LTEREducation     LTER EDUCATION  PROPOSAL WRITING WORKSHOP

Proposal Writing Workshop for Developing and Implementing  Long-term Educational Programs at LTER Sites Sponsored by NSF (Division of Environmental Biology and  Division of Education and Human Resources and the LTER Network Office To be held at the Kellogg Biological Station Michigan State University Hickory Corners, Michigan November 19-21,1999 Blank Application

These Sites have committed to attending— Shortgrass Steppe LTER North Temperate Lakes McMurdo Dry Valleys Kellogg Biological Station Jornada Basin Sevilleta Konza Prairie Palmer Station Coweeta Niwot Ridge/Green Lakes Andrews Experimental Forest Hubbard Brook Baltimore Ecosystem Study

Background and Purpose	In October 1998, teams of scientists and educators from 13 LTER sites assembled at the Biosphere II conference facility in Arizona to plan and share ideas for further developing their educational programs utilizing LTER resources.    Recommendations from the workshop participants included ways to acquire funding required to sustain educational programs at LTER sites. This workshop is designed to provide support and ideas for developing and writing proposals to programs in the Education and Human Resources (EHR) Division of the NSF and to other agencies and/or foundations that support science education programs.
The Workshop	This workshop is intended to assemble teams of 2 individuals from 13-15 LTER sites to collaborate with each other and expert science educators who have extensive experience with garnering funding from the NSF and other agencies for science education programs. The goal of the workshop is to formulate ideas and frameworks for competitive proposals.
Who will attend?	Teams of 2 individuals from up to 13-15 LTER sites (determined by space and funding available). Teams should include the individual who will be the PI on the proposal and a teacher or science educator who will be involved in the project.
What support is available for this Workshop?	The grant awarded through the LTER Education Committee will cover all costs of the workshop - travel to Kellogg, housing, meals and materials. Individuals will be required to pay for their airfare in advance and will be reimbursed for their travel promptly after  orkshop. For our first workshop in October 1998, four individuals cancelled AFTER the Network purchased their non-refundable ticket. Hence, we will no longer prepay tickets. We will determine how many teams can attend based on estimated costs of the first 12 teams who apply, and we will add teams as the budget permits.
Where is the Workshop?	At Kellogg Biological Station, 40 minutes drive from the Kalamazoo Airport, 90 minutes from the Lansing Airport, about 2.5 hours from the Detroit Airport.

TEAM APPLICATIONS

Jornada LTER Site Team Leader: J.E. Herrick
Title: Research Scientist
Address: USDA-ARS Jornada Experimental Range
MSC 3JER, NMSU, Box 30003
Las Cruces, NM 88003-8003
Phone: 505-646-5194
Fax: 505-646-5889
E-mail: jherrick@NMSU.Edu

Second team member: Stephanie Bestelmeyer
Title: Executive Director, and Science Educator Chihuahuan Desert Nature Park
Address: P.O. Box 891 Las Cruces, NM 88004
Phone: 505-524-3334
Fax: 505-524-3334
E-mail:cdnp@zianet.com

Teacher development: we want to have an active program that engages science teachers in this region in developing and using science materials based on this environment.  Presently, we have 4-6 teachers onsite during the summer in this type of activity, and we are intent on expanding this program

Student involvement: we want to have students at all levels involved in core area research projects, and activities requiring synthesis of information from those research projects.  Presently, we have 3 schools in the region participating in our schoolyard LTER program.

On-site activities: we want to expand use of our field site for educational activities involving students and their parents.

A description of your target audience.
Our primary target audience has been K-12, where we have successfully worked in science education for the past 5 years.  Our efforts have been supported by an eclectic set of funding sources including the USDA, the NSF (through the schoolyard LTER program), the World Wildlife Fund (through their education program for the Chihuahuan Desert), and private donations to the non profit Chihuahuan Desert Nature Park.   During the 1998-99 academic year we worked with over 3000 K-12 students in the New Mexico and Texas border region.  These activities included both hands-on experiences in the field at the Jornada site, classroom visits, and school yard LTER exercises at specific schools in Las Cruces and in El Paso selected for more directed interactions on biological measurements and interpretations at established sites at these schools.   With increased support for the Chihuahuan Desert Nature Park we will be expanding this target audience to include undergraduate students at New Mexico State University and the University of Texas at El Paso, both of which are Hispanic serving institutions.
 Through our association with the Chihuahuan Desert Nature Park and its science education staff we will also target the general public in this expanding urban region along the US and Mexico border.  However, our primary emphasis in the future will be K-undergraduate.

For team members who did not attend Workshop I - one-paragraph resume of each member of the proposed team.
Two members will attend from the Jornada: Kris Havstad, an USDA scientist who participated in workshop I, and the new executive director of the Chihuahuan Desert Nature Park, a replacement for Peggy Logan, the prior executive director who participated in workshop I but has transferred to a new position

Marty Green (Second Team member)
616/685-3104 - Phone616/685-2199 -  FAX
Marty.green@kbs.msu.edu

Proposal ideas:Our thoughts are structured in the area of teacher enhancement programs.  Classes, visits by classroom children are "one shot" efforts, while activities with teachers have multiple effects, since these teachers will be dealing with thousands of students over their careers.

Last spring we submitted a proposal to the NSF GK-12 initiative and were turned down.  The model we proposed was the meshing of faculty and their graduate students with practice teachers and classroom teachers.  The outcome is the exposure of graduate students in science and technology with the K-12 system, exposure of practice teachers and classroom teachers to working with higher education.  The research faculty and graduate students serve as resources for teacher training and input into existing curricula.It would appear that the Teacher Enhancement programs at NSF would be the next place that we would pursue this approach.

Currently we are working with four local school districts, concentrating our efforts with 22 middle school teachers.  We are conducting day-long workshops on subjects selected by the group and which relate to our activities on our LTER site, e.g., carbon cycling.  We have also established high speed internet connectivity with two of the four districts through LTER supplements.

We plan to develop a proposal under the Teacher Enhancement Program. Because the MCM-LTER ecosystem is so extremely sensitive to small-scale climate changes, we will focus on the role of climate as a major control on biodiversity, biogeochemistry and primary production, especially in polar environments. We plan both summer teacher workshops and the integration of this program with the relatively “new” Math, Science and technology education program in the School of Teaching and Learning at OSU. We would also attempt to tie into other schools of education in our area such as Otterbein College and Ohio Wesleyan. We feel our program would offer invaluable experience to teachers (M.Ed.s) in their formative years as educators. We are considering summer “internships” for teachers. Because of Dr. Landis’ strong background in computer/technology based education, we are also interested in developing programs of on-line lessons for secondary teachers. Through Dr. Lyons’ connection with NSF’s TEA (Teachers Experience in Antarctica) Program these ideas could also be coordinated or linked to the AM. Museum of Natural History.

Target Audience: Middle and High School Teachers

Dr. W. Berry Lyons is lead PI of the MCM-LTER. In December of 1999 he will become Director of the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University. He has over 25 years experience conducting research and teaching in the fields of oceanography, earth and environmental sciences. He has close to 20 years experience in studying geochemical processes, global change issues and the biogeochemistry of Antarctica. He has a strong interest in the role of research scientists in helping to establish better, more effective ways of teaching K-12 science.

Second team member: Ann McLain
Title: Student Services Coordinator, Center for Limnology
Address: 680 N. Park, Madison WI  53706
Phone: 608-263-3264
Fax: 608-265-2340
E-mail:  asmclain@facstaff.wisc.edu

Ideas for our proposal:  We plan to develop a proposal to the Education and Human Resources Directorate of NSF.   The specific program we are targeting is Teacher Enhancement: Research Experiences for Teachers and Students (Large Scale Data Collection).  Pre-proposals to this program are due in the spring, with final proposals due in August.  If successful, funds would be administered by the Center for Biology Education on the UW-Madison campus, with North Temperate Lakes LTER, the Center for Limnology, and the Wisconsin Center for Educational Research as partners.  The activities we will propose will build and expand upon our initial experiences with teachers and students near NTL-LTER's research sites in northern (Vilas County) and southern (Dane County) Wisconsin.   Our goal will be to facilitate aquatic research experiences for teachers and their students, focusing on use of data collected across temporal and spatial scales.

Target audience:  K-12 students and their teachers.  In our first year we focused on grades 3-5, but we will be expanding to include middle school teachers and students this coming year.  Grades 6-8 will be the target audience of our proposal.

Participant resumes:  Provided for the 1998 workshop.

The SGS-LTER has focused on K-12 Outreach and Curriculum Development with a strong emphasis on serving first generation and low income (FGLI)  students. In Colorado, the majority of FGLI students are students of color.  Our focus fits well with the national need to involve under-represented groups in math and science disciplines, and the need to address the low invovlement of minorities in ecology.  We would like to explore additional funding opportunities to serve FGLI students.

There are four areas that we have pursued funding and would like feedback from the participants on other arenas and feedback on the approaches that we have taken.  These include:

1)  NSF GK-12 Graduate Fellowship Program
2)  NSF IMD - Instructional Materials Development
3)  NSF RAMHSS - Research Assistance for Minority High School Students
4)  DOE - TRIO - Math and Science Upward Bound

We request funding to support two team member (Moore and Saunders) and if funding is available (Miller - PhD candidate in Biological Education)

Dr. Valerie F. Wright
Environmental Educator/Naturalist
KONZA PRAIRIE RESEARCH NATURAL AREA (KPRNA)
keepkonza@ksu.edu

Kathleen Jones
kathleenj@manhattan.k12.ks.us
Teacher
Dwight D. Eisenhower Middle School, 800 Walters
Drive, Manhattan, KS 66502.

Kathleen teachers 7th grade science and
sometimes art.  She's working on a Masters in Ed. with a
speciality in education technology and will work with me next
summer as her project for her Masters.

Proposal Ideas
KPRNA has an education program that was initiated in 1996 through the Friends of Konza Prairie (FOKP) and the Division of Biology at Kansas State University (KSU).  The program (Konza Environmental Education Program or KEEP) has a half time environmental educator/naturalist who is responsible for writing proposals for grants to supplement the small amount of funding that is provided by FOKP and KSU.  Salaries for the environmental educator (EE) and assistant (currently there is no assistant) are also to come from grant proposals.  The program has had good success to date with a small number of activities based around trail hikes led by docents who are trained by the EE.  In the last year the Schoolyard LTER program, sponsored by NSF/LTER, has allowed the addition of more science-based activities as originally conceived in the long term plan of KEEP.  A workshop was held in June to bring together teachers, researchers and docents to further define the Schoolyard LTER program at our site, including the choice of three long-term activities to offer to teachers (See detailed report at www.ksu.edu/konza/keep).

A major proposal developed at Workshop II would include the following:
1. Development of science activities for elementary, middle school and high school students based on the long-term research projects unique to KPRNA and LTER sites in general.
2. Development of web site interactive data bases, where students can enter data taken during a KEEP activity and compare their information with previous years and other students data.
3. Development of teacher and student friendly KPRNA data bases that will allow global access to existing long-term data for use in the classroom.
4. Salaries for a full time environmental educator, a part time assistant, office help and a technical specialist to develop the interactive programs and user friendly KPRNA data bases.
5. Transportation funds for regional schools to come to KPRNA.
6. Annual workshops for teachers.
7. Annual docent training.
8. Equipment, materials and supplies.

The target audience is basically the regional school districts.  We currently work with teachers in 7 districts, some of which are rural and others city or specially defined (U. S. military base schools).  However, the user friendly data bases would allow global access to LTER tallgrass prairie information.  This opens our program to collaborative and comparative studies with interested schools around the world.

 Second Team Member:
Mr. Terry Seehorn
Address:  Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School
339 Nacoochee Drive
Rabun Gap, GA 30568
Phone:  800-543-7467 or  706-746-7467 extension 242
Fax: 706-746-2594
E-mail: tseehorn@rabungap.pvt.k12.ga.us

Brief Descriptions of Ideas for Proposal: Most of our current
educational activities at Coweeta are "boot-legged" off of research funding
and staff. We are very interested in establishing the funding for an
educational coordinator who would coordinate and direct the K-16 science
education at Coweeta. This would allow us to greatly expand the number and
diversity of programs that we are able to offer. This would allow us a
greater number of spring and fall programs for students, initiation of
summer programs for visitors and tourists in the area, and summer week-long
workshops for teachers to broaden and further develop their classroom and
outdoor curricula. We are also interested in strengthening links to
educational programs at other LTER sites where students and teachers may be
able to organize and exchange information online or via email. In addition
cross-site visits may be extremely helpful for instructors and possibly
students.

Target Audience: The target audience for the proposed work is ultimately
the K-16 students in the nearby counties of Macon and Jackson in North
Carolina as well as Rabun County in Georgia. Teachers are a primary conduit
to these students and hence they are also a target audience.

Brief description of ideas you have for your proposal, based on a review of the needs and desires of your LTER site, and the funding programs (for example, see the NSF Web site
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1999/nsf9992/tableofcontents.htm where various EHR programs are discussed in detail. Please note-the deadlines listed on this Web site are standing, annual deadlines which are renewed each year.) This preparation will help us match your ideas with potential funding sources and/or other sites prior to the meeting.

Our program, The Bosque Ecosystem Monitoring Program, coordinates volunteers, particularly students and their teachers, in collecting long-term ecological research information on a unique and rapidly changing riparian gallery forest adjacent the Rio Grande in central New Mexico.  We are looking for funding to develop an outreach program that would enable classes to participate on a once a year basis, rather than the current monthly commitment that a class must give to participate.  We would also like to expand our established four sites to ten to twelve sites to allow greater participation in the program.

A description of your target audience.
Middle and high schools primarily, although we do have one very effective elementary school participating in the program currently.

For team members who did not attend Workshop I - one-paragraph resume of each member of the proposed team.

Mary Stuever is a forest ecologist with a strong interest in environmental education.  She has a BS in forest management from Oklahoma State University and an MS in biology (thesis in fire ecology) from University of New Mexico.  She has written and edited several books, facilitated hundreds of workshops for natural resource professionals, teachers and students, and
consulted on many environmental education programs.

Second team member: Dawn Dolby
Title: Hall Director, Willard Residence Hall, University of Colorado
Address: Reed 120, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80310
Phone: 303-492-5378
Fax:
E-mail: dolby@colorado.edu

We are thinking of submitting a proposal to the Informal Science Education Program of NSF. Our proposal would be to develop experiential learning for Middle School teachers and students, based at our Mountain Research Station (MRS), University of Colorado. Our proposal would build on the existing summer education program at the MRS, in which teachers and students are involved in hands-on learning and interactions with field scientists in the Niwot LTER project. Some of our specific aims are as follows:

- Demystifying science for Middle School science teachers and students through experiential
   learning
- Encouraging girls to pursue science and mathematics
- Encouraging minority students from the Colorado Front Range region to pursue science and
   mathematics
- Developing connections between science instruction and research in our LTER program
- To make students and teachers aware of the ways in which scientific issues affect their everyday
   lives in the Rocky Mountain region

To achieve these aims, we would develop an informal education program focusing mainly on field experiences, but also on laboratory experiences at the MRS. We intend to build on a course taught at CU during the last two summers. In this course, the students were public school teachers, undergraduate education majors, and undergraduate science students. The course had two main components: classroom science and math teaching dealing with the basic concepts of alpine ecology and hydrology, and field trips to the Niwot Ridge LTER site involving both the teachers and their K-12 students. The idea behind the field trips was to bring together the education and science components.

3) Target audience: Middle School teachers and students

4) One-paragraph resume of each member of the proposed team:

Dawn Dolby holds a MA in Instruction and Curriculum from the University of Colorado.  She has ten years of classroom teaching experiences and fifteen years of outdoor education experience.  Ms Dolby participated in the Alpine Ecology class described above and will be pursuing a PhD in Teacher Education in the fall of 2000.

Scott Elias has a PhD in Environmental Biology (University of Colorado, 1980). He has been a Fellow of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, CU, since 1982, and has been a Co-PI on the Niwot LTER project since 1983.  He has published books for general audiences on Ice-Age  Environments in Alaska, the Rocky Mountains, and the American Southwest, and has a book in press on the natural history of the Rocky Mountains. He recently received a four-year grant from the NSF Instructional Materials Development Office to develop an interactive CD-ROM program on Arctic Science, aimed at Middle School students in native communities in Alaska.
5)

Second team member: Dawn Rawls
Title: Science Writer/Education Co-ordinator
Address: UCSD/SIO; La Jolla, CA 92093-0218
Phone: 858-755-6293
Fax: 858-534-2997
E-mail:drawls@ucsd.edu

Brief description of ideas you have for your proposal,
The Palmer LTER Education Outreach will focus on developing the Palmer LTER  Education Associates as a pilot program.  The Associates concept is to create a  sustainable communication network for teachers interested in the Long-Term
Ecological Research and associated with the Palmer Antarctic ecosystem research  team. This working group will include teachers, information technologists,
educators informal and scientists including science researchers. The group will
be coordinated via Palmer LTER education liaisons including information
management which provides support for electronic communications, information
and materials exchange and archive in addition to technology use.

Identification of long-term partners will continue including interface with the
Teachers Experiencing Antarctica and Arctic (TEA) program. TEA is funded by
NSF Directorate for Education and Human Resources, Division of Elementary,
Secondary and Informal Education (NSF/ESIE)coordinating with Office of Polar Programs (OPP). The Palmer Associates Pilot program would reach students via two paths: 1)an online web presence and 2)an interface with teachers who participant in a two week internship at an LTER research institution laboratory and a month long Antarctic field participation in inquiry based research via TEA.   Collaboration with existing centers such as the the National Center for Ecosystem Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS, Kids do Ecology) permits building upon existing outreach program (Kids do Ecology).

Themes developed will build upon existing TEA and NCEAS activities while taking into consideration both the teachers' interest and the Palmer LTER scientists' research.  An initial set of guidelines for development of long-term perspective in the classroom have been proposed in the Palmer LTER Forum report (Baker et al, SIO 99-14).  More specifically, investigations will involve weather and ice cross scientific disciplines and geographic regions so development of these coordinated activities would capitalize upon the variety of weather stations established or existing at participating schools (ie Davis, AWS and GLOBE stations).  Scientific inquiry will be fostered through three stages: use of existing data, use of data collected by the teacher during their field experience, and collection of data through a school based experiment. The Palmer Associates pilot will have individual aspects developed in a modular manner with a recognition of their cross-site potential. Methods to broaden the program to include teachers who have not been to Antarctica will be considered. Communications regarding approaches to assessment would result from continuing development of partnerships with science research educators in order to diversify and facilitate methods. This pilot program will address the national standard tied to earth and space science, technology and changes in environment curriculums as well as relating to water cycles and ice and climate impacts.

Target audience: Secondary Teachers: 6-12

Both members attended Workshop I and have resumes online.

Team Member: Andy Moldenke
Title: Research Assoc. Prof.
Address: Dept. of Entomology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR  97331
Phone: 541-737-5496
FAX: 541-737-3643
E-mail: moldenka@bcc.orst.ed

Proposal ideas.
This past Spring, several people met at the Andrews Forest to discuss the overall education program and endorsed several items/components to be addressed and phased in over the next five years.  As a result, we find ourselves seeking support for a wide range of education activities:
K-12 education
        · Off-site, Schoolyard LTER programs
        · On-site, including possible Certificate of Advanced Mastery (CAM) in Natural Resources, Biology, etc.
K-12 teacher enhancement
        · On-/Off-site workshops and classes.  Topics include:
            How to do science.
            “Current knowledge” updates on science topics.
Undergraduate students
        · On-site and campus-based workshops and classes
        · Research involvement (REU and REU-like programs)
Undergraduate teacher enhancement· On-/Off-site workshops and classes.
Graduate students
        · Research
        · On-campus classes/research
        · On-site workshops/research
        · Provide teaching opportunities
Traditional Field-Station Classes
        · Undergraduate
        · Graduate
Continuing Ed
        · Extension
        · Distance Learning
        · Foster educational orientation to private industry/private managers
Public Education
        · General public
        · Policy makers/elected officials
        · Campfire talks
Elderhostel

This is a huge list, and for purposes of this proposal writing workshop, we will be focusing on K-12 schoolyard LTER programs and associated teacher enhancement.  Specific goals include:
        1) expansion of the Schoolyard LTER program, with specific emphasis on developing web-based software that would allow K-12 students to enter data from established permanent plots (at/near schools) to track changes over time, analyze results, and compare with other school programs.
        2) development of teacher enhancement classes to teach K-12 teachers how to do science.
        3) development of teacher enhancement classes that provide updates in current knowledge in selected science areas (biology, ecology, geology).
We see these last two as being quite distinct.  Our experience with the Schoolyard LTER efforts has taught us that most K-12 teachers are weak in basic science principles, and we are designing a three- to four-weekend series of workshops to cover simple basics such as the scientific method, experimental design, and simple statistics (e.g. t tests, chi square tests).  These sequences will be offered in the Fall and Spring, with the intent to meet on weekends once a month for one and a half or two days.The development of web-based, interactive software could be the basis for a network-wide proposal.  We are going to start work in this area this winter on bootlegged funds, but already appreciate that substantial funding will be necessary to really made much progress in this area.

3) Target Audience.
Diverse audiences, but in order of descending priority: K-12 students: K-12 teachers; undergraduate students; undergraduate instructors; continuing education/informal education audiences

4) Resume for Andy Moldenke (PhD, Stanford University 1970).
Dr. Moldenke is an arthropod ecologist whose research has centered around the issues of biodiversity and the interactions between insects and plants.  Most of Andy’s research has been to establish the "rules" under which assemblages of pollinator species are "added" to communities to result in ever more diverse ecosystems (there may be as few as a dozen or as many as several hundred species of pollinators in a square kilometer).  Andy then tests the validity of these rules by studying pairs of community types in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres which shared no evolutionary ancestry but yet appear "similar" communities (i.e., convergent evolution in deserts, chaparral, forests, alpine & coastal scrub).  Andy has also studied the functional aspects of how the biodiversity of spiders may control outbreaks of forest defoliators.  More recently, Andy has been studying how the enormously diverse soil foodweb is affected by forest management and how it can be employed as an indicator of soil health, especially in agricultural systems.
More germane to this workshop, Andy has been a Co-PI with Art McKee on an NSF-Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) site grant at the Andrews Forest for 7 years (approx. 10 students/yr).  And, he has been a Co-PI on a 3-yr NSF Teacher Enhancement grant to train 40-50/yr middle- and high-school teachers in the basics of science inquiry and field ecological research techniques for 6 weeks during the summers.  In just the 2 1/2 years so far, more than 8,000 K-12 students have passed through classes that have been modified and theoretically improved as a result of this program.

Second team member:  Bill Carlsen
Title:  Associate Professor
Address:  Kennedy Hall, Department of Education
Phone:  607-255-9257
Fax:
E-mail:  wsc2@cornell.edu

Brief description of ideas you have for your proposal, based on a review of the needs and desires of your LTER site, and the funding programs (for example, see the NSF Web site
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1999/nsf9992/tableofcontents.htm where various EHR programs are discussed in detail. Please note-the deadlines listed on this Web site are standing, annual deadlines which are renewed each year.) This preparation will help us match your ideas with potential funding sources and/or other sites prior to the meeting.

We are familiar with the NSF Teacher Enhancement, IMD, ISE, REU, and GK-12 programs, having received grants from each of these.  We do not have a specific idea for an LTER grant at this point, although we are most interested in working with high school teachers (and possibly Cooperative Extension audiences). We would be interested in collaborating with others on a multi-site grant, but would probably not initiate a grant for HBEF.

With our current LTER supplement, we are developing a  teacher resource packet for LTERs, and will develop a HBEF educational web site.

A description of your target audience.
See above.

1) K-12 Teacher Enhancement/ Research Experience for Teachers and Students:
The BES School/Community Research Partnership Program, started in 1998, has built partnerships between BES scientists, teachers, students and community groups to engage students in on-going studies of the local environment. The Partnership Program establishes long-term studies in schoolyards or other nearby sites, which dovetail with BES research programs and also build a database of information useful to the school and to the local community. Over the summer of 1999 a two-week Urban Ecosystem Education Summer Institute was held for teachers participants of the School/Community Partnership Program (K-12).  The institute provided training and field experience to fifteen newly recruited teachers from eight Baltimore City and County schools. The topics offered at the summer institute included:

1) Geographic Information Systems - spatial analysis
2) Hydrology - small catchment study of local hydrology and water flow paths
3) Soils - investigation and evaluation of local and regional soils
4) Land-Cover and Vegetation - investigation of  land-cover and vegetation
5) Social Ecology - integration of social-demographics and ecology of the Baltimore metropolitan area

Specific goals of a new proposal to support expansion of the Partnership Program include:
- Teacher Enhancement - Professional development for teachers in the above mentioned topics (workshops, classes, research experiences and materials), serving more teachers from the same schools (including the development of stronger multi-disciplinary teams to include math, social science, etc.) and more schools
- Research Experience for Teachers and Students - Offer students (in particular minority students) and teachers the opportunity for research experiences during the school year and over the summer
- Develop materials and resources to support teachers and students in schoolyard research (these include written curriculum and web-based materials and interactive software)

2) Informal, Community-Based Education:
The Education Team worked with the BES Demographic-Social team to develop a six-week Summer Neighborhood Science Program at two inner-city community centers where we are exploring the development of urban field stations.  During the six-week program, several BES scientists shared their expertise and career interest with students ages 5- 16.  The Neighborhood Science Program also included field investigation of the surrounding neighborhoods and parks, conducted by BES scientists.  Students explored their neighborhoods observing animal biodiversity, vegetation and urban soils.

Specific goals of a new proposal to support expansion of the Neighborhood Science Program include:
-Establish the Neighborhood Science Program as a year around program
- Expand the resources for the program including written materials, field trips and scientists
- Expand program to other communities in the Baltimore metropolitan area (increasing the opportunity for inner city youth to be involved in science and research  programs)

3) GK-12 Graduate Fellowship Program:
The BES would like to develop internships for pre-service teachers, undergraduate
science majors and graduate students interested in education and outreach to local communities. Target Audience would include middle and high school teachers and their students and informal community-based educators (as the education participants),  and undergraduate and graduate students as the interns or fellows.

Specific goals of a BES GK-12 or similar program include:
- Engage future scientists in studying the metropolitan area as an ecological system in partnership with students, teachers and informal educators, thereby increasing their interest in education, in urban ecosystems, and in collaboration with school- and community-based educators in their future work as scientists.
- Provide students, teachers, and educators with support and assistance as they study the Baltimore metropolitan region.
- Contribute to the development of a comprehensive, regional K-12, integrated curriculum in urban ecosystems that incorporates active and on-going collaboration between schools, informal education programs, scientists and the community.

-Vicki Fabiyi (also of the Baltimore LTER) has 10 years of experience in environmental sciences, education and
community program development. She has expert knowledge of the Maryland State public school system and
curriculum program development. Prior to joining the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, Ms. Fabiyi, was an AmeriCorps
member for the Maryland State Department of Education. In this capacity, Ms. Fabiyi was responsible for facilitating
the Student Service Learning (SSL) requirement for over 53 secondary schools in the Montgomery County Public
Schools system. Ms. Fabiyi has also designed and implemented SSL science projects for infusion into middle school
science curriculum.

-Beverly Feig  has taught science at the middle, high, and community college level pri marily in the biological sciences
since 1971. After serving as Science Department Chairperson at Fallstaff Middle School in Baltimore City, she became
an Instructional Support Teacher working under the Baltimore Urban Systemic Initiative, a grant funded by the
National Science Foundation. Ms. Feig has been a Martin-Marietta Graduate Fellow participating in research on the
oyster parasite, Perkinsus marinus, at the Center of Marine Biotechnology, and an Earthwatch Teacher Fellowship
Recipient tracking Timber Wolves in northeast Minnesota. She was Baltimore City's Teacher of the Year in 1996-97.

1) Name of your LTER Site

2) Brief description of ideas you have for your proposal, based on a review
of the needs and desires of your LTER site, and the funding programs (for
example, see the NSF Web site
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1999/nsf9992/tableofcontents.htm where various EHR
programs are discussed in detail. Please note-the deadlines listed on this
Web site are standing, annual deadlines which are renewed each year.) This
preparation will help us match your ideas with potential funding sources
and/or other sites prior to the meeting.

3) A description of your target audience.

4) For team members who did not attend Workshop I - one-paragraph resume of
each member of the proposed team.

5) Following information for each individual:

Team leader (contact person):
Title:
Address:
Phone:
Fax:
E-mail:

Second team member:
Title:
Address:
Phone:
Fax:
E-mail:

Send Applications:

Patricia L. Sprott: PSprott@lternet.edu
FAX: 505-272-7080 Patty Sprott

Applications will be acknowledged within two weeks after they are received.