Jonatha Gibaud
Jonatha first became associated with Eagle’s Nest when her son Joel came to camp in 1983 as a teenager. His envious sister Margot came the following year, the year she turned eight, and continued in Eagle’s Nest programs and on staff until 2006. Jonatha became a camp representative and then a trustee, and while not an Eagle’s Nest alum, she believes her professional skills as a psychologist and her community involvements have been significantly and positively informed by her association with the Nest.
After earning a B.A. in English at Wells College and an M.A.T. at Johns Hopkins University, Jonatha spent three years teaching English in a public high school and two more teaching freshman English at the University of Tennessee (Knoxville). She then completed an M.A. in Guidance and Counseling at the University of Rhode Island followed by a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University in 1977. She is the creator of the Parenting Sense of Competence Scale, widely used in research on young parents’ belief in the efficacy of their parenting. After a thirty-year career as a supervisor and teacher of graduate and post-doctoral psychology students at Vanderbilt and as a psychologist in independent psychotherapy practice, Jonatha has turned her hand to the creation of art, in the medium of watercolor, and to the care of her three horses, housed at her home not too far from the ENF campus in Pisgah Forest.
Jonatha and her husband Ken Wallston have traveled widely and always loved the outdoors. Having had many years to witness the growth in her own and others’ children in the knowledge, love of the natural world, dedication to community service, interpersonal skills, and self-confidence resulting from the Eagle’s Nest experience, Jonatha has vowed to do all she can to keep this opportunity available to other children.
