Bemidji State was a natural for Jess Paulson, <\/b>who grew up exploring the cedar wetlands around her Steamboat Lake home near Laporte.<\/p>\n
As a teen, she spent summers teaching other kids how to camp, canoe and live in the wilderness through Laketrails Base Camp.<\/p>\n
“(That) was an integral piece of my childhood and helped nurture my love for nature and teaching others about its wonders,” Paulson said.<\/p>\n
The two-time Bemidji State graduate still loves teaching others about the natural world. She is the science advisor at Jane Goodall Environmental Sciences Academy in Maple Lake, a public charter school for grades 6-12 that focuses on project-based outdoor learning.<\/p>\n
“My students are my favorite part of my job,” said Paulson, who has 21 students in grades six through 10 and serves on the school’s finance and personnel committees.<\/p>\n
In 2009, she earned her bachelor’s degree in environmental studies from BSU, with an emphasis on outdoor education and a minor in space studies. She was a teaching assistant in geology and founding president of the Bemidji State Women’s Rugby Club, through which she met her husband, Tyler, a player on the men’s team.<\/p>\n
Paulson spent a year studying environmental education at the University of Minnesota Duluth, working as a graduate assistant with the Great Lakes Worm Watch, and went on to earning a master’s in education online from BSU in 2013.<\/p>\n
Her thesis involved development of an expansive invasive species curriculum, drawing on the connection between Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge and a nearby school.<\/p>\n
“I evaluated students’ behavior, attitude and knowledge towards the environment before and after curriculum implementation,” Paulson said. “Being dubbed the ‘worm girl’ in some of my naturalist circles, I am always drawn to expand the invasive species learning of each place I have worked.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bemidji State was a natural for Jess Paulson, <\/b>who grew up exploring the cedar wetlands around her Steamboat Lake home near Laporte.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28797,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[958],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magazine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28798,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28796\/revisions\/28798"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}