Renee Strnad (she-they)

The 2019 MPI grant proposal from national Project Learning Tree will support the work of the NC PLT program by providing funds to support an NC PLT Advisory Committee retreat, training for current NC PLT facilitators, training for new facilitators interested in the Environmental Education for Early Childhood materials.

Numerous coastal environmental challenges including salt water intrusion, marine debris, and water quality threaten North Carolina������������������s (NC) coastal and estuarine ecosystems. Associated scientific recommendations abound but deficiencies in environmental literacy (EL), and failure to use scientific knowledge in environmental decision making stymie local efforts to employ solutions. Environmental education (EE) among K-12 audiences may address these barriers, as it can build EL among future generations and emerging research suggest that these impacts may ����������������trickle up��������������� to parents, community members, and even decision makers if programs are designed with that goal in mind. For this project, we will partner with Duke University Marine Lab to scale up two citizen science-based EE projects currently being piloted through NSF support. Each of these projects is specifically designed to enhance intergenerational transfer. We will expand the projects to 30 middle grade classrooms across the CAMA counties and experimentally test impacts on knowledge of and engagement with coastal environmental challenges, environmental self-efficacy, and pro-environmental behavior among students; and increased salience of coastal environmental issues in the eyes of decision makers and community members with whom students engage.

The 2018 MPI grant proposal from national Project Learning Tree will support the work of the NC PLT program by providing funds to support an NC PLT Advisory Committee retreat, training for current NC PLT facilitators, training for new facilitators interested in the Environmental Education for Early Childhood materials, and to hire a student to execute a survey of 2017/2018 NC PLT workshop participants. The grant will also fund travel to the 2018 International PLT Coordinators' Conference in Cody, Wyoming.

The Forest to Classroom: STEM for Elementary Educators program will utilize the Project Learning Tree (PLT) resources as the basis of the program. As an environmental education program, PLT emphasizes an interdisciplinary approach to learning and incorporates real-world lessons that help students make connections between school, community, and the natural world. In addition, PLT teaches students how to think about complex issues, employing a problem-solving orientation that helps them design solutions. Working with current elementary education specialists that are trained in, and support the use of, the PLT curriculum, Extension Forestry will design and host a residential F2C program that will provide educators will clear links to STEM education using the format we have from past F2C programs. Programming will include guided exploration of forests and associated biotic and abiotic communities, panel discussions and activities will introduce resource specialists to introduce career and advanced education information to the teachers, and teachers will work individually and in groups to create implementation plans for their classrooms. Webinars by grand band will be utilized for post-program follow-up.

The North Carolina Project Learning Tree Program, housed in Extension Forestry at NC State University, as four goals for 2017: Goal 1: The NC Project Learning Tree Advisory Committee is an advocate and fundraising body for the NC PLT Program. Goal 2: Schools and educators seek Project Learning Tree professional development opportunities tailored to specific needs and based on measurable objectives. Goal 3: NC Project Learning Tree Facilitators effectively speak about the PLT network, state program partners, and resources available on the state and national web sites. Goal 4: Educators in North Carolina have access to state-specific Project Learning Tree resources and on-line training. These goals will be successfully achieved and measured with funds from the national Project Learning Tree Model Program Initiative grant program. Project Learning tree is a program of the American Forest Foundation.

This project aligns directly to the Environmental Literacy & Career Initiation focus area and the NC Sea Grant goal for developing an informed public. Specifically, we will contribute to several priority outcomes: 1) support and enhance K-12 STEM teaching with field-based experiences, 2) identify the current climate change knowledge base among teachers and students, 3) create curricula to connect students with marine and coastal concepts and relevant research, 4) develop life-long experiences that target a wide spectrum of NC residents, 5) increase the number of highly qualified professionals addressing CL and 6) contribute to regional and national Sea Grant and NOAA efforts. The proposed intervention will empower teachers to build CL and implement a field-based service-learning experience with community partners, which may extend impacts from students to parents. This intervention addresses outcomes one, three, and four. We will address goal five by involving 60 undergraduates in data collection through an environmental education service-learning project and one Masters student and 3 undergraduates in project leadership roles. Our empirical evaluation of this intervention will further contribute to outcome two and six, as our ongoing Sea Grant research has begun to identify the current knowledge base as well as contribute to a national conversation around effective strategies for building CL (Mooney, 2014; Stevenson et al., 2014). If intergenerational transfer of CL occurs in association with our experimental treatment, this entire proposal also speaks to the Hazard Resilience Sea Grant priority area.

Shackleford Banks is the southernmost island in Cape Lookout National Seashore and home to a herd of feral horses. The horses, along with the lighthouse and beaches, are the main visitor draws to the park. While technically a non-native species, the park has actively maintained the horses since 1996. The park������������������s enabling legislation was amended in August 1998 and December 2005 to set specific population and management guidelines for the horses. The horses live, behave and are managed like wildlife within their ecosystem. Increasing visitation and lack of understanding by visitors of how to keep wildlife wild is threatening the herd. Visitors routinely get too close to the horses, trying to take photos, touch or even feed the horses. Horses become habituated to people close by them, losing their healthy fear of humans which increases the chances that people will be hurt when horses act instinctively. Waves of visitors disembark from passenger ferries and pass by the same groups of horses each day, multiplying the disturbance effect. This two-year program has two components. Part A: Visitor-horse interactions will be studied to create written guidelines for the park������������������s ongoing Wild Horse Public Educational Campaign. The Campaign takes the educational message to the public in ongoing fashion by varied means. Part B: Wild horse oriented educational curricula will be created for 4-7th grades. Local teachers will be asked to advise, Common Core Standards will be followed, and the information will be made easy for teachers to use in order to increase its attractiveness. The use of wild horses as examples in the curriculum will bring the educational messages to young people, fostering attitudes of conservation and stewardship. The examples, worksheets and activities will be entered in the NPS Education Portal for maximum access.

A large body of literature supports the importance of connecting kids with nature. Benefits include building social and cognitive development (Kahn & Kellert, 2002), reducing stress (Wells & Evans, 2003), improving attention (Taylor & Kuo, 2009), and building an appreciation for the environment (Cheng & Monroe, 2010; Stevenson, Peterson, Bondell, Mertig, & Moore, 2013). Programs like Muddy Sneakers are likely making important contributions to ensuring future generations are connected with nature and equipped with the knowledge, attitudes, skills, and motivations necessary to ensure a sustainable future. However, evaluation of environmental education programs continues to be a challenge for several reasons including logistics, instrument availability, time and resources, and training (Blumstein & Saylan, 2007; Monroe, 2010). As a result, programs like Muddy Sneakers lack the data needed to clearly show how their programs impact students. This project will rigorously evaluate the Muddy Sneakers program and in the process, produce evaluation instruments that will allow for ongoing evaluation and improvement of Muddy Sneakers and similar programs.

Project Learning Tree, a program of the American Forest Foundation, is housed withing North Carolina State University Extension Forestry. The NC Project Learning Tree Program (NC PLT) follows the national program������������������s mission by advancing environmental literacy and promoting stewardship through excellence in environmental education, professional development, and curriculum resources that use trees and forests as windows on the world. This mission is accomplished by providing professional development workshops for formal and nonformal educators across the state through a network of trained volunteer PLT facilitators. The last training for facilitators was held in 2014. This grant proposal will provide funds to train a new cadre of NC PLT Facilitators, as well as provide updated information to current facilitators. Outcomes of the training include: eighty percent of the workshop participants host a workshop by the end of 2018, the number of unique facilitators leading workshops in North Carolina will increase, the NC PLT program will have facilitators in all eight education districts as outlined by the NC Department of Public Instruction and the NC PLT program is able to directly reach out to schools for training via the network of facilitators.

Cape Lookout National Seashore provides numerous educational programs and field trips, however, many teachers are not aware of the offerings or the process to schedule and plan a trip and program to the lighthouse and national park. In order to entice teachers to attend an informational session, two days of professional development will be arranged for teachers, which will include experiencing Cape Lookout programs.