Kelsie Armentrout to Receive Governor's Conservation Achievement Award for Environmental Educator of the Year

Kelsie Armentrout, a former Wake County teacher and Kenan Fellow will be awarded with the Governor’s Conservation Achievement Award for Environmental Educator of the Year on September 12.

The North Carolina Wildlife Federation presents the Governor’s Conservation Achievement Awards each year to honor individuals, associations, businesses and others who have exhibited an unwavering commitment to conservation in North Carolina.

“These are the highest natural resource honors given in the state. By recognizing, publicizing and honoring these conservation leaders – be they professionals, volunteers, young conservationists or life-long conservation heroes – the N.C. Wildlife Federation hopes to inspire all North Carolinians to take a more active role in protecting the natural resources of our state,” said Tim Gestwicki, chief executive officer with the N.C. Wildlife Federation.

Kelsie is being honored for her innovation as a classroom science teacher and for connecting her students with wildlife in North Carolina. Before leaving the classroom this year to pursue a master’s degree, Kelsie taught middle school science at Hilburn Academy, a Wake County Public School in Raleigh and was a 2014-2015 Kenan Fellow.

Kelsie worked on “Students Discover,” a cooperative mammal research project with the Your Wild Life program at N.C. State University and the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences that that is helping citizen scientists survey the animals in their region with camera traps (trail cameras). Working with Dr. Roland Kays and Dr. Stephanie Schuttler from the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences, Kelsie also participated in the eMammal program as a way of bringing citizen science into the classroom.

As part of this experience, Kelsie traveled with the team to Mexico to train with teachers in Guadalajara. Kelsie applied this knowledge as soon as the school year began, and had her students use camera traps at Hilburn to do their own research. Kelsie helped created lesson plans for using the camera traps in the classroom and aligned them with middle school curriculum standards. These lesson plans are now online on the Students Discover website in addition to a short video of Kelsie’s experience in the program. 

Kelsie says her experiences with the eMammal program helped engage her students in science. “Having the opportunity for the students to see their research and their data collection directly impact actual scientists can really open a whole new door for them,” she said.

Kelsie earned her N.C. Environmental Education Certification in 2012 and was featured in a short video on the program in 2014. She had demonstrated an ongoing enthusiasm for bringing the environment into the classroom and credits the program with providing her with resources to successfully teach science.

“Getting my environmental education certification during undergrad really shed new light on science. I ended up becoming a science teacher and wanting to be a science teacher because I saw the importance of student discovery and open-ended questions,” said Kelsie.