Mrs. Pamela Ogurchock Harris

A good scientist asks questions but also learns from their mistakes. Add a dash of fun, and you'll be set. This drives my teaching practice and the way I raise my own children.

I live in Peters Township with my geology professor husband Dan, our inquisitive sons Rocky and Kyle, and a sweet tabby cat named Dr. Zelda Penelope Purrkins. My passions are teaching, playing piano, gardening, Zumba, hiking, raising geckos and a flock of chickens, and eating cheesecake.

I graduated Summa cum Laude from the Honors Program at Slippery Rock University in 2005. My undergraduate degree is in biology and chemistry. SRU provided amazing opportunities to travel abroad, perform in musical ensembles, and conduct biological research.

My Masters degree in science education was completed at West Virginia University, where I taught laboratory courses in Physiology and Cellular Biology in the WVU Biology Department from 2005-2007. During the summer of 2007, I was an environmental biology instructor at Frostburg State University in Maryland for the RSMC Upward Bound program. In that position, my students and I conducted research on stream health and macroinvertebrate populations along Maryland's Savage River.

Mt. Lebanon brought me on board in August of 2007.

From 2009-2012, I worked closely with the University of Pittsburgh's biological outreach program, helping with their Gene Team program and serving on the Pitt Kits advisory board. At Pitt, our research teams looked at transcriptional regulation in yeast as well as muscle degradation in the roundworm C. elegans. During the summers of 2012-2015, I assisted Dr. Steven Harris and Dr. Andy Turner from the biology department of Clarion University to assess recovery from years of acid-mine drainage in the Clarion River watershed.

I love my students. (Graduates, please keep in touch! I want to hear about your adventures.)