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DUNWOODY, Ga.—The woods on Dunwoody Campus are the perfect outdoor classroom for Outstanding Senior Faculty Award winner Dr. Kimmy Kellett. “We have a great greenspace with a forest and a pond. I take students out there and they’re like, “‘Oh, I’ve never been out here before,” ‘she said.
The outdoor classroom is key to getting her indoor lectures and labs come to life, and one that has inspired her throughout her teaching career.
Kellett, an associate professor of biology, started developing the outdoor labs in 2022 with a Dean’s Innovation grant. Working with art professor Angus Galloway and (now retired) English professor Jessie Hayden, the three faculty developed a program where students studied the biology of the flora and fauna on campus, wrote about their feelings about nature in compositions, and drew the trees and plants they were studying. They presented it their findings in a college-wide symposium, “Field, Forms and Feeling.”
The project spurred more outdoor study. Her Biology1104 students document the trees in the campus forest—and measure them for their carbon storage and offset/. “So far we’ve identified 60 trees and tagged them and every semester my students go back and measure them and calculate how much carbon the trees are storing and how they are offsetting carbon emissions,” Kellett said. “They learn firsthand the importance of bigger, older trees to offsetting carbon emissions—and just how many trees offset their own carbon footprint.”
Her students are also currently working on making informational videos about the different tree species on campus. “My goal is to add to the collection and make it library accessible so that you can stand by a tree, scan a QR code and find out more about that tree,” she said.
Kellett joined the Perimeter faculty in 2016. Her love of plants and nature started early in life, and blossomed during a study abroad trip to Costa Rica while she was an undergraduate at the University of Georgia, she said. She continued her interest, doing her doctoral work on plant populations in Costa Rica.
“I liked the fieldwork aspect of research,” she said.” During her graduate work she also fell in love with teaching labs. “I really enjoyed the daily interaction with students rather than the heavy everyday research lab work, and that’s why I chose a teaching- focused path. I am so lucky to find a place like Perimeter College,” she said.
While she did not follow the research path herself, Kellett has become a huge advocate of nurturing student research, helping students connect to opportunities through the university, state and national level.
As the Dunwoody and Alpharetta faculty advisor for students in the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation program, for the past few years, Kellett has worked with students applying for research undergraduate experiences and internships. She’s still in touch with many of her LSAMP students, including Jack Kent Cooke Undergrad Scholar winner Awa Cisse. “Awa is just finishing up her last year at Yale and she just received a Luce Scholarship that will allow her to travel forth for research abroad before she goes to medical school,” Kellett said, “These research experiences opened doors to take our students to so many places,” she said. (For several years, Kellett has also been a regular faculty member on the college’s annual spring trips for students to Sapelo Island, where students study and research the unique ecology and marine life of the Georgia barrier island.)
Connecting students to even more research opportunities is her new goal: she was recently named a faculty associate for Innovation for the new Perimeter College Hub for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. “I loved working with LSAMP students, and I'm excited to help share research opportunities with all Perimeter College students and help them find and connect to internships,” she said.
As a faculty member, getting feedback from her students is the best reaffirmation of her work in the classroom, she said. “The best moments are the emails and notes I get from students who may be applying to graduate school, or received a scholarship, and they say something like, “When I was in your class, I started thinking about research in a different way.”
In May 2022, Kellett returned to Costa Rica, the place where she fell in love with both research and teaching—this time as a program coordinator for a study abroad trip with English faculty member Barbara Hall. This May, Kellett and Hall will be joining Stewart Goodman (Spanish) in taking a new group of students to a study abroad trip to the Yucatan in Mexico.