Brian Boerner

Brian Boerner and Mother Earth are old friends. Vegetable gardens and fruit trees graced his boyhood Haltom City home. He's an Eagle Scout with years of outdoors experience. He worked his way through TCC delivering flowers. And he's a respected environmental expert. 

Boerner is the City of Fort Worth's Environmental Management director. His department is focused on quality of air, water, soil and much more. With family roots in farming and ranching and his love of nature, math and chemistry, "it made sense to focus my skills in this direction," Boerner said. He credits TCC with nurturing his growth. 

He entered TCC in the fall of 1982. He'd earned $500 as a summertime camp counselor.  "That was perfect for books and tuition.

"TCC provided me a gateway to higher education," he said. Costs were affordable and schedules flexed to accommodate his work demands. In 1984, Boerner graduated with an Associate Degree in Chemistry.

By 1986, he held a Bachelor of Science Degree in Chemistry from the University of North Texas. One benefit of higher education, he said, is learning "what you don't want to do. And I knew I didn't want to spend the rest of my life in a lab." 

He went to work for a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency subcontractor, identifying and assessing superfund sites in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, New Mexico and Louisiana. In 1990, he joined the City of Fort Worth to help identify contaminated sites. He also began graduate work at UNT, earning a Master's Degree in Environmental Science in 1995. 

For Boerner, earning a graduate degree was all about applying a natural lesson: "Education is the key to advancing yourself."