A chance trip to an outdoor education program in the Colorado mountains has led Zoe Unruh all the way to Montgomery County Public Schools.

Unruh is one of 21 volunteers with the Chesapeake Conservation Corps working in various organizations throughout Maryland. Supported by the Chesapeake Bay Trust, a nonprofit environmental group, Unruh will work in the school system’s Outdoor Environmental Education Program. She will help the program expand its efforts into regular classrooms and assist with outdoor projects.

“It’s something that’s just so unique, in the sense that kids really get a full immersion experience while still being very close to where they’re from,” Unruh said.

Every year, about 9,200 sixth-graders spend two nights and three days in a “residential” course at the Lathrop E. Smith Environmental Education Center in Rockville, where they learn about ecology, such as why the local watershed is important to the health of the environment.

About 6,000 of the students also participate in environmental projects, such as learning about invasive species, helping remove those in the county (such as stiltgrass, which has pale green leaves and resembles bamboo) and replanting native species.

“When you have 140 kids at the same time doing this, you make a dent in a very big problem,” said Laurie Jenkins, supervisor of the outdoor education program, which is using a trust volunteer for the first time. “It empowers students to have an action that has a positive effect on the environment.”

This is where Unruh plays a new, key role.

A 2010 graduate of Washington University St. Louis who majored in environmental science, Unruh was visiting an aunt in Colorado who recommended she check out an outdoor education facility. She fell in love with the concept, and was struck by how many children who lived near the Rocky Mountains never had spent time in them. Afterward, she worked at San Francisco Nature Education, which provides environmental experiences to underprivileged children.

She said she applied for the Montgomery program in part because of its strong organization.

Unruh will help teachers prepare environmental lessons for their students before they attend the outdoor program. She also might help third- and fourth-grade teachers design activities that mirror the service projects in outdoor education.

The general goal for Unruh, Jenkins said, is to help expand the outdoor program’s reach into regular schools.

“She really wanted to experience the kind of thing that we’re doing here, and we thought she was a great match for what we’re trying to do,” Jenkins said.

Nothing can match children who are awed by their first contact with nature, said Unruh, who is enthusiastic about how outdoor and environmental education programs can help students appreciate experiences that take them away from the latest gadgets and the internet.

“It’s almost like every year is a different generation in that sense,” she said.

Eventually, Unruh wants to open a school focusing on the environment.

“You can pretty much teach anything in the context of environmental education,” she said.

aujifusa@gazette.net