Explore awards

The Environmental Literacy for Alaska Climate Stewards (ELACS) project served 84 K-12 educators and 1,080 Alaskan students in predominantly Alaska Native coastal villages. The project provided opportunities to build understandings of how climate change impacts local environments, increase overall climate literacy, and contribute to community resilience. Participants were primarily from the Chugach School District and the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District, both located in the southcentral region of Alaska. Students and teachers in the Aleutian Region School District, Nome City Schools, and the North Slope Borough School District (southwestern, northwestern, and northern Alaska, respectively) participated to a lesser extent in novel learning experiences made available through collaborative partnerships that emerged during the grant period. The project focused on three areas: teacher professional development, classroom instruction, and community engagement. Professional development included training in project-based learning and co-teaching/coaching sessions with master teachers. Classroom instruction engaged students in meaningful, innovative, place-based, project-based learning, and citizen-science activities focused on site and community needs. Students monitored their local environments, built or otherwise used ocean observation systems, collected data, and represented their new knowledge through presentations and art. Significant outcomes included student work on the relationship between phytoplankton and salmon conservation in Chenega Bay, a Living History Project that engaged community members and elders with traditional ecological knowledge in Tatitlek, and engagement in weather and environmental monitoring plans for the community of Whittier (potentially threatened by tsunamis generated by unstable slopes in a nearby fjord). Students shared active research regarding impacts and available resources. ELACS aligned with and supported NOAA’s educational mission by helping the target populations understand and predict changes in climate, weather, oceans, and coasts. This project promoted students’ environmental stewardship and a deeper understanding of a changing environment at both local and global levels. Throughout the four-year project, students and teachers worked with scientists and experts in education, climate change, and marine science using project-based learning approaches and educational technology. A notable (but not exhaustive) list of partners included researchers from NOAA’s Kasitsna Bay Laboratory, the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences and the International Arctic Research Center (both at the University of Alaska Fairbanks), the Polar Science Center (University of Washington), Ground Truth Trekking, and the Center for Alaska Coastal Studies. Educational consultants included STEMisEd, Teknikio, NexMap, Build-A-Buoy, and EcoArt Expeditions. Corporate and non-profit partners included WeatherFlow, Inc., Batelle, Inc., Cook Inlet Tribal Council, and Alaska Science Teachers Association.

Creation Justice Ministries is partnering with Interfaith Power & Light chapters in Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina on the project “Participatory Education in Faith Communities for Climate Resilience.” Coastal faith communities can be key assets to building resilience in their communities, but often do not have the resources or investment from resilience agencies to build the necessary environmental literacy. The goal of this project is to create networks of faith communities that are educated on the realities of climate change and able to serve as hubs of social and physical resilience for their communities – helping them better weather the physical, social, and spiritual storms of the climate crisis. This project will engage faith communities in social learning on the connections between their experience of extreme weather and the science of climate change; facilitate a series of workshops in which faith communities engage with local scientists, planners, and decision-makers around climate resilience to extreme weather and climate change; and guide congregations through a resilience implementation and educational project. The project team will work with predominantly Black, Indigenous, and other faith communities of color in Mathews County, VA, Wicomico County, MD, and Beaufort and Pamlico Counties, NC. The outcomes of this project are (1) increased social cohesion and networks of accountability between local faith communities, planners, and decision-makers, (2) faith community members educated with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to reason about the interaction of human and natural systems globally and locally, with a specific focus on the inequities of climate change vulnerabilities, (3) faith community members empowered and prepared to educate their communities about climate impacts, participate in civic processes around climate adaptation, mitigation, and resilience, and serve as trusted community leaders when climate disasters occur, and (4) congregations with the infrastructure to continue integrating resilience and climate change education in the life of their church and local community. This project is integrally connected to NOAA’s mission of science, service, and stewardship. By intersecting the service- and stewardship-oriented work of faith communities with the science of resilience agencies and local universities, members of faith communities can be more resilient and adaptive to the risks and hazards associated with climate change. Other project partners include NOAA Regional Climate Services Center, NOAA Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments program, North Carolina Division of Coastal Management, North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resilience, Mathews County Board of Supervisors, Maryland CoastSmart Communities, Duke University Marine Lab’s (DUML) Community Science Initiative, Environmental Finance Center (EFC) at the University of Maryland, and Virginia Institute of Marine Science (William & Mary).

This collaboration led by three major national aquariums - National Aquarium in Baltimore, Monterey Bay Aquarium, and New England Aquarium - will develop a leadership initiative to build capacity within aquariums and related informal science education institutions nation-wide, enabling education staff to engage and inspire millions of visitors to take action about climate change and the ocean. Over three years, the aquariums will increase climate literacy among informal science educators by: 1) creating a national network for training, resource sharing and support; 2) developing climate change activity carts to support exhibit interpretation; 3) providing training for youth interpreters; and 4) hosting regional and national summits to strengthen collaboration and showcase and disseminate model programs. Outcomes for educators will include increased knowledge of climate change science; knowledge of strategies, tools and materials for educating about climate change; and confidence in their ability to communicate about climate change.

A consortium of Aquarium of the Pacific, National Aquarium in Baltimore, New England Aquarium and Seattle Aquarium will build educator capacity in the aquarium community and informal science education field to more effectively communicate about climate change and its impact on coastal zones and marine life. The project will utilize NOAA datasets and visualizations in providing interpreters with training and strategic framing communication tools based on the best available social and cognitive research. The objectives of the project are to: (1) develop and test four exemplary interpretive “visual narratives” that integrate research-based strategic communication with NOAA data visualization resources; (2) test the application of the visual narratives in a variety of geographic regions and institution types (aquarium, science center, etc.) using multiple technology platforms; (3) build a professional development program for climate change interpretation with data visualization; and (4) leverage existing networks for dissemination and peer support. Other key partners include the NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory (VisLab), the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL), the Exploratorium in San Francisco, the Ocean Explorium in southern Massachusetts, FrameWorks Institute and New Knowledge Organization.