Howard County Legacy Leadership
​Institute for the Environment
Got questions? Contact us by phone or email:
Barbara Schmeckpeper, Ph.D. Coordinator (410-381-5279) or
Cathy Hudson, Coordinator (410-796-7232)
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About ELL and HoLLIE
Environmental Learning and Leadership (ELL) is a learning-packed, eight-week environmental education and volunteer leadership institute offered as a non-credit course through Howard Community College. The ELL course is held 9am-4:00 pm Thursdays in February and March at the Belmont Manor and Historic Park Carriage House, except on field trip days when it is held at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD.
For a description of the class structure and curriculum see the Classes page.
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ELL is a streamlined version of Howard County Legacy Leadership Institute for the Environment (HoLLIE), introduced in Howard County in 2009.
HoLLIE is an intensive volunteer leadership and environmental education program based upon the award-winning Legacy Leadership Institute model developed by Laura Wilson, Ph.D., Director, University of Maryland Center on Aging.
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The institute’s original outreach was to persons 50+ and was designed to allow participants to use leadership skills to address environmental concerns and give back to the community, usually with 100+ hours of volunteer service to a local environmental organization.
The current ELL offering is shorter than its parent program, HoLLIE; it's open to adults of all ages, with optional field trips, and has no volunteer requirement following the classes. However, any participant who follows up the course by engaging in an approved environmental volunteer project with a county environmental organization may be certified as a HoLLIE graduate.
Meet Our HoLLIE Coordinators
Our coordinators develop the HoLLIE class curriculum and use their experience and contacts with environmental groups in the region to arrange a stellar list of speakers that cover the entire range of environmental concerns from global climate change to local food security and sustainability.