Paper No. 3
Presentation Time: 2:10 PM

MEASURING AND MAXIMIZING THE IMPACT OF A FEDERALLY-FUNDED CLIMATE EDUCATION PORTFOLIO VIA STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS AND COLLABORATIONS (Invited Presentation)


MARTIN, Ann M.1, CHAMBERS, Lin H.1, PIPPIN, Margaret R.1, GEYER, Andrea2, KARSTEN, Jill3, BAEK, John4 and YUE, Sarah5, (1)NASA, Langley Research Center, 21 Langley Blvd, MS-401A, Hampton, VA 23669, (2)Virginia Space Grant Consortium, 600 Butler Farm Road, Hampton, VA 23666, (3)Directorate for Geosciences, National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Blvd, Arlington, VA 22230, (4)National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Office of Education, Herbert C. Hoover Building, Room 6528, Washington, DC 20230, (5)National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Office of Education, 1401 Constitution Ave. NW #6857, Washington, DC 20230, ann.m.martin@nasa.gov

NASA Innovations in Climate Education (NICE) at Langley Research Center has funded 71 climate education initiatives since 2008. A key component of NICE’s program model is a commitment to fostering and facilitating a community among our awardees. Recently, we have prioritized the growth of a parallel community of NICE project evaluators. Face-to-face meetings, dedicated webspace for sharing evaluation-related resources, and quarterly webinars allow project evaluators to leverage prior work and incorporate common or useful instruments and tools.

We aim to maximize the impact of the funded portfolio through this community of practice, and further through a tri-agency collaboration with sister initiatives at NOAA and NSF. Along with the benefits this community provides to the funded educational and evaluation activities, these efforts also reflect the commitment of NICE and the tri-agency collaboration to government-wide alignment of STEM education activities and evaluations across Federal agencies (e.g., the recommendations of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Committee on STEM Education).

Through the formation of a Tri-Agency Common Evaluation Framework working group, these three agencies are involved in coordination of evaluation across the tri-agency portfolio. In April 2012, the working group, comprising representatives of these agencies, the funded projects, and their evaluators, met in Arlington, VA to take early steps in the development of a framework for the common evaluation of this diverse portfolio. The common framework and nascent draft logic model have taken into consideration common evaluation-related needs, the articulation of common goals and desired impacts, and available or needed instruments and/or methodologies in this field. In late October 2012, this framework and the next steps will be discussed in detail by the environmental evaluation community during the American Evaluation Association annual meeting.

This talk will describe NICE’s efforts to assemble, synthesize, and share climate literacy-focused evaluation instruments, tools, and resources. We’ll also report on updates to the efforts of the tri-agency collaboration to establish a common evaluation framework, and on the feedback received from members of the American Evaluation Association.