Founder Rich Silver

  U of Earth founder, Rich Silver is a national award winning educator who has spent over thirty years investigating the mysteries of nature and human potential. He is currently a practicing EcoTherapist and EcoEducator living in the northern Sierra Nevada. During his twenty-eight year career as a California State Park Ranger he developed many educational programs, both within and outside of California State Parks.

Emphasizing his lifelong dedication to deepening and healing the human-nature relationship and promoting the rights of nature he co-founded The Endangered Species Faire in 1979, currently one of the longest running environmental education events in the nation. His The Many Voices of the American River (1996), an EcoEducation training program for guides and teachers, has gained national recognition and was the cover story for the national publication, Legacy.

Many of his other field programs, Nature as Healer & Teacher, The Spirit of the Sierra, The Secrets of Trees, The Essentials of EcoTherapy and Hearing Earth's Voice, are popular and have been highly praised.

Rich holds a Bachelor's degree in a special major Mind and Nature, a Master’s degree in Counseling and Educational Psychology, and is ABD (All But Dissertation) having completed all course work for a PhD in Applied Ecopsychology with the doctoral degree pending acceptance of his dissertation.

Described as a "rogue scholar," with a vow to get out of the ivory tower (conventional academia) and into nature, Rich is a great-grandson of the legendary abolitionist John Brown. Like his great-grandfather four generations earlier, he is a passionate nature wanderer, naturalist and defender of life. His deepest satisfactions come in service to life and his greatest pleasures arise from soulful conversations, solitude in nature, solo backcountry skiing, river running and group soul work in nature.

As a developmental ecopsychologist, Rich’s research interests are in the field of human potential and the spiral of human development. His inquiries look into the developmental stages of values & worldviews and morals & ethics (actions in service to the greater good), the unfolding of self-identity, and interspecies communication. The subject of his dissertation, titled, The Miracle of We: a Post-Rational Animism, examines the claim of Dr. George Washington Carver, “Anything will speak to you if you love it enough” and demonstrates the need for developing trans-rational knowing and awareness.

Additionally, Rich has research interests in healing and sports psychology where he investigates peak performance and self-transcendence while using a nature-based approach in mentoring & coaching youth through his local high school track team.