On this episode of Appalachian Outdoorosity, Dr. Joy James, a professor in App State's Department of Recreation Management and Physical Education, interviews App State graduate, Mary Bowman. While a student, Mary created a podcast called "Mumbling Mountaineer Minutes," wherein she explored Student Perceptions of Physical Activity Incorporated into Science Lessons. Listen to this podcast within a podcast as Mary interviews herself. This episode has so many levels. 

Show Notes

Mary Bowman, She/Her

Graduated Spring 2023 from App State with a degree in Recreation Management 

Worked at Outdoor Programs for the Outing Center

Was involved in Venture Scouts

Worked at Boy Scouts of America Philmont Scout Ranch

Completed her Recreation Management and Physical Education Department Honor’s Thesis “A Pilot Study: Student Perceptions of Physical Activity Incorporated into Science Lessons” in collaboration with the HOPE Lab

As a part of her RM Senior Seminar, she completed a podcast on her thesis and this is what this episode is about.

Transcript

Becki Battista

Welcome to Appalachian Outdoorosity, where we encourage you to get outside and keep going outside. Here we will share App State stories that entertain, inspire and inform listeners about living an active outdoor lifestyle. Each episode features a story with the goal to get you outside and keep you going outside to improve your overall wellness. This podcast is presented by the Hope Lab, where our purpose is to investigate the role of outdoor physical activity, exercise and play on health, the environment and human development.



Becki Battista

The vision of the Hope Lab is to continue developing the foundation for promoting and supporting outdoor physical activity, exercise and play through interdisciplinary research. Feel free to check us out at hopelab.appstate.edu. Hi, my name is Becki Battista. I am a professor in exercise science at Appalachian State University and a self-proclaimed outdoor physical activity addict.



Becki Battista

I'm your host for today's episode of the Appalachian Outdoorosity Podcast. On today's episode, team member Dr. Joy James, a professor in recreation management, interviews her former recreation management student Mary Bowman. This is a different take for our podcast where we highlight Mary's RMPE Departmental Honors thesis. She worked on a project with the Hope Lab team. Then, as part of a class project, she created a podcast about her research.



Becki Battista

When Joy heard the podcast, she knew we had to highlight it here on Appalachian Outdoorosity.



Joy James

So, it's Joy James here on Outdoorosity. We're so excited. Our guest is Mary Bowman, who's a recent graduate from Appalachian State University in recreation management. So, I'm going to let Mary kinda introduce herself. Both of us are having trouble because we giggle a lot. So, listeners, be prepared for that. So, Mary, if you'll introduce yourself and tell us where you're from and what your favorite outdoor recreation activity is.



Mary Bowman

I am Mary Bowman. I am from Cary. So, Mary from Cary. I just graduated from App in May. Went there because at the time I was undecided and thought that I could really get a good kinda liberal arts experience. I found recreation management and just fit right in. Yeah, my favorite recreational activity is backpacking. I haven't done it in a while.



Mary Bowman

Work is really taking it out of me, but I’m really happy to get back into it in the coming season.



Joy James

Mary, share with us what you're doing for work too. I think that's interesting.



Mary Bowman

Yeah, I am working at Grandfather Mountain Stewardship Foundation as an environmental educator. We get groups at the mountain that are school groups, but also just some other groups that come and we do some environmental education. So, programs going outside as much as we can.



Joy James

Cool. I know it's a cool job. I love Grandfather.



Mary Bowman

Yeah, me too.



Joy James

Tell us how you first got interested in the outdoors. Like what experiences is or what's a story that you would be willing to share that helped you kind of realize the outdoors was a path that you wanted to pursue, both personally and professionally.



Mary Bowman

Yeah. So, I am the only daughter with two older brothers who are actively involved in scouting, and I would always tag along on a bunch of their trips, especially when my dad became a scoutmaster. And so, I kind of was an honorary scout when I was a kid and tried my hand at Girl Scouts. And it wasn't the path that really called to me.



Mary Bowman

And so, when I was old enough, I joined Venture Scouts and which is a high adventure coed, youth led form of scouting and really, really just found my calling there. I did Sea Base. I did Philmont. I did Northern Tier during the winter. So, I did all of the extremes. I was super-hot. I was super cold. I was very tired the entire time.



Mary Bowman

But I found when I was doing that, especially as I age up within the crew, that I loved when we got new scouts in and I had to kind of guide them through everything and like start like, this is how you camp. This how you set up a tent. This is the best way to leave, no trace, all this kind of stuff. I realized I could make a profession out of it by going to national parks and seeing the interpretive park rangers I was like,





Joy James

Yes, please sign me up. Cool! At Outdoorosity, we haven't really talked to people who've come up through the scouting movement, let alone Boy Scouts and venture scouts. Before the Boy Scouts kind of accepted both girls and boys. And would you say Boy Scouts is where you learned how to backpack, or were you backpacking before that?



Mary Bowman

It was because of scouting that I learned how to backpack. My dad would kind of take our family to scout out the trails that they would go out with the scouts. So, we did it. We did a few trails like that, but it was really once I started getting into scouting myself and when we needed to go to Philmont and do all of those prep hikes that I really kind of fell in love with backpacking.



Joy James

I could talk about this a longer time. Unfortunately, I can't talk to you longer because I brought you on this podcast to help showcase an assignment that you did as part of a class you were in with me. And also, Mary did her departmental honors thesis with the Hope Lab, who's a sponsor of Outdoorosity and also part of the assignment that I had in the class was to do a podcast, and Mary was brilliant and she combined her research for her honors thesis with some of the work that she was doing and this other class with me.



Joy James

And one of these assignments was to create a podcast and this podcast was so good and it really kind of showcases not only the work that you did. Mary, it showcases what the Hope Lab is all about, trying to help people become more comfortable in the outdoors. And so, I really wanted to share this podcast that you created with the Outdoorosity listeners.



Joy James

So, before we kind of give them a taste of, of the podcast in your own words frame or set the picture for us. When you created the podcast, what were you going for? And just kind of set the tone because I know you approached it from a different way and had a unique take on the assignment, so I'll let you share from there.



Mary Bowman

Yeah, well, first I want to say that the biggest struggle with this assignment was the time limit that was set on it. Because once I started, like writing my script and everything. I was like, I, this is way too long. I think it would end up being like six or so minutes longer than it needs to be, which is just me talking, which is a lot.



Joy James

It was fine that you went over. It was a ten minute limit and I was so engaged as I hope the audience will be engaged with your talking.



Mary Bowman

I tried to approach it with kind of like it was more like a like a newspaper, sort of like column kind of thing where there's this set up where every week there's another time that we talk about a topic associated with App State and I was the host and the guest on my podcast, so I kind of focused on the research that I had been doing with Joy James and kind of just also a little bit of my experience and connecting the class with my experience in the outdoors.



Mary Bowman

And yeah, I just kind of had a lot of fun. I tried to make it as alliterative as possible, so it’s like, Mumbling Mountaineer Minutes. I and I hope you can hear me because I am talking very low.



Joy James

She’s an Appalachian mountain Mumbler, but no. So, what we're going to do at this point is switch over to that podcast to let the listeners listen and then we're going to come back and talk with Mary. So have a listen.



Mumbler

Hail and well met fellow M&Ms. I am your host. Mumbler and this is your podcast ‚Mumbling Mountain Mountaineer Minutes. For any new listeners tuning in, the Mumbling Mountaineer Minutes podcast is my show where I get people talking in low voices about fascinating topics across campus. Last week we had Dr. H, one of App State's very own IO psychologists talking about the