salvage Project at UT-Austin from 1963 until 1979. In 1979 he founded Prewitt and Associates, Inc., a cultural resources consulting firm. Upon his retirement in 2002, he was elected to the board of directors of Shumla School, Inc., Comstock, Texas, and has served as board president since February 2004. Also in 2002, he was appointed Research Fellow at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory, UT-Austin. In 2005 he was appointed adjunct lecturer in anthropology at Texas State University. A registered professional archeologist, he has over 40 years experience conducting fieldwork, analysis, and reporting of archeological materials of all ages. He has delivered about 90 papers, lectures, and talks, and is the author or co-author of over 75 reports, monographs, and journal articles.

Andrew Sansom serves as Executive Director of the River Systems Institute and Research Professor of Geography at Texas State University-San Marcos. He is a former Executive Director of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Executive Director of the Texas Nature Conservancy, and founder of The Parks and Wildlife Foundation of Texas. Under his leadership at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Mr. Sansom spearheaded several important programs, including creating the Parks and Wildlife Foundation of Texas; opening two state-of-the-art hatcheries that also serve as research laboratories, educational centers and aquariums; creating new programs to promote awareness of conservation issues in large urban areas; and slashing the backlog of deferred maintenance in the Texas State Parks System. Mr. Sansom also is a past recipient of the Chevron Conservation Award, The Chuck Yeager Award from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, The Pugsley Medal from the National Park Foundation, the Seton Award from the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, the 2005 Harvey Weil Professional Conservationist Award, The Nature Conservancy Lifetime Achievement Award, the Houston Aububon Society President’s Award, and the Sierra Club Evelyn R. Edens Award for Rivers Protection.

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Sponsored by the Southwest Regional Humanities Center, the Center for the Study of the Southwest, the River Systems Institute, and the Department of Geography at Texas State University-San Marcos.

Texas State University is a member of the Texas State University System.