NOAA CLIMATE STEWARDS: AFFECTING CHANGE THROUGH EDUCATION, COLLABORATION, AND ACTION

Climate change is the defining environmental issue of our time. NOAA plays a key role in understanding and predicting the magnitude of global change and must ensure that critical information is delivered to the public, especially our educators and youngest citizens. Working with Federal, NGO and academic partners, NOAA’s Climate Stewards Education Project (CSEP) promotes experiential and place-based education to enhance the connections between human actions and their effects on natural Earth systems.

With over 750 participants across the United States - and growing - CSEP brings a wide range of formal and informal educators into active communities of climate learning, providing individuals working with elementary through university age students with sustained professional development, collaborative tools, and support to build a climate-literate public actively engaged in climate stewardship. CSEP also supports educators in the development and implementation of climate stewardship (mitigation or adaptation) projects with the goals of increasing their audiences’ understanding of climate science, and engaging them in practical actions to reduce and/or adapt to the impacts of climate change.

The methods and outcomes of CSEP’s major project components from 2010 through 2014 will be presented including distance learning opportunities, face to face workshops, and educator’s stewardship projects. The evolution of CSEP’s project design, evaluation and participant support will be discussed, including the use of the CSEP wiki - the primary tool for stewardship project development and the Peer Review Process - where peer mentors to foster collaboration among participants through video conferencing, reviewing and refining each other’s stewardship project activities.