Personal Information
Noel, the Marksman
2007-2008 National Champion
American Legion Junior Air Rifle CompetitionColorado Springs, Olympic Training Facility, August 2007
Click here to read her personal
narrative about this event.
Max, my husband
![](images/maxncarrie.jpg)
Max and our
caracal, Carrie |
Noel, my daughter
![](images/noel.trevor.apache.jpg)
Noel (left) and my nephew, Trevor (right)
holding a baby cougar |
To give you a little
of my background, I am originally from GA and attended the University of Georgia
for my undergraduate degree. I majored in math until I was a beginning senior.
Now I know none of you would do this but it dawned on me that I would have to
get a job in a year. I really did not want to teach math. So I changed my major
to special education (a wide open field at the time). Now my parents said four
year is all you get, so I doubled up on courses and actually did finish that
year.
I taught a primary self-contained special education class for three year in
Athens, GA and made another profound decision. I wanted to go to graduate
school, but a different one. So I decided I wanted to go to the University of
NC. I got a job near Chapel Hill for one year so I could get residency in the
state (out-of-state tuition is high, you know!). Well, I did finish my master’s
degree in several areas of special education.
Then I decided I wanted to take some courses for fun. I took all of the computer
programming classes at our community college at night while I taught in public
schools during the day. Soon I became Supervisor of Exceptional Education and
wrote a computer program which processes all the IEP’s in the county. Believe
me, the teachers loved it. However, it was my job to check all that paperwork
(you know how thick those files get). In fact, I used to measure my day’s work
in terms of feet. “Oh, I only have two feet of work today,” or “Whew, it’s a
heavy day with five feet of work!”
Well, I did get tired of that paperwork and moved across the county line to
become Director of Instructional Technology. For ten years I taught teachers,
administrators, and students how to use computers. Meanwhile, I continued my
education. In 1991, I completed my PhD. in curriculum and instruction. In
October, 1992, I married my husband, Herald Maxwell (everyone calls him “Max”).
We had a lovely daughter, Noel, on Christmas Eve of 1993.
In 1994, we got our first CAT. Now, of course, I’m not talking about a normal
cat. I’m talking about two lion cubs. Oh, did I mention that my husband is a
little unusual. He was a professional magician at the time (and is still quite
good) and wanted to create a stage show with an anti-drug, anti-violence
message. He wanted to use a large cat. A lady he met loved the idea and gave us
two lion cubs. Well, we surely did not have the $250,000 for the stage show, but
little did we know that these precious animals were our first rescue. They were
malnourished and had terribly broken legs. We nursed them back to health and
Project Noah, Inc. was born.
Check us out at
www.projectnoah.com.
We moved to Bowling Green, KY in 1997 and I worked in the Computer Science
department for four years before moving to the College of Education in 2001. I
love teaching the Educational Technology classes here at WKU.