Shannon Bodeau

Shannon is the Project EXPLORE Coordinator for The North Carolina Arboretum. After growing up in the San Francisco Bay area of California, Shannon was drawn to the Blue Ridge Mountains by the incredible plants and animals that call this region home. Shannon attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, where they obtained a B.S. in biology with a second major in studio art. During their time at UNCA, they served as a herpetology research assistant, as co-director of UNCA’s Student Environmental Center, and as the first UNCA McCullough Fellow to carry out a visual arts based sustainability education project. This is Shannon also served a second year in AmeriCorps at The N.C. Arboretum in 2020-2021, after spending the 2019-2020 year serving as an environmental educator at Ijams Nature Center in Knoxville, TN.

“I believe that we all have a connection to nature, we just need to find it. Sometimes we can do that through art, sometimes through science, and a lot of the time through play!”