Volunteer Spotlight: Chuck Kirkpatrick

Chuck discovered St. Louis Audubon through his wife Denise, owner of the Wild Bird Center located in South County, prior to its closing.  The store had been hosting the St. Louis Audubon website which Chuck was administering. At the store he met Mitch Leachman and together they worked on redesigning the website and formalized Chuck’s position as the webmaster for St. Louis Audubon Society. Their cooperative efforts began in 2009 and Chuck continued to administer the organization’s website through 2019. With the newly developed website moving to a different platform, Chuck has had the opportunity to volunteer in different capacities, like creating an educational video series called Chemistry and Birds.

Chuck’s interest in nature is multifaceted.  For the past four years, he has been an avid beekeeper. Like any beekeeper knows, he has experienced some good honey yields, but also some colony loss, likely due to the landscaping services that routinely spray his neighboring yards. He is also interested in nature photography and was able to capture some great shots of a pair of pileated woodpeckers frequenting his suet feeder.

Chuck is a native of St. Louis and not only enjoys watching cardinals in his yard but is also very thankful to have a great baseball team like the St. Louis Cardinals to watch close to home.

Chuck and Denise have two children and have been married for 42 years. Chuck attended the University of Missouri-Columbia as an undergraduate and majored in Chemistry.  He continued his education at Indiana University earning a Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry. He then worked for Dow Chemical in Baton Rouge, LA, returning back to St. Louis in 1984 to work for SLU with Parks College of Engineering, Aviation and Technology, where he was a department chair and dean.  Then, Chuck moved to the Chemistry Department at SLU in 2003, where he still works today.  Chuck teaches general, inorganic, and computational chemistry, and also does research in computational chemistry.

Chuck has been a valued contributor to SLAS over the past eleven years. In helping get our website up and running he strived to make the information impactful and to foster awareness and respect for nature. We continue to advance these values in our updated website. Chuck’s work, interests and contributions remind us of the intersection between birds, conservation and nature that is central to our mission.

Thank you, Chuck, for your lasting commitment to St. Louis Audubon. We sincerely appreciate your technological proficiency and guidance and look forward to collaborating with you on many more endeavors!

Mitch Leachman presenting Chuck with a volunteer award.