EXAMPLES OF SUCCESSES IN EDUCATION LTER

· AND site is involved with a statewide program of science education targeting minority, rural and low-income students: http://osu.orst.edu/pecollege/TheSMILE/.

· At BNZ site, K-12 students in urban and rural Alaska are engaged in long term ecological research and are contributing data to ongoing global research projects: http://www.globe.gov. High school students involved in research at BNZ won top honors in the Alaska High School Statewide Science Symposium, the Alaska Science and Engineering Fair, the National Junior Science and Humanities Symposium and the International Science and Engineering Fair.

· CAP At CAP we have developed and implemented a schoolyard ecology program (http://caplter.asu.edu/explorers) where students collect data similar to CAP LTER data, enter results into our database, share data with other schools, and develop hypotheses and experiments to explain their findings. The program improves science literacy by exposing students and teachers to research conducted by university-level scientists; enhances teachers' capabilities to design lessons and activities that use scientific inquiry and encourages collaboration between CAP LTER researchers and the K 12 community. Our program reaches about 2,000 children annually (about 40% from under-represented groups) in 22 school districts in the Phoenix Metropolitan Area.

· CWT Coweeta LTER scientists and staff have been providing middle school, high school, and community college students "hands on" field and laboratory research experience since the Schoolyard program began in 1998. The activities include assisting scientists with data collection on current LTER research projects and conducting follow-up measurements from studies established by previous Schoolyard LTER students. A few of our current schoolyard projects include stream macroinvertebrate surveys, fish population surveys, terrestrial carbon pool and flux measurements, and riparian vegetation recovery measurements.

· GCE An undergraduate student at GCE was named one of two undergraduates in the entire Georgia Tech student body to receive a Sigma-Xi undergraduate Research Excellence award for 2001-2002. Another undergraduate student won the competition for best undergraduate poster at the Southeastern Estuarine Research Society Meeting.

- HBR recently developed an educational resources website for middle and high school teachers and students (http://www.hubbardbrook.org/education). The site offers a virtual tour of the experimental forest, an opportunity to learn about HBR scientists and their work, information about acid rain, and descriptions of major research projects. We also developed an accompanying teacher's manual that contains six lesson plans for hands-on exploration of the LTER network (http://www.dnr.cornell.edu/ext/LTER/lter.asp). Activities involve analyzing spreadsheets, manipulating data, observing habitats, and performing community-based research. In May 2002, the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse (ENC) recognized the HBR website by presenting it with the "Digital Dozen" award (http://www.enc.org/weblinks/dd/).

- HFR hosts 600-800 students annually through its Fisher Museum, conducts teacher training and has established invasive species and phenology monitoring projects on school grounds. In 2002 a high school intern in our SLTER won awards at the regional and statewide science fairs for a project she developed independently from her SLTER work at Harvard Forest.

· JRN collaborates with USDA-ARS and Chihuahua Desert Nature Park. The joint efforts served over 8,000 K-12 students and 300 teachers in 2001. The creation of science education programs for K-12 students in Southern New Mexico and West Texas is the first of its kind. These types of programs did not previously exist in the region.

· KBS site has included graduate students and post-doctorates in their education program, raising interest in K-12 education and providing pedagogical learning. The Michigan School Board of Directors awarded an Education Excellence Award to the Schoolyard program in 2001. This program served as a model for a proposal to EHR that was successfully funded for 3 years.

· KNZ SLTER serves 400-500 K-12 students/year. Several LTER databases honed for teacher/student friendly access on the Internet.

· Because of logistics of bringing students to MCM, science has been brought to students and teachers by establishing monitoring experiments in their communities.

· At NTL students generated research projects that established baseline data including presence/absence, distribution, and phenology at habitats near their schools. NTL Schoolyard program has leveraged funds from NSF to obtain two Dwight Eisenhower Professional Development Programs.

· PAL actively collaborates with existing national partnerships (Teacher’s Experiencing Antarctica as well as Boy and Girl Scouts) with highly functional infrastructures.

· Hundreds of PIE middle school students have participated in the salt marsh science project of Massachusetts Audubon. The quality of their work is impressive.

· SBC outreach program at South Coast Watershed Resources Center is linked to the California Science Content Standards Students monitor phosphate, nitrate, temperature, dissolved oxygen, GPS coordinates, pH, conductivity and salinity.

- The Bosque Ecosystem Monitoring Program (BEMP) tracks ecological change in the Middle Rio Grande riparian forest ("bosque"). Most monitoring is by K-12 students and their teachers, mentored by trained University of New Mexico students. Public, private, pueblo, and home schools representing approximately 3000 youngsters have been involved since 1997. BEMP is funded through US Fish & Wildlife Service, Sevilleta "Schoolyard LTER" Program, and Bosque School.

Synchronous monthly monitoring occurs at 12 sites along 280 km of the river. Collected data emphasize groundwater dynamics, precipitation, and net primary production of native and introduced vegetation.
Synthesized data are made available to resource management agencies and citizens.

· VCR students are learning why water quality is important by learning techniques, applying them to various watersheds and examining the data. This data is important to LTER research because it becomes part of its database. VCR Schoolyard program has used NSF funding as leverage to secure additional funding from a private foundation.