Educator Spotlight: Elizabeth Warfield

Elizabeth Warfield, an educator at Grandfather Mountain Stewardship Foundation, completed her NC Environmental Education Certification.

Elizabeth provides educational programming and is also a group coordinator at Grandfather Mountain. “I get the chance to work with people doing environmental education as well as help groups plan their programming and schedules for their visit. I get to work in the woods, with animals, and at the top of a mountain, which is a truly phenomenal experience.”

Elizabeth says her favorite part of earning her certification was the career growth and networking. She credits the program with helping her find a job. “The program gave me the opportunity to expand the professional development in my career path, and I made so many wonderful  connections. I never thought environmental education would be my career path until I started working at Grandfather Mountain and started this certification. Ever since diving headfirst into environmental education, I fell in love with it and I knew this is exactly where I want to be.”

When asked about an experience in the program that stood out to her, Elizabeth says it was the NC Forestry Association’s Investigating Your Environment workshop. “The workshop was an enriching and educational experience. I truly loved the site visits because they gave me the courage to go out and adventure at other facilities on my own and to learn what other places are doing with their education and interpretation programming.”

For her community partnership project, Elizabeth coordinated a Youth Climate Summit at Grandfather Mountain for middle and high school students. Elizabeth partnered middle and high schools in Western North Carolina and with the Wild Center, a natural history center near the center of New York state’s Adirondack Park. Brad Panovich, the chief meteorologist for WCNC-TV in Charlotte was the keynote speaker. “The summit gave students an opportunity to expand their passion for caring for the environment, to meet friends who shared their same concerns and to work on making an impact in their communities.”

Elizabeth says the certification  program changed her approach to teaching. “I learned how to lead with more open mindedness and broad concepts to let students really explore every possibility that the environment has to offer. I have also become more experienced in program development and pivoting on a dime. I have become more adaptable than before when trying to make programs work for my groups.”

She says the program also changed the way she views environmental issues. “I feel so much more hope towards the environment and that even when the world may be making poor choices to protect our environment, there a tremendous amount of people that care and want to learn more about how they can make a difference and that is beautiful to me. I used to feel more doom and gloom about the state of the environment when I was doing research but in education I feel more inspired because I get to be on the team of people encouraging hope into the next generation and I have truly benefited emotionally from that.”