Belize Zoo Founder to Speak at New College’s 43rd Annual Commencement, May 22

Sharon Matola, a New College alumna who has been referred to as the “Jane Goodall of Belize” by ABC Nightline, will deliver the keynote address at New College of Florida’s 43rd Annual Commencement on May 22, at 7:00 pm on the bayfront behind College Hall.  Matola is founder and director of the Belize Zoo and Tropical Education Center, which she started in 1983 to provide a home for animals left stranded after a documentary film project shot in Belize.

This is the 13th occasion on which a distinguished New College graduate has given the commencement speech. The first alum to address the graduates was Fields Medal winner and mathematician William Thurston, in 1984; the most recent was Anita Allen, professor of law and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania, in 2006.

The 2009 commencement ceremony will also include remarks by New College president Gordon E. “Mike” Michalson, who will host a private reception for graduates and their families on Thursday, May 21.

The New College Alumnae/i Association will host a toast to new graduates mid-day on May 22. Some 200 alums are expected to be in town for Commencement and Reunion Weekend.

This year’s class, which is expected to include some 170 students from throughout the U.S., will continue the College’s tradition of academic achievement, with four seniors to date having been named Fulbright Scholars for 2009-2010.  Other prestigious awards garnered by the graduating class of 2009 include: four French Teaching Assistantships; a Poe/Faulkner creative writing graduate fellowship at the University of Virginia, and New College’s first-ever Hollings scholarship from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A biology major received a post-baccalaureate fellowship in functional neuroimaging at the Duke-UNC Brain Imaging and Analysis Center, a mathematics graduate was one of only 40 students from around the world invited to participate in the NKS (New Kind of Science) Summer School in Italy, and New College’s only Goldwater Scholar in mathematics was accepted into the computer lab at the University of Cambridge in the U.K.

Originally from Baltimore, Sharon Matola came to New College in 1978 to study biology and environmental science, graduating in 1981. While enrolled in a master’s of science program at the University of South Florida, she joined a traveling Mexican Circus as part of her academic work and stayed for nearly a year. She returned to Sarasota in 1982 and then went to Belize to work as an assistant to a documentary filmmaker, managing the wildlife for conservation/nature-oriented films. After the shoot was over, she was left with a directive to “get rid of the animals,” as there were no funds to support the wildlife crew.

“I was desperate to save them,” she recalls, “as these animals were unable to be released back into the wild.  So I figured that I would start a zoo, since Belize didn’t have one.” Over the last 25 years, she has developed a world-class facility, currently home to more than 125 native Belizean species. To date, the Belize Zoo has rehabilitated nine jaguars, saving them from certain death.

“They were livestock predators, not able to be returned to the wild,” explains Matola. “I reshaped their behavior.”   Two have been sent to North American zoos in Milwaukee and Philadelphia, where Matola says they have contributed much to raise awareness about their species in neo-tropical America. Some of the cats are being kept at the Belize Zoo as research resources for scientists.

Matola’s life story – in particular her struggle to stop the Chalillo dam – is documented in the book, The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman’s Fight to Save the World’s Most Beautiful Bird (2008) by Bruce Barcott. Matola and the facility she started also have been featured in numerous documentary films, including a September 2007 segment on ABC Nightline, which dubbed her “the Jane Goodall of Belize,” a comparison to the pioneering work on behalf of chimpanzees.

There’s no question in Matola’s mind that meeting the rigors of a New College education prepared her for the unusual avenue in life she chose to follow.

“It takes drive, initiative and commitment of spirit to obtain a degree from New College,” states Matola. “That degree is not simply a piece of paper; it is a symbol of someone’s ardent dedication to achieve something difficult. The platform of courage in spirit, for me, was what was fostered through my New College experience.”

Matola will be reinforcing these points in her commencement talk on May 22 by providing significant “life-marks” from her personal life, and how she addressed those events.