DACC Staff Spotlight: Dona Rhea, Wildlife & Resource Management Instructor
Dona Rhea is in her 2nd year teaching at DACC. Prior to coming to DACC, she was the Conservation Educator at Delaware County for 12.5 years where she led hundreds of school presentations and facilitated community events and programs. She has her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Agricultural Education from The Ohio State University.
Dona loves to see her students do well on contests. “Seeing students compete and do well in nature and wildlife contests this school year has been exciting. Students won the Envirothon contest in 2021 and were 9th in the state of Ohio at the nature interpretation contest in November 2020.”
Dona and her husband Lee have been married for 14 years. They have an 8-year-old daughter named Makayla and a 4-year-old son named Lance. As a child, Dona grew up on a dairy farm. As an adult, Dona and her husband raise 100+ replacement dairy heifers for my family’s dairy farm.
When Dona is not doing schoolwork, she spends time on the farm helping feed calves, milking cows, and baling hay. She loves baling hay and straw all summer. Dona and her husband go to their kids’ school and extra-curricular events which is exciting watching children excel at something they love.
Dona’s advice: “As former president, Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, ‘A nation that destroys its soil, destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.’ Natural resources conservation is the wise use of natural resources. I encourage people to use natural resources in an intelligent and sustainable way.”
