Educator Spotlight: Carol Hambridge

Carol Hambridge, an Environmental Engineer with a passion for educating others about environmental protection through science and art, recently completed her NC Environmental Education Certification. 

Carol volunteers for Habitat and Wildlife Keepers (HAWK), which is the Matthews Chapter of the North Carolina Wildlife Federation. She maintains a neighborhood fairy garden and “Little Owl’s Lending Library” with books about nature and stewardship. She also has a cutting garden where she grows flowers to give away through her non-profit, “Fill Up My Vase.” The garden is also used as a teaching garden. She enjoys camping, hiking, painting, photography, sewing and making digital murals.

Carol looks forward to sharing her knowledge through teaching the many stellar instructional programs. Her favorite part of the program was learning about the mobile phone apps iNaturalist and Merlin. “These everyday tools are easily available to everyone, and I am constantly showing others how these tools work to identify plants, insects and birds. The Merlin Bird ID App is an especially simple and powerful tool.  By recording bird sounds, anyone can discover what bird is calling, without even seeing it. By forming frequent, immediate and intimate connections to nature, further wonder and learning are ignited.

When asked about what experience stood out to her from the program, Carol mentions several adventures. “I loved learning about the stars on a cold January night through an outdoor Zoom call with a professor of astronomy, learning about all the different frog calls in NC, and going on a mushroom hike with a mycologist. “My most memorable experience, however, was finding the spotted salamander egg masses in a vernal pool at Reedy Creek Nature Park.”

For her community partnership project, Carol worked with HAWK to design a new educational sign at Squirrel Lake Park near the pollinator garden and bee hotel. The new sign will allow people using the park to learn about solitary bees and inspire them to help bees by creating backyard habitats, reducing pesticide use, and planting native flowers. She also created a display with posters, sample bee houses, nesting materials, an informational handout, and fifty take-home solitary bee house kits with instructions for the Matthews Kids in Nature - Earth Day Festival. The handout includes ways to improve backyards to create native bee habitat. Her project also included modifying the existing bee hotel at Squirrel Lake Park by replacing some of the drilled logs with updated nesting tube structures that can be replaced for cleaning.

When asked if the program changed her approach to teaching, Carol says, “my previous approach was more focused on the environmental issues and what we should be doing to mitigate the problems. The certification program has inspired me to focus on the wonder of nature instead of the problems. Concurrently, there is a significant need for all ages of our population to nurture our well-being through closeness to nature. By cultivating this essential human nature connection, we promote the desire to learn more, cultivate a deeper appreciation, and a desire to protect.”