Sarah Yelton

Environmental Education Manager
Center for Public Engagement with Science

Biography

Sarah Yelton is the environmental education manager for the UNC Institute for the Environment’s Center for Public Engagement with Science. Much of her work centers around building partnerships with formal classroom teachers and informal science educators to incorporate current environmental science into instruction, using field experiences and outdoor learning approaches in programs like the Schools in Parks Collaborative to integrate learning across content areas. She also engages diverse youth in learning about and developing locally relevant solutions to climate impacts in their communities to support climate resilience and building pathways for youth into STEM fields, for example in the YES Resilience: SEE Solutions project. Ms. Yelton’s expertise has also been integral to development and expansion of several community science projects working with researchers across UNC, including Well Empowered, Lake Observations by Citizen Scientists + Satellites, and Caterpillars Count!. In her role as the research translation coordinator for the UNC Superfund Research Program, she engages key state and federal agency stakeholders, trains researchers and students in science communication skills and develops innovative communications and educational materials, as well as programming, for a range of environmental science and health topics related to hazardous chemical exposure.

Education

M.S., Natural Resources, Environmental Education, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, WI
B.A., Leisure Studies and Recreation Administration, and Anthropology (double major), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill