Ellen McCallie

Ellen is currently the co-ordinator of interpretation in the education division at the Missouri Botanical Garden. This means she spends her time designing ways to communicate about research and science to visitors, teachers and students.

Ellen grew up in St. Louis, Missouri and is a tropical ecologist and educator. She spent a year in Bogor, Indonesia as an American Field Service (AFS) exchange student before attending Grinnell College in Iowa, where she earned a B.A. in Biology and a concentration in Environmental Science in 1992.

Following college, Ellen spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar, conducting research on the pollination of agroforestry trees in the Amazon Basin. Ellen’s graduate research was conducted in Timor, Indonesia, on alternatives to slash-and-burn agriculture.

Ellen then went on to become the first education curator of the Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House and Education Center in St. Louis before starting her own elementary science curriculum business. This is Ellen's first Rough Science project.

Read Ellen's Diary Interview with Ellen