2006 Kansas Solid Waste Management
Hall of
Fame
Stan Slaughter has a long history as an effective and inspiring educator. Stan attended college on a basketball scholarship starting at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and ultimately graduating from Rockhurst College in Kansas City. He holds a master’s degree in Biology from University of Missouri-Kansas City.
He first taught science in Junior High in the Kansas City area and in 1976 was honored as KC area Science Teacher of the Year. After leaving teaching in 1980, Stan worked as the lead instructor for Midland Energy Institute, a contractor for the Carter Administration’s Solar and Energy Conservation programs. He founded Slaughter Energy Enterprises in 1982 providing solar and energy conservation products and services to the Kansas City area. In 1987 He co-founded the Heartland All Species Project, an environmental education non-profit organization. Heartland organized Kansas City’s Earth Day celebrations for 8 years and produced some of the most innovative festivals and programs in the US. While at Heartland Stan started The Composter’s Project which provided compost education programs for Kansas City, but later took him to many states. In 1991, he was funded by the Hallmark Foundation, The City of Kansas City and KCP&L to build a traveling trailer and take his compost education show on the road. This began Stan’s life as a traveling environmental educator.
Stan’s ability to entertain and educate children has been at the heart of his success. His assemblies on reducing waste have taken him to 25 states and more than 500,000 students and adults. He’s appeared at state fairs, museums, libraries, conferences and workshops, delivering many types of programs including keynote speeches. In the mid-1990s, Stan worked at several venues in Kansas, including the WORKS! Conference and the State Fair. Then in 1997, he submitted a grant application to KDHE to provide environmental education in Kansas schools. Although the grant was not funded, KDHE offered him a contract to provide programs statewide. In the eight years since, he has presented at more than 500 schools for more than 75,000 students.
Stan has always been an innovative educator incorporating songs, skits, and plays into his programs. His cassette album "In Tune with All Species" was released in 1989, followed by the "Rot N’ Roll" cassette (on composting and recycling) in 1993. His "Unintended Consequences" CD (on household hazardous waste) was released in 1998 and "The Eco-Troubadour" CD in 2002. Since then, he has updated his early releases and produced a new all-water CD titled "Water All over the World". He has also developed songbooks for his CDs, a recycling learning guide, a compost learning guide, coloring book and poster, and a card game called Compost Gin. He maintains a multi-media web site www.stanslaughter.com with over 300 pages, offering streaming audio and video, online games and compost tutorials.
Stan has been honored by a wide variety of organizations for his work. In 1993 Missouri Waste Control Coalition awarded Stan its outstanding educator award. In ’95 the US EPA Region VII picked Stan as its first recipient of the Missouri Environmental Educator of the Year award. Governor Graves gave Stan a similar award in 1997 and in 2000 the U. S. Compost Council Awarded Stan its Clark Gregory Award for outstanding compost education nationally. Just this fall (2005) the Mid-America Regional Council Solid Waste District named Stan its Environmental Educator of the Year for his work in the 5 county region around Kansas City.
Stan truly enjoys his work. As the Eco-Troubadour he’s become known across the nation and enjoys the feeling of having helped educate our youth. He lives in Lee’s Summit, Missouri and was recently engaged to be married to Linda Chubbuck, a music educator he met while on the road in Kansas in 2004.
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Stan Slaughter
The Eco-Troubadour