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Orange High School Teacher named Mountains to Sea Scholar
Kenan Fellows Program Awarded Merck Foundation Grant to Expand Environmental Education Initiatives in the Triangle: Orange High School Teacher is Selected for Participation in the Mountains to Sea Scholar program
Andromeda Crowell
Science Department Chair for Orange High School
M.S. Biology
National Board Certified Teacher
RALEIGH - Ms. Andromeda Crowell, a teacher at Orange High School, has been named a 2022 Mountains to the Sea Scholar. This program offers professional development by the Kenan Fellows Program for Teacher Leadership at NC State University. The focus is on improving environmental education. Ms. Crowell Teaches AP Biology and Honors Anatomy & Physiology for 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. She has 10 years of experience in education, all in Orange County Schools.
The Kenan Fellows Program for Teacher Leadership (KFP) at NC State University is pleased to announce that it has received a $25,000 grant from the Merck Foundation to grow and sustain its environmental education professional development programs in the Triangle area.
This is the second year that the Merck Foundation has supported the KFP in its efforts to impact educators and their students by offering professional learning opportunities that focus on sustainability initiatives across the state. Last year, a cohort of 25 educators from Durham Public Schools (DPS) completed a cross-curricular professional development series on food and the environment. This year’s program includes 21 educators from DPS, Wake County Public Schools (WCPSS), and Orange County Schools. The 2022 Mountain to the Sea Scholars will spend a semester completing a series of in-person and online professional development sessions facilitated by Linda Dion, who teaches in Wake County and Robin Bulleri, an educator in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools. Both Dion and Bulleri are KFP alumni.
The workshops include a series of site visits that will allow the Scholars to learn first-hand from field experts on a variety of water conservation issues affecting North Carolina from wetland restoration in the mountains to aquaculture on the coast. KFP has partnered with the US Army Corps of Engineers at Jordan Lake Dam, the Walnut Creek Wetland Center, Conserving Carolina and the NC Carolina Coastal Federation to provide interactive learning experiences that the Scholars will translate into relevant lessons to use in their classrooms and share with other educators. The Scholars will receive a $100 stipend upon completion of the program. View a list of scholars on this website.
“I applied for the program to gain a better understanding of water quality, conservation efforts, and environmental justice in our community and state,” said Crowell. “I hope to use my field experiences through the program to create lessons that connect human health with water quality and the environment. Environmental science is important to me as a biology teacher because the environment has a direct impact on our health—the way we express genes, the changes to our epigenome that impact future generations, disease outcomes and more. Not to mention, we all live in one interconnected environment. It is essential to understand our impact on the environment and vice versa to ensure we all continue living here safely.”
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About the Kenan Fellows Program: Founded in 2000, the Kenan Fellows Program for Teacher Leadership addresses the critical need for high-quality professional development for K-12 educators, and is the largest (science, technology, engineering, and math) STEM-focused teacher leadership program in North Carolina.