Lesley Anderson
Lesley Anderson
Fellowship Placement: Library of Congress
Hometown: San Diego, CA
Lesley Anderson received her Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo in 2012. In 2017, Lesley completed her Master of Science in Chemistry from South Dakota State University while teaching full-time. She is currently a doctoral candidate in Science and Mathematics K-12 Educational Leadership at San Diego State University. Lesley's research experiences are what have driven her toward inquiry in the classroom and project-based learning. In 2011, Lesley was a part of a research team that tagged and tracked breaching great white sharks off the coast of South Africa. Lesley spent the summers of 2013-14 working as a data analyst for NASA at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In the summer of 2015, Lesley worked for NOAA at the Southwest Fisheries Science Center in the Marine Mammal and Turtle Division conducting sea turtle genetics research. In 2016 and 2017 as Lesley worked on lab course work for her masters of science in chemistry, she worked with ice core samples from Greenland and Antarctica to create a climate record. In December of 2017, Lesley embarked on a scientific expedition of a lifetime with the PolarTREC Program trekking down to Antarctica with a research team to investigate the elusive ghost particle known as a neutrino.
All of these research opportunities provided inspiration for lessons in her classroom and serve as the foundation for her desire to bring real world experiences to students. Her interest in marine science research got her connected to SeaWorld and the Hubbs Research Institute that collaborates with Rising Tide Conservation. This organization works to discover the key to breeding ornamental fish in captivity and they have partnered with the High Tech High Ichthyology Program, enabling students to conduct real scientific research in partnership with actual scientists. Lesley’s most recent visit to Washington, D.C. was in 2018 when she brought three of her underrepresented high school students to the nation’s capitol to present their research on ornamental fish alongside scientists at the American Geophysical Union conference.
Lesley has been a science teacher and instructional coach at the High Tech High schools for the past eight years. Her passion for conducting real world science in the classroom with her students has enabled her to embed authentic inquiry and real life problem-solving into her curriculum in order to better prepare the next generation of scientists for the workforce.
