Cohort 10
Ruth Poland
EDUCATION • M.A. in Teaching - Life Sciences University of Maine • B.A. in Environmental Studies Washington University-St. Louis
ENROLLED • Cohort 10
LOCATION • Bar Harbor, Maine
Ruth Poland grew up in the suburbs of Boston, attending Quaker-inspired schools and traveling regularly with her family and during a gap year in Belgium. These early experiences embedded a curiosity for other cultures and perspectives and a deep value for diversity in the face of our common humanity. Ruth attended Washington University in St. Louis for a B.A. in Environmental Studies. She then spent three years as an alternative educator in trekking, agriculture, and sustainability programs, reinforcing her love of the outdoors, human connection, and community service. These experiences also underlined the disparity between opportunities afforded youth based on family wealth, which spurred Ruth to seek certification as a public school teacher to serve students of all backgrounds. She attended the University of Maine for an M.S. in Education and taught 8th grade physical science and math for three years before moving “downeast” to be the co-coordinator of a sustainability non-profit. Her involvement in this group and as Chair of the Bar Harbor Climate Emergency Task Force led to her growing confidence in understanding building science, climate solutions, and community activism. For the past 10 years, Ruth has taught high school biology and environmental science in her town, where she is raising her two children with her botanist husband. She has become the self-dubbed Sustainability Coordinator for her district and is driven to understand and pursue systems-level supports for schools to address climate change, which she perceives as the ultimate amplifier of inequity and human suffering.
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Ed.D. in Educational Sustainability
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