About
Position: Retired director, University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum; monarch researcher and co-leader of the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project.
Karen Oberhauser recently retired as the Director of the UW-Madison Arboretum. Before coming to Madison, she and her students at the University of Minnesota conducted research on several aspects of monarch butterfly ecology, and she is now getting back into spending more time focused on monarch conservation and citizen science. Her strong interest in promoting a citizenry with a high degree of scientific and environmental literacy led to the development of a science education program that involved courses for teachers, and opportunities for youth to engage in research and share their findings with broad audiences. In 1996, she and graduate student Michelle Prysby started a nationwide Citizen Science project called the Monarch Larva Monitoring Project, which continues to engage hundreds of volunteers throughout North America. Karen has authored over 90 papers on her research on monarchs, insect conservation, and citizen science.
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