Explore awards
Use the filter menu and interactive map to explore the past competitions offered and grants awarded through the Environmental Literacy Program.
To learn more about project findings and outcomes, view the summaries of our grantees’ summative evaluation reports.
Science Center Public Forums: Community Engagement for Environmental Literacy, Improved Resilience, and Decision-Making
By engaging diverse publics in immersive and deliberative learning forums, this three-year project will use NOAA data and expertise to strengthen community resilience and decision-making around a variety of climate and weather-related hazards across the United States. Led by Arizona State University’s Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes and the Museum of Science Boston, the project will develop citizen forums hosted by regional science centers to create a new, replicable model for learning and engagement. These forums, to be hosted initially in Boston and Phoenix and then expanded to an additional six sites around the U.S., will facilitate public deliberation on real-world issues of concern to local communities, including rising sea levels, extreme precipitation, heat waves, and drought. The forums will identify and clarify citizen values and perspectives while creating stakeholder networks in support of local resilience measures. The forum materials developed in collaboration with NOAA will foster better understanding of environmental changes and best practices for improving community resiliency, and will create a suite of materials and case studies adaptable for use by science centers, teachers, and students. With regional science centers bringing together the public, scientific experts, and local officials, the project will create resilience-centered partnerships and a framework for learning and engagement that can be replicated nationwide.
Envirosphere Educational Project
McWane ScienceCenter (McWSC) is a non-profit, interactive science museum committed to showing the public how science and technology enrich their lives and help them solve problems. McWSC has a goal of extending the power of experiential learning to as many people as possible, particularly those who would otherwise not be able to do so on their own. McWane’s environmental education initiative, the Envirosphere Educational Project, uses NOAA’s Science on a Sphere (SOS) to provide environmental education and workforce development programs for an estimated 200,000 people. This number includes the general public, school groups from across the region, and 2,500 children in low-income communities from across the state of Alabama. All visitors have the opportunity to go to the SOS exhibit and participate in environmental education programs led by McWSC Education Staff. Each program corresponds to one of the SOS data sets and to the Alabama Course of Study Standards for elementary and secondary schools. The intended outcomes of the Project are to make complex environmental science concepts more accessible to people of all ages; to provide educational opportunities to children who would otherwise not have access to this type of information; to partner with local and state academic institutions, school boards and municipalities to improve environmental science curricula and awareness; and to increase the visitor’s knowledge of and pique his/her interest in science and its related real-world applications.
Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship Program
The Triangle Coalition for Science and Technology Education provides a competitive program that selects & provides financial assistance to current science and math teachers for 10-month fellowship in the federal government. This project would allow NOAA to continue to be one of the host agencies, with one teacher fellow hosted in FY08, and up to two teacher fellows in FY09 and FY10. These teacher fellows will work with NOAA's Office of Education to learn about how federal science and math education policy and programs are structured. The Triangle Coalition for Science and Technology Education provides coordinated training and professional development activities and trips for the fellows that work in up to 10 different federal agencies.
Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship Program
The Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship Program was enacted by Congress and is administered by the Department of Energy-Office of Science and managed by the Triangle Coalition for Science and Technology Education. Participation includes the Department of Energy (DOE), NASA, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The program provides an opportunity for current public or private elementary and secondary mathematics, technology, and science classroom teachers with demonstrated excellence in teaching an opportunity to serve in the national public policy arena. This proposal seeks funds to place Einstein Fellows at NOAA over the five-year period 2010-2015. The NOAA Einstein Fellows will support NOAA's education vision of an environmentally literate public and a diverse workforce who will use NOAA's products and services to make informed decisions that enable responsible action. The Fellows provide practical insight in establishing and operating education programs and they provide "real world" perspectives to program managers developing or managing education programs.
Signals of Spring - ACES [Animals in Curriculum-bases Ecosystem Studies]
Signals of Spring ACES (Animals in Curriculum-based Ecosystem Studies), will use NOAA remote sensing data with curriculum-based activities for middle and high school students (see http://www.signalsofspring.net/aces/). Students use Earth imagery to explain the movement of animals that are tracked by satellite with NOAA's ARGOS monitoring system. The project addresses the issues surrounding the animals and environments of NOAA's National Marine Sanctuaries (NMS). Comprehensive teacher professional development will be delivered both onsite and online for 250 teachers. The project will impact 20,000 students and parents. Ten curriculum modules will be delivered to students, accompanied with an investigation of El Nino and animals, as well as ocean life and global climate change. ACES will provide classrooms with the curricular area of conservation and the ecological issues surrounding the ocean, using marine animals as the engaging component. Students will apply NOAA Earth data to animal migrations and the critical environmental issues that face these animals that are of depleting populations. Once teachers and students have the necessary skills to interpret data, students will perform the ACES investigations.