LAURA SANDERS ARNDT
Culturally-relevant & Purposeful STEM Creator,
Founder & Executive Director
Laura Arndt grew up playing in the woods of mid-Missouri, working at children’s outdoor camps, and traveling with family to explore other natural ecosystems and immerse themselves in other cultures. This was the beginning of her life-long curiosity about, celebration of, and respect for the environment and for people of all cultures. She has called a place in a ponderosa pine forest south of Denver, Colorado, home for her adult life. It’s on this ancestral land of the Ute, Cheyenne and Oceti Sakowin where her two sons grew up, and the vision of Global GreenSTEM took form.
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Laura’s goal, with anyone she works with, is to create bridges of understanding and empathy between people and their natural environment through active learning and positive action. She customizes educational experiences to local environmental issues, to targeted STEM concepts or skills, and to the learners’ culture, interests, and concerns. By simultaneously teaching and modeling effective instructional strategies based on research, Laura sparks curiosity, excitement, and motivation to understand and solve real problems by applying STEM knowledge and skills.
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Laura consults with educators in diverse formal and non-formal settings: Schools, school districts, museums, zoos, state parks and nature centers, organizations, forest service and wildlife agencies. Her consulting is enriched by fifteen years of teaching high school science and elementary science/ GreenSTEM. Laura also spent two decades working with several international mountain gorilla organizations developing and implementing conservation education programs and curricula. Her Global GreenSTEM focus is also influenced by the beginning of her career as a Colorado state park education ranger, a keeper/researcher/volunteer at Brookfield and Denver Zoos, and a volunteer for an organization that cared for permanently injured raptors and created opportunities for them to be bird educators.