LEVERAGING INTEGRATE COMMUNITY EXPERTISE, PRODUCTS, AND PROCESSES WITHIN SYNERGISTIC EFFORTS TOWARD ADVANCING NC-FEW GOALS

The Food-Energy-Water-Nexus (FEW-Nexus) framework was developed as a way to understand the interplay between natural systems and their human dimensions in the space where these three resources, each vital to human society, intersect. The National Collaborative for Research on Food, Energy, and Water Education (NC-FEW) is an emerging community that is poised to leverage previous work done by InTeGrate (Interdisciplinary Teaching about Earth for a Sustainable Future) in order to further advance FEW-Nexus related educational programming and education research within the geosciences and beyond. Many of the products and processes developed by the InTeGrate community, as documented in Gosselin et al. (doi:10.1007/978-3-030-03273-9_1) and elsewhere, are highly relevant to NC-FEW goals across the K-12, postsecondary (graduate and undergraduate), and informal/non-formal contexts represented by our Working Groups. One goal of NC-FEW is to identify and promote best practices in education research on educational programming grounded in the FEW-Nexus. The community-based assessment strategy developed by the InTeGrate assessment team is a significant contribution that can be highlighted and evolved through NC-FEW. The education research conducted by the InTeGrate community in the areas of supporting student learning of interdisciplinarity, systems thinking and societal relevance of the Earth sciences can be featured within the NC-FEW goal of synthesizing current education research on educational programming grounded in the FEW-Nexus. Additionally, the expression of the InTeGrate framework within the structure of a material development rubric is an effective starting point for articulating design principles for NC-FEW educational programming. NC-FEW as a networked improvement community seeking to foster collaboration among community members representing diverse disciplines, fields, expertise, and institutions is poised to learn from the InTeGrate model as it continues to grow.