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INRSEP Alumni

Nolan Colegrove Portrait

Nolan Colegrove (Hupa)

Forestry B.S., INRSEP, 1994

Practitioner of tribal ceremonies including Deerskin Dance, Jump Dance and Brush Dances, and caring for his people. Following the words of his ancestors, “Keep these dances going no matter what.” 

  • District Ranger, United States Forest Service Six Rivers National Forest, 2009-present; College of the Redwoods Associate Professor – Forestry courses; Intertribal Timber Council, Executive Board President 2001-2009; California Indian Forest & Fire Management Council, Executive Board President 1996-2009, and Hoopa Valley Tribe Forest Manager, 1993–2009
  • Helped establish the Tribal Gathering Policy for R5 FS and CA BLM, allowing Tribes to gather forest products without a permit on public lands, helped with the boundary adjustment of the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation (adding over 2,600 acres), helped with the development and passage of the Tribal Forest Protection Act (TFPA), & with the effort to establish the Western Klamath Restoration Partnership to work with the USFS. Lead the effort for the Hoopa Tribe’s first Tribal Forest Management Plan, Smartwood certification for Hoopa, completed TFPA agreements with the USFS for the Karuk, Hoopa, and Yurok Tribes, & the PL 93-638 agreements with the Hoopa and Karuk Tribes within the Dept of Ag/USFS for stewardship work on NFS lands. HSU Forestry Advisory Committee. Facilitated numerous stewardship agreements between the USFS and Tribes to restore prescribed burning back into the ecosystem. Served and currently serving as the Agency Administrator or representative for numerous wildfires.
Keith Parker

Keith Parker (Yurok)

Fisheries Biology, B.S. (Freshwater) 2015, Natural Resources M.S. (Fisheries), INRSEP, 2018

Keith is the Senior Fisheries Biologist for the Yurok Tribe and lectures at Cal Poly Humboldt. 

  • Responsible for co-stewarding the Klamath River’s 44 miles through the Yurok reservation
  • 2023 Awardee of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) Professional of the Year in Technical Excellence 
  • Recently selected by the Governor's Office of Planning and Research to be part of the Climate Resiliency Team
  • In 2018, he discovered two new subspecies, or ecotypes, of Pacific lamprey (a jawless fish that resembles an eel)—one that matures in the river and one that matures in the ocean. Lamprey has great cultural and historical value to Pacific Northwest tribes
  • His research has combined thousands of generations of scientific tribal observation with cutting-edge genetic sequencing
Irene Vasquez

Irene Vasquez (Miwok/Paiute)

Environmental & Natural Resources Sciences M.S., INRSEP, 2019

Irene currently works for the United States National Parks Service in *Yosemite National Park as a Cultural Ecologist where she strives to restore tribal stewardship and manages an Indigenous conservation work crew the “Yosemite Ancestral Stewards.” She also helps provide project oversight and assist with compliance tasks. Highlights include reducing heavy fuels in black oak groves to restore low intensity prescribed and cultural fire. 

*Yosemite National Park resides in the traditional territories of the North Fork Rancheria of Mono Indians of California, Tuolumne Band of Me-Wuk Indians, Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians, Kutzadika’a Mono Lake Indian Community, Bridgeport Paiute Indian Colony, Bishop Paiute Tribe and the Southern Sierra Miwuk Nation.

Corey Gray

Corey Gray (Siksika Nation Blackfoot)

Physics B.S. & Applied Mathematics B.S., 1997

  • 2017, Team Awarded a Nobel Prize for Physics for their work on black holes
  • 2015, LIGO confirmed a prediction of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves over a century ago. LIGO's discovery marked the first time gravitational waves were directly detected, the first direct observation of black holes, and the first confirmation that binary black hole systems exist in the universe. This discovery meant a whole new way of observing and learning about the universe and ushered in an entirely new field of scientific inquiry, gravitational-wave astronomy
  • 1998-Currently, Senior Gravitational Wave Detector Operations Specialist, Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in Hanford, Washington

“I grew up in southern California and went to the local California State University (CSU), which was in San Bernardino. I didn’t know what I wanted to study yet, so I was undeclared for the first year. I then wanted a change of scenery, so in my sophomore year I applied for the furthest away CSU campus, which was Humboldt State, on the coast of northern California, just south of the Oregon border. That’s where I finished my undergrad, and I decided upon studying physics. I’m not going to lie, it was hard— the courses were tough, and being away from home was difficult. What helped me was finding a new family there, thanks to the Indian Natural Resources Science and Engineering Program (INRSEP). Right when I was homesick, crying in my dorm room and wanting to leave, that’s when I found INRSEP—it kept me going, and helped me stay at Humboldt State. I did two science-related internships towards the end of my degree, which were very valuable.” ~ Corey Gray in interview with American Physical Society, Nov 01, 2023