Each year Manitou Springs High School welcomes in new students along with staff; this year MSHS welcomed Alicia Mauer into the science department. “This will be my 15th year of teaching,” Mauer said. “I worked at Woodland Park High School for five years and then I worked at Colorado Early Colleges for 10 years.”

At Woodland Park High School, Mauer taught the Chemistry, Biology, Anatomy, and the AP Environmental Science courses. Before that, she worked in Colorado Early Colleges. “It is a concurrent enrollment high school,” Mauer said. “So you go there because you want to finish an associate’s or sometimes even a bachelor’s by the time you graduate high school.”

Last year in her 15th year of teaching, Mauer won the 2022 award of Excellence in Teaching for Secondary Science by the American Vacuum Society.

However, after many years of working at WPHS, she decided to depart and seek employment elsewhere. “I was there since 2008. I wanted to really delve and contribute to my community,” Mauer said. “I left Woodland Park because it wasn’t going in the direction that I was looking to go in.”

Mauer made her next move to MSHS and returned to her community in a new found teaching role. “I’m still contributing to the community that I came from,” Mauer said. “I graduated from Manitou in 2002, so it felt like and I also felt like it was a good community to invest in in terms of developing environmental stewardship again.”

Nivyara Turrentine (10) is a student of Mauer’s Biology class. Turrentine said that Mauer is passionate about the subject and her high energy attitude will fit in perfectly with the town. “Everybody in town is a bit eccentric,” she said. “So having eccentric teachers is great.”

Julia Jackson, the science member of the Building Leadership Team, thinks that Mauer was a shoe-in for the role and exactly what it needed. “She’s a really good communicator and team player,” Jackson said. “Along with creative hands-on ways to go about teaching science, with just a lot of great experience in general.”

Mauer’s passion lies not only with teaching, but with environmental awareness and action: leading and participating in many activities surrounding the protection of the earth’s environment. “My passion in Woodland was doing environmental film festivals, and doing the Environmental Science Team,” Mauer said. “I want to find another community to bring those programs into to continue to grow environmental stewardship and a community.”

Mauer has many hopes for the rest of her career at MSHS and looks forward to giving back. “I am proud to be a part of the community,” Mauer said. “It’s like coming home.”