Rev. Stephen Mitten, S.J. serves as the Spiritual Director and Resident Ecology Faculty at LUREC (Loyola University Retreat and Ecology Campus). Fr. Mitten grew up in Zion, IL and worked for the Illinois Department of Conservation while he pursued his undergraduate degree in biology from Northern Illinois University in 1979.

He earned a M.Div. from the Jesuit School of Theology-Berkeley in 1991and a M.S in 2004 in Tropical Ecology and a Graduate Certificate in Tropical Biology and Conservation in 2005 both from the University of Missouri-St. Louis Whitney R. Harris World Ecology Center (formerly the International Center for Tropical Ecology).

While pursuing his master’s degree in ecology he was granted an International Center for Tropical Ecology (ICTE) Research Scholarship to assist in the study of the ecology of the White-crowned manakin (Pipra pipra) in Ecuador (2005); a Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) Student Fellow to study mangrove avian communities in Belize (2004) and a fellowship to the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, (STRI) Bocas del Toro, Panama in tropical marine ecology where he researched the behavioral ecology of Aratus pisonii, the Mangrove tree crab (2003).  He has also done ecology field research in Guyana and Venezuela.

Before returning to graduate school in ecology, he taught theology and biology at Marquette University High School (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) and at Red Cloud Indian High School (Pine Ridge, South Dakota); served as director of the Sioux Spiritual Center in Plainview South Dakota and served as director of the Deacon and Lay Ministry Formation Program for the Catholic Dioceses of Rapid City.

More recently, from 2005 until 2012 he worked in Belize, Central America where he established and directed the Environmental Science degree program at St. John’s College Junior College and served as chair of the Science and Math Department.  He was the college’s faculty moderator for GECO, the school’s ecology club and also served for a brief time as Acting Assistant Dean for the School of Professional Studies.  While at St. John’s College Junior College he taught Ecology, Evolution and the Environment (non-majors); Introduction to Environmental Studies (non-majors); Fundamental Ecological Principles; Environment and Society; Geography of Environmental Systems; Sustainable Agriculture and Aquaculture; Environmental Monitoring and Sustainable Energy; Research Methods in Tropical Ecology; and the Natural History of Belize (a joint field course with Viterbo University (LaCrosse Wisconsin).

smittensj@luc.edu
773-508-8241
Quinlan LSB 421C
Loyola University Retreat and Ecology Campus (LUREC)

SCHOLARLY PUBLICATIONS

Mitten, S., C.S. McKeon, and I.C. Feller (2004).  "Winter and summer bird communities of Twin Cayes, Belize." Atoll Research Bulletin, 527:1-21 National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.