Working with Sustainable Design and Technology at Appalachian State in Boone, North Carolina--Jennifer Maxwell

Interview with Jennifer Maxwell conducted by Willard Watson and undergraduate students, Ethan Bowen and Madison Biddix, from Dr. Katherine Ledford’s Appalachian Stories course. Interview was conducted in Mrs. Maxwell’s office in East Hall at Appalachian State University, for the Blowing Rock Art and History Museum, Blowing Rock, North Carolina, in conjunction with the Smithsonian's traveling exhibition "The Way We Worked." 

How did you decide on your career?
"You know, it’s interesting, my passion for specifically environmental sustainability came from just being a kid and really loving the outdoors and spending most of my time outdoors. I grew up on a farm so I just really connected with nature in that way. I had this interesting thing happen to me when I was 19. My brother was 18 when I was born so he moved away and lived up in Rohde Island. So when I was 19, I said 'I’m gonna go'—I didn’t really know him that well because he didn’t really come home very often—I decided to get on a plane and go visit him and so I went and spent a week with him.

We went to some friends of his house and they had a cookout. We got there and they had this beautiful 10-acre organic farm and they had animals and they had built their own home—it was a passive solar home. It was just really an awesome experience for me just to hang out for the day on their farm. Everything that we ate came from their garden and I just really connected with that and got really interested in… 'Oh I really want to live more sustainably and more self-sufficient.'

That was what really drew me to that. So I moved to Boone sort of on a whim in 1997. I was sitting with a neighbor in our apartment that we lived in and found out that there was this program—sustainable technology, specifically sustainable design was what I was really interested in. He was doing a project and building a model on the porch and I was like, 'Wow, that’s really cool!' and he’s like 'Yeah, there’s really cool classes.'

Read the full transcript below.

Asset ID #7800