Bill Mulvey

What do you do?I an educator at the high school level teaching students how to conduct research and collaborating with other teachers in all departments on student projects. I use my EE materials to create lessons I feel are relevant to the curriculum and add interest to all aspects of the educational experience. I plan on using my EE certification to help me get seasonal jobs with the National Park Service and State Parks throughout the U.S. I am excited to retire in 2.5 years and start my new career travelling the U.S. working seasonally at National Parks hopefully teaching environmental education related topics.

I enjoy a multitude of outdoor activities including surfing, mountain biking, hiking, canoeing, birding, fly fishing and just being in the out of doors. I learned to love the outdoors at an early age camping with my parents at Julian Price Park along the Blue Ridge Parkway. We often took weekends to camp, hike and canoe. My parents were both avid birders and my dad took me on canoe trips all through my teens. I credit my folks with my love of the outdoors and educating people about the need for preserving it. One of my earliest memories of camping is looking out of a huge wall tent in the middle of the night and seeing the glow of a raccoon's eyes in my dad's flashlight. He and my mom had neglected to put the food up well enough and the raccoon was rummaging through it for goodies.

What was your favorite part of earning your certification? 
Meeting all the great folks at the workshops and seeing that there were lots of folks that wanted to teach people about the environment and how to get out and enjoy it! I also loved the lessons learned from all the experiences and enjoyed thinking about how I could use these to inform people about the environment and hoe to take care of it.

What certification experience stands out for you? 
There are so many that were so good it's hard to pick just one! I remember going for a mountain stream invertebrates class with Tonya Poole and electro-shocking fish in the Davidson River as well as catching invertebrates from the substrate in the stream. It was such a fun and informative class in a great place.

What was your community partnership project and how did it affect the community? 
I helped to get the Athens Drive High School Arboretum up and running with another teacher at Athens Drive. I helped to secure donations of plants, get soil samples to determine the best plants for the area, get a Master Gardener to come and talk with us about which plants were best our location, get a contractor to provide signage for each of the plantings to educate users about the plants uses by man and animal. Our arboretum will be enjoyed by all who use the Athens Drive High building as it surrounds the entrance to the school and public library. Planters in the center of the walkway will be planted with seasonal vegetables to illustrate local crops and an adjacent outdoor classroom will be used to education students. The arboretum plantings surround the outdoor classroom area and will also be labeled to inform their uses by man and animal.