Environmental Education

In the latest installment of their Working Shift series, WBEZ in Chicago talked with the sustainability manager of Chicago’s Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, Fellow Kristen Pratt, about the work she does both inside the museum and in Chicago neighborhoods to promote the principles of sustainability.

A new National Science Foundation (NSF) Coastal SEES grant supports a team of researchers from seven institutions — UC Merced, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UCLA, Stanford University, the Carnegie Institution for Science and Oregon State University — in forming an interdisciplinary “uber-university” to study the relationships between fog, climate change, redwoods and the human response.

ECO-STEAM in education has the potential to help turn our educational institutions, and indeed our everyday lives, into laboratories of discovery and innovation in order to emulate nature.

Fairfield-based philanthropic group, Near & Far Aid, has awarded a $10,000 grant to SoundWaters in support of its STEM Academy. SoundWaters’ STEM Academy provides hands-on, science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programming for underserved and low-performing students. “Studies have shown that by the end of 5th grade, low-income children lose two months in reading achievement while student peers from wealthier backgrounds improve and can be as much as three grade levels ahead by middle school,” said SoundWaters President, Leigh Shemitz.

Adults get most of the credit for structuring and managing the world, but researchers are finding that children play a much bigger role in society than we often imagine.

Fairfield-based philanthropic group, Near & Far Aid, has awarded a $10,000 grant to SoundWaters in support of its STEM Academy. SoundWaters’ STEM Academy provides hands-on, science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) programming for underserved and low-performing students. “Studies have shown that by the end of 5th grade, low-income children lose two months in reading achievement while student peers from wealthier backgrounds improve and can be as much as three grade levels ahead by middle school,” said SoundWaters President, Leigh Shemitz.