Kelly Henderson is Chatham University’s Eden Hall Campus K-12 Education Coordinator. Kelly has been working for Chatham since 2014. In this role, she collaborates with a team of trained Chatham undergraduate and graduate students to host over 2,000 K-12 students per year for experiential field trips on the University’s sustainable farm campus. The Eden Hall K-12 Program team also provides professional development workshops for educators on how to talk about sustainability in the classroom, hosts an annual sustainable K-12 student project conference, collects resources to encourage student-driven community change work in schools, and runs summer camps at Eden Hall. Place-Based Education, Project Based Learning (PBL), Anti-Racist Education and Culturally Responsive Teaching are all critical in her work. On occasion, Kelly is also Adjunct Faculty for the Education Department. She has taught undergraduate classes on “Experiential Learning and Classroom Partnerships.”

Before coming to Chatham, Kelly helped start the Pittsburgh 2030 District with the Green Building Alliance and she was also the project manager on LEED green building certification for the United Steelworkers Building. Her history with environmental and outdoor education has varied from leading mountaineering, caving and wilderness survival trips, and supervising overnight camp staff, to leading community bike rides around Pittsburgh for Venture Outdoors. Before changing careers, she worked in U.S. Department of Energy and university labs researching material changes that would make solar panels more efficient.