Photos by Amber Bartlett

By Jacob Mitchell

Ms. Pelle is a new Arundel High School teacher specializing in computer science. She is the first female computer science teacher with career experience in the STEM field at Arundel.

Before she became a teacher, Ms. Pelle worked as an environmental engineer studying climate change, where she did construction and design at Princeton Hydro. During this time, Ms. Pelle worked on stream restoration, where she would go in and dredge the size for stream banks or create new streams. She also did other things like dam removals, which she said is “essentially taking out a lot of dirt”. She worked at Princeton Hydro for 8 years before deciding to teach computer science at the University of Alabama and the University of Tennessee.

Princeton Hydro is a company that was formed in 1998 which, according to their website, has “a specific mission of providing integrated ecological and engineering consulting services.” They “offer expertise in ecosystems, water resources management and engineering, and geotechnical investigations and design.” 

Ms. Pelle also taught engineer fundamentals, which she says is, “basically introductory physics for engineers,” and hydrology courses. Despite the changes from her previous jobs, she says that her time at Arundel has been “a great and fantastic experience.”

 Ms. Pelle feels that the state of Maryland is an especially great place to work in environmental engineering, saying, “Maryland has a really strong emphasis on the environment, so there’s a lot more opportunity in Maryland than, let’s say, in other states because Maryland really cares about it.” She believes that environmental engineering is “a great field field to get into the future,” because of the opportunities it provides.