Instructor Bios

Mr. Abdouch is a professional naturalist, environmental educator, design consultant and writer with nearly 50 years' experience. He is President of juST-EAMagine, an educational services company that serves schools, school districts, wildlife conservation agencies, municipalities, libraries, museums and other centers of learning.

Prior to establishing juST-EAMagine, he was the Administrator of the world famous George C. Page Museum of La Brea Discoveries in Los Angeles, California. His professional career began in nature centers, one of which he founded and directed. He served on the editorial staff of Ranger Rick’s Nature Magazine while with the National Wildlife Federation in Washington, DC, where he ultimately served as NWF’s Director of Member Programs. He has served on staff and faculty at both the University of California Irvine (University Extension and the Office of Teacher Education) and the University of Southern California (Southern California Earthquake Center, Department of Earth Sciences).

He has successfully completed many wildlife conservation education and training assignments for governments in developing countries ranging from Egypt to Botswana and India to Malaysia. In 2015, he served as a guest educator in Istanbul, Turkey where he helped train teachers to teach gifted students there. His most recent international assignment was in Qatar where he worked with specially-selected high school students before hosting them at UC Irvine for a summer science, technology and engineering program.

He also spent 10 years with the UCI Gifted Students Academy, serving in both the summer program and special academic year assignments as well as operating grant programs for the Academy.

Mr. Abdouch has been recognized and has been presented awards for his achievements by local, state and national wildlife, education and editorial organizations. He has also been credited for the designation of two National Recreation Trails for the U.S. National Trails System. Most recently (2016), he was given a Spirit of Volunteerism award by One OC.

Mr. Abdouch has written curricula for major educational experiences in forensics, natural history, ancient civilizations, marine science, moments in history, paleontology, anthropology and archaeology. He is also the author of Big M: The Mammoth of Moorpark (2015), has been published in Ducks Unlimited Magazine and is presently completing Bwana Style, a design book, a children’s book on dragons and a new forensic mystery.

He holds a bachelor's degree in General Science and a master's degree in Biology

As a young US Army combat engineer specialist, John Anderson learned to quickly improvise a variety of engineering solutions under combat situations.  Mr. Anderson later trained and worked as an industrial designer and designed many products for airliners, small utility vehicles, medical and electro-mechanical industrial products.

Later with his urban planning background, Mr. Anderson became Advanced Planning Manager for the City of Anaheim, where he initiated and directed major planning activities including computerized statistical mapping systems and transportation studies. For his urban planning experience and expertise, Mr. Anderson was awarded a State Planner Emeritus Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Mr. Anderson's major passion is flight in all its forms, including aerospace. By invitation, Mr. Anderson served as a volunteer technical member in the Google X-Prize moon landing competition. Following his passion, Mr. Anderson recently enjoyed teaching industrial and flight design/innovation-related classes in several STEM venues including the UCI Gifted Students Academy.