Hayden Nelson, Past Chair

As president of the ECC, I help coordinate the more specialized activities of other officers. I also represent the ECC in communicating with ASEH leadership and am an ex officio voting member of ASEH's Executive Council.

Hayden L. Nelson is a Ph.D. Candidate in History at the University of Kansas where he specializes in environmental history in the nineteenth-century North American West. His dissertation is a forest history of the North Woods region of northern Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, and Ontario's Lake Superior watershed. 

Trevor Egerton  

Trevor Egerton is the ECC Mentorship Coordinator. He is looking forward to continuing to build on a successful mentor program from ASEH 2025 in Pittsburgh to help ensure that different generations of environmental historians continue to connect broadly and deeply. If you have thoughts, feedback, or ideas, about mentorship in ASEH please reach out!

Trevor is a PhD candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder where he studies the intersections between racial segregation and outdoor recreation in the American South from the New Deal to the 1960s. In particular, he examines African American outdoor recreation at segregated southern state parks, seeing what these parks illuminate about the connections between the rise of outdoor recreation and the Civil Rights Movement.

Dale Mize  

Dale Mize is the Conference Coordinator for the ASEH Early Career Caucus. His role focuses on organizing social outings and networking opportunities for the Early Career Caucus during the ASEH Conference.

Dale is a History PhD student at the University of Illinois studying how health concerns shaped the beef industry in the United States from 1945 to 1995. His research seeks to understand how anxieties about disease and diet impacted both human and cattle bodies, while also transforming beef itself as a product of consumption.

Paige Groot 

As the Fundraising Coordinator, Paige is responsible for advancing the fundraising initiatives for the Early Career Caucus in partnership with ASEH leadership.

Paige Groot is a PhD student at Queen’s University where she studies colonial environmental history, with a focus on the Lesser Antilles and the broader British Atlantic. Her research uses HGIS (historical geographic information systems) to map imperial and creole ecologies in the early modern Caribbean.

Alex Miller 

As Events Coordinator, Alex plans and sees through networking, skills development, and community building events for ECC members. He brings his passion and experience for developing strong communities, both professional and social, to this position. As an MA student in 2020-2021, Alex was the social chair of Colorado State University’s history graduate student association. When he’s not working on his dissertation he can be found around Bozeman, Montana’s vibrant bluegrass scene—either playing mandolin or listening intently. Please reach out to Alex with any questions, concerns, or event ideas via email or on the ECC Discord.

Alex is a PhD Candidate at Montana State University studying public lands and economic transitions in the late twentieth century Colorado Plateau. He employs methods from history and resource geography to examine the roles rural communities play in federal land management and community advocacy. His dissertation examines the designation of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah and how this event and its aftermath led to the Recreation Economy—an economic structure sold as a sustainable balance of economy and environment.