Martha Clarvoe	Secretary	Hartwick
Andrée Conklin		Hartwick
Mark Davies	Treasurer	Oneonta
Jonathan Dokuchitz		Gilbertsville
S. Tier French		Cooperstown
Willard Harman, Ph.D.	Vice-president	Cooperstown
Jim Hill		Cooperstown
Eamonn Hinchey		Oneonta
Pam Lea		Richfield Springs
Vicky Lentz	President	New Lisbon
Jim Patrick		Cooperstown
Donna Vogler, Ph.D.		Oneonta

Martha Clarvoe, a resident of Hartwick since 1980, was elected to the OCCA board in 2000. She has a long history of involvement in environmental concerns, having participated in a junk mail recycling project with the League of Women Voters of the Cooperstown Area (of which she is a past president) and also in a pilot recycling project with six families in the late 1980s. Since joining the board, Clarvoe spends 20 hours or more weekly volunteering at OCCA. Besides helping with routine office work, she also played a key role in researching and organizing information for OCCA's light pollution brochure, researching possible recycling markets for agricultural plastics, recruiting volunteers for Household Hazardous Waste Collection Day, and producing OCCA's re-use and recycling guide for county residents. She has also worked with teachers at Cooperstown Middle and High Schools to create a recycling project for paper, bottles and cans. Clarvoe attends the Otsego County Solid Waste Committee meetings for OCCA and is a member of the Otsego County Burn Barrel Education Committee.

Andrée Conklin moved to the area in 1982 and has been a resident of Hartwick since 1993. She has been on the OCCA board since 1999. Formerly a dairy farmer in Sharon Springs, she now works as a historic domestic arts interpreter at The Farmers' Museum. Conklin is concerned about the water quality of Otsego Lake and the Susquehanna River and, in particular, about the effects of agricultural herbicides and pesticides and their impact on our soil and water. She is an advocate of recycling of agricultural plastics. She collects and distributes oil-based paints at Otsego County's Household Hazardous Waste Collection Day. These paints would otherwise be disposed of as hazardous waste. She would like to see an exchange warehouse set up for the recycling of oil-based paints.

Mark Davies, a professor at Hartwick College, holds a doctorate in Social Foundations of Education.  His concern about the environment was awakened while still in college when he learned of the Exxon Valdez spill.   Davies then became an environmental organizer by mobilizing students to protest construction of a new building on his college campus that would have destroyed sensitive ecological areas in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. When he taught high school history and psychology in New Jersey, he incorporated environmental awareness into his courses, successfully cleaning parks, land and streams with his students near his school. Since receiving his doctorate, his teaching and research have focused on place-based education, or education that takes the environmental and social phenomena of any location as its starting point.  At Hartwick College, he teaches a course titled “America’s Oil Addiction,” which addresses sustainability and consumer issues surrounding peak oil and its connection to climate change and water rights. His more recent research has examined the connections between peak oil, water issues, climate change, and the challenges these issues pose to educators trying to teach values and habits for a sustainable future. Locally, he has been involved in the Environmental Working Group of Otsego County, a network seeking to raise public awareness about peak oil and global warming and encourage sustainable lifestyles.  Through OCCA, Davies hopes to work with local farmers, and he is also concerned about the prospect of natural gas drilling in the area and its impact on underground aquifers and surface water resulting from the horizontal drilling process. 

Jonathan Dokuchitz is a lifelong resident of Otsego County, having grown up in Unadilla and Oneonta. At 18, he headed to New York City to pursue a career in the performing arts and begin his training. After eight Broadway shows, work in the film, television, and recording industries, and countless commercials, Dokuchitz returned to Otsego County full time three years ago. Now residing in Gilbertsville, he has taken the position of vice president of operations at his family's business, Custom Electronics, Inc., where he oversees the facilities, manages the Human Resources department and serves on the Board of Directors, among other responsibilities. Throughout his time in New York City, Dokuchitz kept a residence on Unadilla's Buckhorn Lake, a private wildlife refuge that instilled at a very young age his belief in the ardent preservation of our natural resources. Dokuchitz also currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Chenango, Delaware, Otsego Workforce and Custom Electronics, Inc. and is secretary of the Gilbertsville Village Improvement Society. He is a member of the Butternut Valley Alliance and is that organization’s entertainment liaison for special events. He served for one year on the Board of the Gilbertsville Center for Sustainability, looking to save the 1930s school in the village, and on an ad hoc committee formed by concerned Gilbertsville residents regarding hydrofracturing and its bi-products, working with local elected officials on protective regulations. He is a member of Greenpeace, Best Friends Animal Society, The Central Park Conservancy, ASPCA and the Animal Legal Defense Fund. Voted on to the board in September 2010, Dokuchitz will continue his involvement in the community as a spokesperson for conservation and preservation through OCCA.

S. Tier French, born and raised in Cooperstown, now splits her time between there and Boston. French, who holds a bachelor of fine arts degree from Ohio University, has travelled to all seven continents where she has experienced, first hand, the negative effects of global warming and pollution. She has been a member of OCCA since 2006 and has been a major funder of the educational tent at the Otsego Lake Festival. French, who first learned about energy conservation from her parents, believes the lessons children are taught about conservation and natural resource appreciation will remain with them throughout their lives, to be passed along to their children and even to their children’s children. She is also a member of the Lake and Valley Garden Club.

Willard Harman, who has served on OCCA's board since 1970, is a distinguished service professor and director of the SUNY-Oneonta Biological Field Station. He has been a Springfield resident since 1968, where he has been an active member of the town's planning board. His specialty is limnology (the scientific study of bodies of fresh water). In environmental matters, he is particularly concerned with "keeping an eye on Otsego" (Lake). His professional involvements include vice president of the New York chapter of the Federation of Lake Associations (FOLA), representative for New York and New England lake associations on the federal Northeast Aquatic Nuisance Species Panel, member of the Susquehanna Drainage Basin Community Assistance Consortium, Upper Susquehanna River Monitors, SUNY-Cobleskill president's advisory committee for fisheries and wildlife technology, and member of the board of Otsego 2000, a local environmental planning organization.

Jim Hill, who resides in Middlefield, earned his BS in earth science from Stony Brook University and his MA in biology from SUNY-Oneonta. He recently retired from the Richfield Springs School District where, for the first 25 years, he taught AP biology, Regents biology, and electives in human genetics and astronomy. Five years ago he became the district technology director. Over the last 10 years, Hill has twice been named a recipient of Apple Inc’s “The Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Technology” award. The Otsego Chamber of Commerce has also selected him twice for Scholar Recognition awards. In addition, Hill is a co-director of the Cooperstown Concert Series and a Town of Middlefield Historical Association board member

Eamonn Hinchey resides in Oneonta. He is a certified science teacher and teaches at Milford Central School, where he also coaches soccer and is very much involved in all aspects of the school community. His undergraduate work focused on conservation issues and he is currently writing a master’s thesis that concentrates specifically on the conservation of Otsego County lands and waters. He sees education as playing a vital and necessary role in gaining increasing support for the complex environmental and conversation issues the county faces. He says, “ I dream of making Otsego County into a mecca for responsible citizenship and sustainable environmental initiatives.”  Specifically, Hinchey looks forward to opportunities to educate people as to the “best way to obtain products from the land in a sustainable way.”

Pam Lea moved to Otsego County in 1978 after graduating from Cornell Veterinary College. Four years later, in 1981, she started the Exeter Veterinary Clinic, which she has operated for the past 33 years. In addition to the demanding rigors of a very successful practice, she has raised two children here, son Ashton, 25, and daughter Skyler, 23. As Dr. Lea puts it, she loves “the rural/small town atmosphere, the rolling hills, the abundant wildlife, the changing seasons, and the beautiful streams, ponds, and lakes.” Given her love of this beautiful land, she sees herself as an advocate for clean air, clean water, and the conservation of our natural resources.

Vicky Lentz, who joined the OCCA board in January 2007, is a biologist specializing in the immunology of large mouth bass. She is a tenured professor at SUNY-Oneonta. As an OCCA board member, she would like to see OCCA continue to expand its role countywide. Her particular areas of interest and concern are natural gas drilling, preservation of natural areas, and sustainable farming practices. Lentz is originally from southern Indiana. With her husband, Edward Lentz, she lived in the Philadelphia area for 25 years. During her undergraduate years she attended Indiana State University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Delaware. She did graduate work in plant biogeography at Rutgers University in Camden and later obtained a Ph.D. in immunology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Jim Patrick, who joined the OCCA board in March 2009, lives in Ipswich, Massachusetts and Cooperstown.  He brings to the organization an appreciation for the natural features of the Cooperstown areas as well as skills in financial management. The geography of his personal history has given him a sense of watershed stewardship.  He grew up in Cooperstown in various locations but always close to or on Otsego Lake.  Patrick attended the University of New Hampshire and has spent considerable time guiding on the Allagash River in Maine.  He now lives near a river in Ipswich.Patrick wants to lead by example through volunteering, fundraising, helping with Board involvement,  and promoting awareness in the community.  For a number of years, Patrick worked in New York City and Boston in the financial services industry.  He intends to apply his expertise in finances to OCCA’s needs for investment oversight, asset allocation and funds management.  He currently works as a consultant and spends winters as a ski patrol in Sugarloaf, Maine.  He and his wife, Stephanie, hope to pass on a love of the local natural surroundings to their three children, Kyle, Elizabeth, and Margaret.

Donna Vogler, who joined the board in January 2003, is an assistant professor of biology at SUNY-Oneonta, teaching courses in ecology, plant ecology and environmental science. A resident of Oneonta, she is a former employee of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She has been an active member of the Oneonta Susquehanna Greenway Project. Vogler was a valuable contributor to OCCA's initiative to compile a natural resources survey for Otsego County. Other interests she would like to pursue with the board include wetland protection as well as support of working farms and sustainable forestry.

The OCCA Board of Directors is comprised of volunteers. For the "OCCA Board of Directors Nomination Form," click here. To access the "OCCA Board Member Application Form," click here. For the "OCCA Board Member Job Description," click here.