Next school year, Chase Owen will be filling the spot for the new physics teacher at RHHS. 

Currently, he is a student teacher at Wichita State and also works in the Programs and Education department at Sedgwick County Zoo. 

Owen has worked with students before, but this job will be his first teaching position.

“I worked at a scout camp in Osceola, Missouri, summer camp for four or five summers,” said Owen. “So I taught merit badges and all that good stuff, and in my junior year of high school we did a program in our science department where the first semester we learned a whole bunch of facts about animals and all that good stuff, how to take care of them. And then, second semester we actually brought in multiple middle schools and elementary schools, and that was my first real experience working with children and actually working with education and doing all that type of stuff. So not my first time around, but exciting nonetheless.”

Although Owen now has an internship with WSU for education, and is working to educate people about animals at the zoo, a career in education is not what he originally had in mind.

“In high school I really wanted to be an engineer,” Owen said. “I wanted to do stuff with acoustics and sound and build opera houses, all that cool stuff. But then I realized that that’s way out of my abilities. I realized that the thing that I was really passionate about was the science aspect of it, like physics and math and all that good stuff. So when I had that class my junior year, then I kind of realized that I think my calling is education. I graduated high school with the intent of going to WSU for Biology Education originally, but then I changed it to Earth and Space Science Education.”