Paula Schaper, Multimedia Program Director of Mat Bevel Company. Photo courtesy of Jim Schrimpf.
Paula is a media specialist, project manager, instructional designer and community builder who has led the Mat Bevel Company effort to create a science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM) curriculum called The Universe Within inspired by Mat Bevel Company founder Ned Schaper’s world of Beveldom. The world-building experience is designed to help disadvantaged youth in Southern Arizona near the U.S.-Mexico border develop the skills to become makers, creators, inventors and problem-solvers
Having run her own media and marketing company for the last 25 years, Paula has translated her brother Ned’s body of work, a kinetic junk theater set in the magical world of Beveldom, into a multimedia curriculum to help young people learn science, math and engineering in an artful, engaging format using emerging technologies.
Paula stirs the hearts and minds of elementary students with her passion for developing and teaching STEAM curriculum! She has a knack for finding the key learning takeaways that will inspire confidence in students and prepare them to excel in lesson activities.
Students who have taken the course reported greater confidence in creative problem-solving skills, increased knowledge of math, science, and engineering well beyond their grade level, greater empathy for community-wide challenges and improved presentation skills. She has built an impressive team to develop over 80 hours of hands-on educational programming to date. A new 40-hour module is in the making.
In the late 1980s, she and her business partner created the largest paid fan club in history for New Kids on the Block prior to the introduction of the Internet. Over the last 15 years, she’s developed a social science method called Genis Factor® through her marketing company WestWordVision that taps into the intelligence, personality and energy of human collectives by mapping and leveraging success patterns and untapped assets through time. Her clients have included Arizona Centennial Commission, Arizona-Mexico Commission, Arizona Tech Parks, Green Chemistry & Commerce Council, Healthy Building Network, Health Product Declaration Collaborative, New Jersey Innovation Institute, PENN State University and the Tohono O’odham Nation.
After earning a Bachelor of Music degree for harp performance from the University of Michigan, Paula booked and promoted concerts for Art Blakey, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, and Spyro Gyra. At several Detroit-area marketing firms, she managed accounts for Gelman Sciences, Borders Books and Crain Communications. In Michigan and California, she branded and built fan communities for musical artists Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Aerosmith, MC Hammer and Paula Abdul.
Paula moved to Tucson, Arizona, in 1992 and joined her brother, Ned Schaper, to establish the Mat Bevel Institute as a popular avant-garde theater venue. A few years later in 1997, she founded WestWordVision. In 2014, she re-joined her brother to launch Bevelvision Productions and new educational programming.
Today, she is a member of the Patagonia Union High School District’s Governing Board.