Bucket list for new Outdoor Center naturalist includes stronger school connections

As a new hire at the City of Eden Prairie, it’s up to Max Melby to find the best path forward for the Staring Lake Outdoor Center he now supervises. Melby is a naturalist – an expert on nature and the outdoors – so he may be well-suited to find that path.

Melby, who turns 34 on April 4, follows Stan Tekiela, who ran the Outdoor Center and its programs for the last 24 years before retiring in January.

The new supervisor and lead naturalist, who grew up in Eden Prairie, knows the lay of the land well. The son of Brian and Liz Melby, he graduated from Eden Prairie High School in 2008. He and his wife, Dayna, have a 3-year-old daughter and a son on the way.

Melby calls the new job his elusive “white whale”: the kind of work he loves, with the pay and benefits he needs, in a community that’s been his home.

“It never really left my mind that one day I want to figure out a way to get back here,” Melby said. “When I heard Stan was retiring, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, it could actually happen!’”

Melby is part of a small wave of new hires in the Eden Prairie Parks Department, including a new parks director, Amy Markle.

While he’s busy considering the Outdoor Center’s future identity, a bit of Tekiela 2.0 remains. Before departing, the former supervisor scheduled summer camps and numerous other Outdoor Center activities.

Melby’s science teaching experience ranges from elementary to high school, including at Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center near Finland, Minnesota. He’s seen every level of a small school’s operation, which Melby says will help him manage and shape a growing, sustainable Staring Lake Outdoor Center, based in the log cabin on Staring Lake’s north shore.

But, Tekiela’s fingerprints are everywhere at the Outdoor Center, and Melby says it will take time to determine what changes lie ahead.

“I feel I’m too early in this role to say, ‘This is the identity,’” he said. “It’s going to take some time to transition. Where I am now is still gathering some data.”

Yet, he already knows that his goals include a program with more visibility to residents and better connections to students and teachers in Eden Prairie Schools across all grade levels. “I want it to be easy for them to do field trips. I want it to be easy for them to interact with us,” he explained.

“I would like this place to be more noticed, more visible to people,” he added.

“It is our job to connect people with green spaces.This is the perfect job for me. I know this space. I know this place.”