Educator Spotlight: Katherine Wombwell

Katherine Wombwell, a student at Montreat College, recently completed her NC Environmental Education Certification. Katherine will graduate this spring and would like to work in the outdoor education field. “I enjoy working with a variety of age groups and I hope to work at a site that encourages direct engagement with non-captive audiences. During my time studying environmental education, I have enjoyed leading nature walks and providing scientific and historic information about sites for my participants. In my free time, I really enjoy hiking and backpacking with my friends.”

Katherine says her favorite part of certification was the site visits. “I really enjoyed going to the different sites. I feel like my experience was unique because I went to most of the sites with my friends, which was so fun.” She also enjoyed the instructional workshops especially when they provided a curriculum guide.

For her community partnership project, she created a freshman-college experience, the Montreat Outdoor Recreation Studies COMPASS Program that is designed to introduce students to the outdoor education field. Katherine says she chose to work with college students because of the opportunities they have to work directly with their communities. “This past summer, we introduced students to rangers, nature guides, and what it looks like to study the outdoors. As a result of the program, we saw a tremendous increase in students' appreciation for nature and interest in outdoor education.”

As part of the five-day college immersion students were able to travel throughout North Carolina and the eastern part of Tennessee while being introduced to the fields of adventure recreation, outdoor ministry, conservation law enforcement, and environmental education. “The students were able to engage with one another in new, unique, and novel experiences that created a strong sense of community within the group. On a broader level, students engaged with the larger North Carolina community by learning from outdoor recreation professionals, visiting museums, and attending tours in various locations across WNC.”

Katherine says the certification program helped her become a teacher. “I started this program when I was learning to be an educator, so it established a foundation for who I am.” She says the program also changed the way she thinks about environmental issues. “I think that the idea that we teach students how to think, not what to think, is what has stood out to me the most. It is a concept that I think about regularly and really value in my own teaching methodology.”