Explore awards

The Bishop Museum will develop, implement and evaluate of a full set of informal education programs centered on the Science On a Sphere® exhibit. This project includes the following programs and exhibits: -Eleven classroom modules on earth and ocean sciences (one module for each grade from kindergarten through 10th) using a field trip to the Science On a Sphere® (SOS) and the new Science Adventure Center at Bishop Museum as the keystone for each module. - Exhibits in the planetarium lobby that will augment the SOS display by providing additional content information, local tie-ins, and information on how SOS works. - Daily live demonstrations at the sphere. This includes public demonstrations (1200 shows, 22,000 attendees during the grant period) and school children (400 shows, 9600 attendees during the grant period) for a total attendance of 31,600. -Yearly teacher workshops (2 total, 80 educators) to promote the use of the classroom modules mentioned above with NOAA staff and museum staff. Special-event programming incorporating the sphere will also include an eight-session lecture series featuring NOAA staff; two annual "Mad About Science" Festivals; eight Family Sunday events; and twenty local television news and weather broadcasts using the sphere and its programs for content and background.

Bishop Museum is installing Science On a Sphere® (SOS) at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu , Hawai’i. Science on a Sphere, a spherical multimedia display on which NOAA data can be displayed, provides an unparalleled opportunity for innovative and meaningful environmental education for all ages. Hawai’i's natural environment is ideal for conducting research and education on significant topics of earth and ocean sciences, and NOAA scientists currently play a large role in ongoing research in and around the Hawaiian Islands. The addition of a SOS unit to the Museum will allow visitors to learn about the global earth systems that underlie the "science of Hawai’i" featured in the Science Adventure Center at the Bishop Museum. The Science On a Sphere® globe will feature a variety of data sets and serve as the centerpiece of live educational presentations. In addition, Bishop Museum staff and scientists will assist in creating new and exciting visuals for SOS.

Both Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawaii and Imiloa Astronomy Center in Hilo, Hawaii have installations of NOAA Science on a Sphere and experience with developing programs for spherical display systems. In collaboration with NOAA Pacific Services Center (PSC), these museums are producing and distributing four modules on earth system science topics for spherical display systems. These four modules will focus on climate change, the restless earth, weather and climate, and real-time planet earth. Hawaii State Department of Education will produce pre-visit and post-visit lessons for each of four school programs.

The Bishop Museum is installing new Science On a Sphere (SOS) projectors and computers in advance of the 2010 Association of Science Technology Centers (ASTC) conference in Honolulu, HI. The state of the art hardware will allow the Bishop Museum and Lawrence Hall of Science to showcase NOAA-funded programming for the museum community during the conference. The project also seeks to build network capacity by creating and maintaining a database on SOS sites' hardware within the existing NOAA yahoo usergroup forum and through conference participation. Project evaluation efforts will focus on the aesthetics of SOS imagery pre and post installation and whether or not it significantly impacts the visitor experience.

The goal of Community Resilience Informed by Science and Experience (C-RISE) was to build the capacity of coastal communities to support resiliency planning and adaptation actions. To accomplish this the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) worked with an advisory group including representatives from NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management, Maine Geological Survey, Maine Department of Environmental Protection, the cities of Portland and South Portland, Greater Portland Council of Governments, New England Environmental Finance Center, and Axiom Technologies to develop public programming that provided participants with knowledge of and access to local sea level rise data. This program, "Preparing Coastal Communities for Sea Level Rise" is a community education event that built participant knowledge in sea level rise science, future projections, and local impacts. Through visual presentations and facilitated discussions, GMRI brought regional relevancy to global climate data using local history and case studies of past flooding events. Using technology and peer discussions, GMRI staff provided participants with access to interactive data sets and maps that visualized the impacts of sea level rise and weather events on community resources like roads, parks, hospitals, schools, and other valued assets—and how climate projections will increase these impacts over time. Over the course of this grant, GMRI staff facilitated over 60 community events in over 30 coastal communities in Maine, reaching over 2,000 individuals. While many of the participants had heard about sea level rise and storm surge prior to this program, few had internalized what this meant for their own communities. Post-event surveys indicated that participants discussed flooding issues with their families, friends, and neighbors, further examined local sea level rise maps, and engaged with community decision-makers about resiliency planning. GMRI believes that strong and informed representation of citizens is vital to addressing climate challenges and resiliency actions. We continue to leverage this work through various projects as we collaborate with coastal communities to provide them with knowledge, skills, and tools needed to develop community-focused resilience plans for sea level rise.

Coastal rural communities have deep cultural connections to and rely heavily upon the marine environment and economy. Due to their remoteness, isolation from central planning agencies, and lack of financial and municipal resources, they are highly vulnerable to climate impacts such as sea level rise. The Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) and key project partners, Upswell and the Island Institute, will develop, convene and facilitate regional trainings by which Maine’s rural coastal communities can increase their capacity to plan and prepare for coastal climate impacts by developing the knowledge, skills, and relationships necessary to create data- and community-informed climate resilience plans. Cornerstone to the regional trainings is an engagement tool that builds common knowledge, incorporates diverse community value and voice, provides a framework for community planning and decision making, and builds relationships amongst participants. These trainings will also leverage and engage resilience professionals in Maine to share and represent their resources as communities apply those to their newly acquired skills and frameworks for community planning and decision making. Community leaders from the regional trainings will continue their learning through participation in a professional learning community. We will also leverage GMRI’s prior NOAA Environmental Literacy Grant, titled “Community Resilience Informed by Science and Experience (C-RISE),” to deliver community education programming that builds the capacity of residents in coastal communities to support resiliency planning and adaptation actions by providing participants with knowledge of and access to local sea level rise data. This project will serve 20 rural coastal and island communities in Maine through four regional trainings. Each community will select a diverse and equitable representation of 10 stakeholders and community leaders to participate in the trainings. Community education events will be accessible to all residents of each community. These interventions will build community literacy and capacity for developing coastal resilience plans that benefit the social, environmental, and economic health of the community and align with Maine’s Climate Action Plan. An advisory group including representatives from NOAA’s Office for Coastal Management, Maine Sea Grant, Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve, the State of Maine’s Governor’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future, Maine Geological Survey, Maine Department of Environmental Protection, the Town of Vinalhaven, and the Town of St. George will guide the development and implementation of this project. Researchers at the University of Maine, Orono will evaluate the implementation of the project as well as assess the impact of this project on a communities’ ability to make community-informed climate plans. This project reflects NOAA’s Community Resilience Education Theory of Change, specifically supporting resilience planners and community members to develop trusting relationships focused on their collective environmental literacy through genuine conversations around resilience planning and decision making. With NOAA, we envision communities that have the capability to anticipate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from significant multi-hazard threats with minimum damage to social well-being, the economy, and the environment.

The Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk is located at the mouth of the Norwalk River where it flows into Long Island Sound. Its mission is to inspire people to appreciate and protect the Sound and the global environment. As global climate change increases, extreme storms and sea levels continue to rise and a growing percentage of the 23 million people living within 50 miles of the Sound are directly affected by severe weather events, providing a timely opportunity to educate students, teachers, and the public about community resilience. From 2017-2020, the Aquarium developed and delivered an innovative three-session climate resilience education program to more than 2,000 middle and high school students in Fairfield County, Connecticut. The Sound Resilience student experience began in the classroom, where students learned about the impacts of hurricanes and coastal storms on their communities and used a hands-on “beach in a box” to model the effectiveness of built structures like seawalls and natural resilience features including salt marshes and oyster reefs. Then, during a two-hour research cruise on the Aquarium’s hybrid-electric research vessel, Spirit of the Sound, students collaborated to map their home coastlines from the water: identifying vulnerable locations from apartment buildings to power plants, as well as the existing resilience structures protecting their coast. On the vessel they also stepped into the role of climate scientists, conducting real-time weather and water sampling, including collecting and examining photosynthetic plankton that absorb carbon and help to slow down the effects of climate change. The third program session, back in the classroom, sent students on a design and decision-making journey, in which they compared their collaboratively created resilience map with flood-risk maps of their hometown, then worked together to identify gaps in resilience infrastructure and design a resilience plan for their community. As a result of Sound Resilience – Get on Board!, there were significant gains in students’ understanding of resilience science and their own sense of agency in creating a resilient future for their communities. Participants also reported deeper understanding of, and connection to, the Sound’s coastal ecosystems, which serve to buffer storm waves, sequester carbon, and protect communities from extreme weather and climate change. The Aquarium also developed and delivered a teacher professional development workshop focusing on effective and standards-aligned methods of teaching climate change, resilience, and environmental justice issues. Finally, an interactive experience was created for guests in one of the Aquarium’s most highly trafficked spaces. It includes a series of twenty-foot map projections of Long Island Sound showing present and future vulnerabilities and resilience methods, as well as a touch-screen kiosk where guests can interact with NOAA resources showing the risks that floods and sea level rise pose to their home communities. Although the grant period has ended, the resources created thanks to NOAA’s Environmental Literacy Program will live on. The guest experience on the Aquarium floor will continue for the foreseeable future and the student programs—in-person as well as virtual—and teacher workshops will remain available within the Aquarium’s program catalog.

In 1999, The Ocean Project completed a comprehensive opinion research on public attitudes, perceptions, and knowledge of the ocean ever conducted. The research identified a broad vacuum in public understanding of the ocean; a fundamental issue of ocean literacy. To further increase effectiveness in building ocean literacy, this project updates and expands The Ocean Project's research to create a more highly detailed database of public awareness, knowledge, and attitudes about the ocean and the impact of climate change on the ocean. It develops recommendations to enable free-choice learning educators to improve the ocean and climate literacy of their visitors. The study includes a comprehensive review of existing literature, qualitative and quantitative research, analysis of the data, and publication and broad dissemination, including recommendations for programs and content that build ocean and climate literacy. The work done by The Ocean Project is helping the ocean education community better understand the motivations, psychology, and emotions behind segments of the public's attitudes toward the ocean. These data are essential as the institutions, agencies and organizations of the ocean community work together and independently to engage people, inform decision-makers, and enhance ocean and climate literacy throughout the Nation.

This project will expand and enhance an initiative that offers zoos, aquariums, and science museums the market research they need to engage and motivate the public on issues related to the ocean and climate change. The three-year project will measure changes in public awareness and action on ocean and climate-related issues. It will integrate these research findings into recommendations offered to staff working at zoos, aquariums, and science museums as well as to the ocean conservation community and provide professional development for staff members at these institutions in order to support and shape public outreach efforts that connect climate change, the ocean and individual actions, especially among our nation's youth.

The Ocean Project will empower America's zoos, aquariums and science museums to become centers of innovation and effective leadership for healthy oceans and conservation in their communities, providing meaningful engagement opportunities for their 200 million annual visitors to become involved in helping with solutions. To help them do so, The Ocean Project is launching a competitive "Innovative Solutions Grants Program" that will provide financial resources for zoos, aquariums and science museums to develop innovative local and regional ocean conservation solutions and stewardship initiatives, with a special emphasis on engaging youth and minorities. To leverage and maximize the benefit of this small grants program, The Ocean Project will also provide the awardees with opportunities for capacity building in strategic communications and share the resulting new strategies and successes with our growing partner network of 2000 zoos, aquariums, science museums and other conservation and education organizations in all 50 States and worldwide.

Brooklyn College and the National Wildlife Federation Eco-Schools USA program in New York City created The Resilient Schools Consortium (RiSC) Program to increase the environmental literacy of middle school and high school students while providing opportunities for their voices to be heard. The City's long-term planning document, OneNYC, set forth a vision for a resilient city without specifying a role for students or including specific plans for their schools. This project addressed this gap by allowing students to interact with city, state and federal officials and resilience practitioners and present their ideas for resilience guidelines for NYC Public Schools. An active-learning RiSC Curriculum was developed by two middle school teachers in collaboration with their peers and the project team. The curriculum is available at https://riscnyc.org. RiSC teams at six middle schools and high schools used the curriculum to follow the UC Climate Resilience Toolkit’s Steps to Resilience. They learned about climate change and extreme weather, the vulnerability of their schools and their communities, options for addressing the risks, planned, and prioritized action, and executed small scale resilience projects on their school grounds when possible. Students were able to share what they had learned and have dialogue with professionals from government agencies and non-governmental about actions and solutions at two RiSC summits in June 2018 and June 2019. The RiSC program directly reached over 200 NYC public schools students through direct participation on the RiSC teams or RiSC-sponsored events, and indirectly reached hundreds more through the interaction of RiSC students with their peers. RiSC students were highly motivated by the program’s focus on action and the opportunity to speak directly to officials at the summits. The RiSC program also resulted in the creation of the New York City Climate and Resilience Education Taskforce (https://cretf.org), a group of NYC agencies, educators, and non-governmental organizations that are working towards providing climate and resilience education for all New York City students and their teachers. Key contributors to the success of the Resilient Schools Consortium program included New York Sea Grant and the Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay.