Rachel Wellman

It’s difficult to list science teacher Rachel Wellman’s accomplishments without taking a breath.

In 2014, Wellman got her PhD as a biogeochemist/ ecologist from Texas A&M University. She began her teaching career soon after at Galaxy Elementary School in Boynton Beach, where she started a STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) Club and the school’s Green Roof Team, where students explored science-based problem-solving. She also served on the Green Committee that helped Galaxy win Green School of Excellence recognition in 2016.

Then she switched to Boca Raton High School, where she started an Environmental Club, helped win a grant to get blue recycle bins for all the school’s classrooms, and served as science adviser and sponsor for Our Planet Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to saving the Amazon rainforest. The students built an aquaponics system, which recycles the waste from aquatic creatures and feeds it to hydroponic plants. Wellman spent three weeks with her students in Peru this summer sharing their experiences with the aquaponics system.

Wellman, 38, follows in the footsteps of her mother, Sylvia Wells Wellman, a Duke University Hospital scientist who returned to Palm Beach County to teach middle school. Wellman moved to Palm Beach County in 2014 to take care of her mother before her death in 2015.

“I decided to become a full time teacher while I was her full-time primary caregiver in early 2014,” Wellman said. “I have a passion for learning and sharing what I have learned. It’s important to me that I and my students stay informed, trusting and using the scientific process...I want my students to understand that much of our knowledge of the world as we now know it is because of the accountability we scientists hold among each other.”