Stephanie grew up in the Appalachian Mountains of rural Western North Carolina where she spent much of her time exploring the French Broad River and surrounding national forests. She completed an undergraduate Education degree at Appalachian State University in 2009 and has since taught full time across a variety of grade levels. In 2018 Stephanie completed a M.S. in Environmental Studies at the University of Montana with an emphasis on curriculum development and interned at the Montana Natural History Center. Since graduating from UM, Stephanie has been teaching project-based learning at Washington Middle School. She is an alumna of the Cycle the Rockies course, served as a teaching assistant for the course in 2018, instructed for the Conservation Across Boundaries course in 2019 and is excited to instruct the WRFI/UM High School Summer Explorations Program: Climate Change in Glacier National Park in the summer of 2021.