In this position, Dale will serve on the Ecological Society of America's Executive Committee at governing board meetings.
The Ecological Society of America was founded in 1915 to unify the sciences of ecology, stimulate research in all aspects of the discipline, encourage communication among ecologists and promote the responsible application of ecological data and principles to the solution of environmental problems. The society has more than 7,000 members worldwide.
Dale first joined the ORNL staff for a short while as a research assistant in the Environmental Sciences Division in 1975. She returned in 1984 as a research scientist in the Environmental Sciences Division. She received a 1989 Performance Improvement Process Award and a 1991 Technical Achievement Award from Martin Marietta (now Lockheed Martin) Energy Systems.
Before joining ORNL, Dale worked as a research associate in the College of Forest Resources and the Department of Botany at the University of Washington and in the Forest Research Laboratory at Oregon State University.
She worked as a research assistant in the Department of Botany at the University of Washington and in the Center for Quantitative Science in Forestry and Fisheries at the University of Washington.
Dale was a teaching assistant at the University of Washington and the University of Tennessee; an instructor at the University of Puget Sound; and an assistant professor in the Department of Biology at Pacific Lutheran University.
She is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Women in Science, the Ecological Society of America, the International Association for Landscape Ecology and Sigma Xi.
Dale has served on many scientific boards and committees, including the Environmental Protection Agency's Scientific Advisory Board Ecological Processes and Effects Committee and its Resources Strategies Committee, the National Science Foundation Panel for Human Dimensions of Global Change and the National Research Council Review Team for Brazilian Institutions.
Dale's work has appeared in more than 80 publications and she has been awarded two International Technical Communications Competition Awards for a Scholarly/Professional Article and two Technical Publication Awards from the East Tennessee Chapter of the Society of Technical Communication, in 1991 and 1992.
She earned a bachelor's degree (with honors) in mathematics and a master's degree in mathematics with a minor in ecology from the University of Tennessee, and a doctorate in mathematical ecology (an individualized program) from the University of Washington, Seattle.
She received a Puget Sound Mycological Society Student Fellowship in 1979, a Northwest Science Association Student Award in 1979, and a Ford Fellowship in 1976 and 1977.
Dale lives in Oak Ridge with her husband, Charlie, and their three children.
ORNL, one of DOE's multiprogram national research and development facilities, is managed by Lockheed Martin Energy Systems, which also manages the Oak Ridge K-25 Site and the Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant.