Jean Moule

Jean Moule was born in South Carolina and raised in New York City and Los Angeles. She earned her B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, where she studied art, psychology and education, and was arrested in the Free Speech Movement.

She and her husband, a forester, raised three children while she earned a M.S. from the University of Oregon and a Ph.D. from Oregon State University. Both a Duck and a Beaver, she is currently an emerita faculty member at OSU, where she continues to teach online and through the Honors College. While at OSU she initiated a new program in Teacher Education. This immersion experience placed OSU student teachers in culturally and linguistically diverse schools in Portland and Salem. She is past president of the Oregon Chapter of NAME (National Association for Multicultural Education).

Through her experiences as a student and a teacher, Jean Moule has come to understand how students are harmed by the racism institutionalized in our nation's laws and still embedded in many hearts. She authored the text, "Cultural Competence, A Primer for Educators," filled with many stories of schooling, some from her own family. She hopes that her work will help Oregon's and the Nation's children, including her six grandchildren, to have culturally competent teachers.

As her grandchildren’s Nana Jean she has complied her columns for "Skipping Stones," a multicultural magazine, into a series of books, "Ask Nana Jean About Making A Difference,"and "Nurturing Grandchildren: Black, White, & In-Between." The most recent book is a complete collection of all her columns, "Seeking Warmth and Light." The books include reproductions of her watercolors.

She is currently working on her first fiction book, "Canyon Survival: Escape from the Flames," that follows four children, a grandmother, and their animals as they evacuate and survive a raging fire. In the process they uncover more of Oregon's history, and their own strengths in difficult situations.

For "fun" Jean ski patrols, geocaches, climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro and is learning to fly an airplane.