FEATURE ARTICLE

UMCES/Sea Grant
Summer Research Fellowship

Recently, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) and Maryland Sea Grant formed an Environmental Science Education Partnership (ESEP) to organize education and outreach efforts and address issues in environmental science education. The ESEP is a consortium of University researchers and education specialists whose primary interest is the professional development of teachers, nonprofit educators, and community leaders. Our mission is to:

"promote professional development and leadership in environmental science education through the enhancement of content knowledge using current University-based research"

The ESEP is linked to four state-of-the-art University research laboratories that span Maryland's portion of the Chesapeake Bay watershed, providing a unique look into the numerous ecosystems across the State. The scientists at the individual laboratories conduct research on current issues that impact the watershed from the mountains to the sea and are actively involved in the extension of their work with ESEP education specialists.

The ESEP consortium includes individuals from:

• Appalachian Laboratory, Frostburg, MD
• Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, Solomons, MD
• Horn Point Laboratory, Cambridge, MD,
• Center of Marine Biotechnology, Baltimore, MD
• Maryland Sea Grant College

Cheryl Overington examines an oyster during the Chesapeake Bay Cruise during the introductory one- week orientation course of the SRF program.

One focus of the ESEP is a necessary expansion of "a meaningful Bay experience" to include a greater emphasis on the classroom teacher. Teachers are the individuals that will ultimately make the student experiences meaningful by weaving together what they have learned during a field day or overnight trip with current critical issues that impact the watershed and how these issues are being addressed. A grant from the NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office this past summer was used to fund a 7-week Summer Research Fellowship (SRF) for 10 Maryland teachers at the various research labs from the ESEP consortium. This fellowship program enabled teachers to gain a greater understanding of the Chesapeake Bay watershed and how the scientific process becomes the first step in gathering critical information to make decisions.

In the 7-week program, teachers spent the first week in an introductory course (Ecology of the Chesapeake Watershed) traveling from the Appalachian Lab in Frostburg, MD, to the Horn Point Lab in Cambridge, MD, learning how current research is addressing critical watershed issues. Following this course, teachers spent the remaining 6 weeks in a research lab working with University scientists and education specialists on current research that they in turn will translate into practical "hands-on" classroom activities for their students during the 2002-03 academic year. To facilitate this process Maryland Sea Grant has developed an on-line Web Journal for the Summer Research Fellows to enter information about their individual projects, methods and techniques learned, and the development of a 5E outline to be used with their students that reflects upon critical issues derived from the research experience.

http://www.mdsg.umd.edu/Extension/msgsnn/msgsnn05_1/index.html