BOXERWOOD RISING:
- Boxerwood
- Aug 20
- 4 min read
Meet Josie Kuehner, 2025 Rockbridge County HS graduate

Throughout our 25th year, we’re sharing stories of young people whose Boxerwood experiences shaped their passions and vocations. Have a young friend to recommend? Contact Catherine Epstein, creator of this series: catherine@boxerwood.org
Click here to read the entire series.
You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. – Oh the Places You Go, Dr. Seuss
Not everyone can pinpoint the moment they found their calling, but Josie Kuehner has a pretty good idea. The direction this recent RCHS graduate is steering arises directly from her formative years with Project NEST. Next up: coastal Maine for college studies in marine biology.
Back in middle school, Josie took part in our annual trip to the Chesapeake Bay. This signature program takes a busload of 7th graders to an island environmental education center run by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF). During the 3-day, 2-night immersion experience, the students explore Bay ecology with CBF and Boxerwood educators. “They showed us all about the water and the ecosystem there, and we got to do a bunch of catching fish and exploring the land,” she recalled. “I think that’s when my interest in biology really piqued…We did a bunch of pH testing to see the quality of the water and how it was affecting the life there.”
This testing also revealed a difficult reality: life in the Bay was struggling, due to sediment and other polluting inputs upstream. That moment, Josie explained, “was definitely eye-opening …When I heard about that, and all the things that were happening to these animals – I think it changed something in my mind. I was like ‘Wow, this is a whole other world that you can focus on and protect.’”
She points to the tangible, hands-on nature of the trip – a staple of Boxerwood learning – as essential to her a-ha moment: “Being in the classroom is one thing – just to hear about it – but to see it with your eyes, it was definitely a different experience and a different emotion.”
These emotions, of course, can be difficult to process, but Josie recalls that she didn’t feel only despair: “I was definitely very sad about the fact that we don’t care for the world as well as we should…But it also gave me a lot of hope that I could maybe do something in the future to change that.”
Josie’s saltwater epiphany didn’t arise out of the blue – it was built on years of Boxerwood connections closer to home. Growing up in Lexington, Josie recalls with fondness many Boxerwood programs as a student at Waddell Elementary. “[Our class] would walk over there and we would test the water,” said Josie, who today enters college with a love of chemistry. Then there were the Boxerwood wildlife investigations: “I remember going to the turtle pond and seeing if we could find turtles and frogs, and talking about their environment. That really stuck out to me.”
As with her experiences at the Bay, these authentic outdoor endeavors brought Josie’s learning alive. “It was definitely a breath of fresh air,” she recalled. “When you’re in school for that long, it’s hard because it gets very monotonous and repetitive, but taking the field trips was like, ‘Oh this is something new, and I’m getting to apply hands-on knowledge that I learned.’” She notes that it was especially meaningful to be so young while “being put into that world and getting to do those experiments. I feel like if we hadn’t [had Boxerwood], we wouldn’t have been able to do those until high school. Starting at a young age, even having a glimpse of what that world might be if you want to do research, that’s really important.”
As she entered high school, Josie’s interest in science continued to strengthen. At RCHS, she particularly enjoyed AP Biology and AP Chemistry classes. “Once you get into those higher level classes, it felt like they were really digging into those subjects,” she explained. “We did the pGLO lab where you take DNA from a jellyfish and you put it into bacteria…and you try to culture it and get it to grow and glow. Those things, where I could actually put genetics and DNA to the test, were really cool.”
All of these experiences coalesced around a growing interest in marine biology, said Josie, who departs this month for her first year at Bates College, near coastal Maine. Yet even in her teen years, Josie still found ways to literally tend her Boxerwood “nest.” The summer of her junior year, she worked as our trail ranger for the Play Trail and Fairy Forest. “I would clean up after the kids and make sure everything was in order on the weekends,” she recalls. The mornings were often sparse with visitors, but “there would be a few kids who’d come early in the morning. And to see their bright faces and just to be so interested in everything around them, it was just really amazing.”
Reflecting on that most recent Boxerwood experience, Josie returned to the pay-it-forward theme that is part of her life’s emerging direction. “Being able to allow that space for the children coming after me was really special,” she said. “It made me feel like I had given back to Boxerwood in the way they had given to me.”
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