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.
Climate Resilience Education and Action for Dedicated Youth Program (Climate READY Program)
The goal of the Climate Resilience Education and Action for Dedicated Youth Program (Climate READY Program) is to increase the environmental literacy of South Florida students, teachers, and the general community so they can become more resilient to extreme weather and/or other environmental hazards. To prepare for a future of increasing environmental hazards, communities will need an informed public that is willing to act on decisions on a personal and civic level. Education has the potential to play an important role in achieving that goal. However, despite dire predictions of the impacts of climate change, the topic has yet to make it into mainstream education in the South Florida classroom. Climate READY is a collaborative effort between FAU Pine Jog, the Palm Beach County Office of Resilience, the Coastal Resilience Partnership, South East Florida Regional Climate Change Compact, city sustainability offices in Boynton Beach, Boca Raton, West Palm Beach, the School District of Palm Beach County and Galaxy E3 Elementary School. Climate READY will focus on engaging some of the most underserved and socially vulnerable communities located in Palm Beach County, Florida. The Climate READY Program has four interconnected components: Climate READY Institute (training 48 students, grades 9-12) to become Climate READY Ambassadors, Afterschool Climate READY Program (engaging at least 300 after school students in grades 4-8), Climate READY Teacher Professional Development (training 48 teachers from targeted schools) and Climate READY Community Outreach (engaging at least 600 community members at local community events). This project will leverage NOAA assets including Science on a Sphere (SOS) technology and datasets, the SOS Explorer Mobile application, Weather Ready Nation, US Climate Resilience Toolkit, and Owlie's Weather-Ready Educational Activities. FAU Pine Jog will use the Climate Action Learning Process to develop all program lessons. The primary outcome of the program will be to enhance the adaptive capacities of identified vulnerable communities so that they are more prepared to respond to climate-related hazards and to increase civic engagement, inclusive decision-making, and equity.
Citizen Science, Civics, and Resilient Communities (CSCRC)
The "Citizen Science, Civics, and Resilient Communities” (CSCRC) project led by the Museum of Science, Boston in partnership with Arizona State University, Northeastern University, SciStarter, and the National Informal STEM Education Network (NISE Net), engaged thousands of public participants around the United States in participatory data collection and community deliberation about four climate-related hazards: heat waves, sea level rise, extreme precipitation, and drought. The aims of the project were to increase resilience to extreme weather and environmental hazards through the inclusion of community-generated data, local knowledge, and community values into civic planning, and to increasing capacity among science centers and informal educators for including publics in resilience planning and data collection. The project formulated, iterated, and evaluated a science-to-civics model that included agenda-setting, decision-making and policy forming phases. These activities were developed and implemented by educators at 30 US science centers in collaboration with local resilience planners. Groups of participants in each community collected, analyzed, and shared data about locally relevant hazards; learned about vulnerabilities through visualizations of geospatial data; participated in deliberative, participatory resilience planning and shared perspectives about resilience strategies and their societal and environmental trade-offs; formulated community resilience plans that brought forth diverse perspectives; and presented their findings and recommendations to resilience planners and publics. Participants contributed community-generated data such as urban heat island maps, precipitation data from rain gauges, or documented extreme events through photos of their communities. These data were visualized through StoryMaps, exhibited at local libraries and fairs, and used to facilitate community discussions about the tradeoffs of proposed resilience strategies. Many of the deliberation and participatory science activities pivoted to online formats in response to the pandemic. These digital engagement activities provided new and unanticipated challenges, but also new opportunities connect project participants and capture participant engagement in powerful ways. Our project evaluation found that citizen science and Forum participants increased their knowledge around climate hazards, resilience strategies and their tradeoffs. Participants also increased their confidence and interest in engaging with climate topics, including ways to take action around community climate hazards, contributing to citizen science efforts, and contributing to public policy. Museum professionals found that the project positively impacted their ability to implement science to civics activities, felt supported by the trainings and materials, and planned to continue implementing these programs provided they had continued access to materials, tools, and experts. Many of the project materials are freely available for download at nisenet.org/cscrc and the local project portals documenting the citizen science activities can be found at scistarter.org/noaa.
Exploring Inner Space: Linking Aquariums with Ocean Scientists
This program is a pilot project and collaborative effort to develop partnerships and educational programming using state of the art technology. The project partnership is comprised of a leading ocean science research and education institution, the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography and its new state of the art Inner Space Center (ISC), and two strong national ocean science education networks: the National Centers for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (COSEE) Network and NOAA's Office of Exploration and Research (NOAA-OER) Education Alliance. In addition, two partner sites will serve as proof of concept sites and education hubs - Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration (CT) and South Carolina Aquarium (SC), both affiliated with COSEE, the Coastal Ecosystem Learning Center Network (CELC), and NOAA-OER. Through this initiative, the ISC will install new Exploration Command Stations (ECSs) and enhance Ocean Today kiosks at the partner sites, strategically selected aquariums. Through this pilot project, the ECSs and kiosks (modeled after the original Ocean Today kiosk in the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History’s Sant Ocean Hall) will form an Ocean Interpretive Station at the partner sites. The ISC will provide live links from the Center's facilities to the newly installed ECSs and kiosks using feeds from various remote Ocean Exploration platforms, including the NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer and the exploration vessel, E/V Nautilus. The project's Content Development Team (CDT) will develop associated educational materials for use in public programs at the partner sites.
Interpretation of Real-Time Weather and Climate Data for Spherical Displays
The Interpretation of Real-time Weather and Climate for Spherical Displays (EarthNow) project utilizes the Science on a Sphere (SOS) Network to enable meaningful interpretation of real-time weather and climate data by museum docents and visitors viewing SOS exhibits nationwide. The project will generate and provide real-time NOAA weather, climate and ocean data to the SOS Network along with appropriate training for docents. It will also provide data interpretation summaries, data discussions and concise talking points on a regularly updated blog. This project is being implemented by a collaborative team of two weather and climate centers of NOAA/NESDIS: the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) and Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites (CICS), in association with the NOAA Environmental Visualization Laboratory, the I.M. Systems Group, and the Maryland Science Center.