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BALTIMORE
FOUNDATION RECEIVES NOAA CHESAPEAKE BAY WATERSHED
EDUCATION AWARDS
Funds Designed to Educate Students and Teachers
The
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
has awarded grants to a broad array of organizations for projects that
promote environmental education about the Chesapeake Bay. The funds
went to environmental education organizations located throughout the
Chesapeake Bay watershed through NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office’s
Bay Watershed Education and Training (B-WET) Program. NOAA is the environmental
research and service agency of the Commerce
Department.
The Living Classroom Foundation (LCF)
of Baltimore received $114,000 through the grant program. LCF’s
School Leadership In Urban Runoff Reduction Program will receive the
funding. LCF is a non-profit organization founded in Baltimore in 1985.
LCF provides innovative experiential and educational job training programs
for 30,000 youth annually.
The
B-WET
Program is the first federally-supported, environmental education
program focused solely on the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The program
was established to provide environment-based education to students,
teachers, and communities throughout the watershed. The goal is to bring
the environment into every classroom and every child out into the bay
watershed in a meaningful way.
"Educating
young people is a major priority of the Administration of President
George Bush and important to the long term success of NOAA in achieving
its missions of environmental assessment and prediction, and natural
resource stewardship," said Vice Admiral Conrad
C. Lautenbacher, Jr. U.S. Navy (ret.), undersecretary of commerce
for oceans and atmosphere and NOAA administrator. "The Chesapeake
Bay is a treasured natural resource that provides a great opportunity
to educate young people about the science necessary to fully understand
the complex interactions between humans and the environment."
“The
Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries should be considered a living classroom,”
said Lowell Bahner, director of NOAA
Chesapeake Bay Office. “The Bay provides a source of environmental
knowledge that can be used to help advance student learning skills and
problem-solving abilities across the entire school curriculum.”
This
year’s 19 grant recipients were selected based on criteria that
parallel the Chesapeake 2000 agreement. The agreement calls on bay states
and the District of Columbia to combine efforts in ensuring that students
receive a “meaningful” bay or stream outdoor experience
before they graduate. The criteria emphasize sustained, hands-on, multi-disciplinary
environmental experiences that are aligned with academic learning standards.
Selected
projects total $878,000 and range from investigating current Chesapeake
Bay fishery issues to stream corridor restoration. Projects will take
place in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia and
the District of Columbia.
The
following projects were awarded environmental education funds:
MARYLAND
- NOAA awarded
$52,000 to the Friends of the
Patuxent Wildlife Research Center, Inc. Funding will provide a
schoolyard habitat coordinator to promote and assist in implementing
schoolyard habitat projects providing schools and teachers with unique,
hands-on, integrated instructional opportunitiesto restore or create
wildlife habitat on school grounds.
- NOAA awarded
$51,483 to Maryland State Department
of Education to provide local school systems with teacher training
workshops. These workshops will match state standards to local curriculum,
establish background scientific knowledge and skills for a specific
project, allow teachers to meet and interact with local professional
resource personnel.
- NOAA awarded
$114,613 to the Living
Classrooms Foundation to provide a project-based learning experience
for students that is centered on the question, “What is storm
water runoff pollution, and how can we help prevent it?” Throughout
the program, students will work within their own neighborhoods and
schoolyards to investigate this important urban environmental issue,
to examine their own attitudes and behaviors, and to seek solutions
to this problem.
- NOAA awarded
$35,245 to the National Aquarium in
Baltimore to develop a meaningful service learning opportunity
for inner-city school students. The program will provide students
and teachers practical investigative experience using a horticultural
experiment to grow tidal wetland plants for multiple community-based
restoration projects.
- NOAA
awarded $35,000 to the Alice
Ferguson Foundation, Inc. to provide teachers within Prince Georges
County the opportunity to participate in the Hard Bargain Farm Environmental
Education Center. The greater watershed community benefits from the
extension of environmental education to the inner-city, challenging
youth to forge solutions to real environmental problems.
- NOAA awarded
$12,882 to Crossland High
School to provide students with first-hand experience of the components
of a watershed, from the tributaries in the local neighborhood, down
stream to the rivers of the Chesapeake Bay. The students will investigate
how the hydrologic cycle is applied to natural and developed landscapes
and design their own solutions to managing urban storm water runoff
on their campus school grounds.
- NOAA awarded
$3,149 to the Kent County Soil and Water Conservation District to
provide students within Kent County the opportunity to participate
in the Kent County Envirothon. The Envirothon is a problem-solving
natural resource competition for high school students, which consists
of four infield training sessions culminating in a one-day competition.
- NOAA awarded
$6,500 to the Mars Estates Elementary School to allow students to
interact with the environment through hands-on experiences, reading
and writing in order to build background knowledge, develop scientific
research skills and improve achievement in science.
PENNSYLVANIA
- NOAA
awarded $70,000 to the Pennsylvania
Department of Education to train teachers throughout Pennsylvania
in environment and ecology mandated standards.
- NOAA awarded $5,037
to the Keystone Central School District Central
Mountain High School Science Department to expose all ninth grade
biology students in Keystone School District to an outdoor environmental
experience. Each student will use hands-on activities to explore a stream
or wetland in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
VIRGINIA
- NOAA
awarded $70,000 to the Virginia Resource Use Education Council to establish
a high quality, highly visible and accessible teacher training “academy”
across Virginia. The project will feature a series of training opportunities
that provide both content and direct experience for teachers in Virginia.
- NOAA awarded $25,000
to the Friends of the Rappahannock
to provide sixth and seventh-grade students with an intensive, long-term,
hands-on experience that drives home important environmental concepts.
The students will integrate the monitoring of their nursery into class
projects, and receive intensive training (both in-class and in the field)
on the role of riparian buffers, and on how to design an effective stream
restoration project.
- NOAA awarded $73,000
to the Virginia Marine Science Museum Foundation to provide an array
of educational experiences for forth-grade students. The goals of this
project are to increase student knowledge of Chesapeake Bay ecology,
to help students achieve higher academic success in science, and to
develop champions for the Chesapeake Bay.
- NOAA awarded $10,636
to the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences
to provide the opportunity for motivated and interested high school
students to investigate timely and pertinent issues in the Chesapeake
Bay, such as the blue crab fishery or the state of the Eastern oyster.
WASHINGTON,
D.C.
- NOAA
awarded $35,000 to the Earth Conservation
Corps to provide students, teachers and the local community with
day-long trips to the Kingman island where they will engage in dynamic
hands-on environmental education activities focusing on river ecology,
native wildlife and biodiversity conservation of the Anacostia River
and the greater Chesapeake Bay watershed. The innovative curriculum
combines environmental science, social studies, and African American
history as part of the hands-on environmental education experience.
- NOAA awarded $100,000
to the District of Columbia Department
of Health to provide meaningful bay or stream experiences to District
of Columbia high school students. Working through each of the six partners,
D.C. high school students will be exposed to earth science, chemistry
and life science in analyzing the Potomac or Anacostia watershed both
in the classroom and in the field.
CHESAPEAKE
BAY WATERSHED
- NOAA
awarded $100,000 to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF)
to expand CBF’s Teacher Training Institute. The Institute will
provide teachers with the skills, knowledge, and comfort level necessary
to integrate lessons and projects focused on the local watershed into
their classrooms.
- NOAA awarded $62,353
to the National Audubon Society
for a student program that will teach the fundamentals of birdwatching
and fishing in context with Maryland-D.C. science education curriculum
and the Maryland High School Core Learning Goals. The program will culminate
by engaging students in a mentoring program to transfer their new skills
and knowledge to a younger class.
- NOAA awarded $15,854
to the University
of Maryland Center for Environmental Science to provide teachers
with a course that offers a unique opportunity to integrate university-based
research and data with the Chesapeake Bay 2000 agreement.
NOAA
is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through
the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and
providing environmental stewardship of our nation’s coastal and
marine resources.
NOAA
Chesapeake Bay Office
410 Severn Avenue, Suite 107, Annapolis, MD 21403
Tel: (800) YOUR-BAY, ext 660; (410) 267-5660
Fax: (410) 267-5666;
Web:
http://noaa.chesapeakebay.net
To learn
more about NOAA, please visit:
http://www.noaa.gov.
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