Browsing by Author "Wiederwohl, Christina"

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Gulf Coast Stewards of Tomorrow: Working Towards a Sustainable Future through At-Sea Learning for South Texas Middle and High School Students
Oceanography; TAMU; https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14641/203; Environmental Protection Agency
Public literacy is the foundation to promote changes in societal views of the relevance of critically important environmental issues that directly effect a local population. Without a clear linkage of how an environmental issue impacts everyday citizens, the desire to take action on improving these issues is often lost. Public literacy oftentimes begins in the middle and high school (grades 6-12) setting, where students are learning to form their own independent opinions on environmental issues. A key way to reinforce these issues is through experiential learning in the classroom and, even more impactful, in the field. When students are emotionally engaged in topics about the natural environment, they experience an overall change in their attitude towards the environment, as well as an increased desire to change their own habits to further protect the environment (Ballantyne and Packer, 2002). In fact, programs that are most effective at engaging students do so by showing students first hand local environmental impacts, combined with hands-on research activities and classroom lesson plans (Ballantyne et al., 2001). This project is designed to educate young citizens on local environmental impacts, and empower them to work towards improving the environment through stewardship. It will focus on Corpus Christi Bay (CCB), a semi-tropical bay on the Texas coast located approximately 136 mi south of San Antonio, and 179 mi southwest of Houston, that is largely used for commercial and recreational fishing. As with most bays and estuaries, human impact on the bay is substantial with wastewater outfalls, storm water runoff, substantial agricultural activity within the watershed (cotton, sorghum and corn) that adds nutrients, and altered freshwater flow due to irrigation needs and loss of wetlands to urban development. This, in turn, leads to poor water quality. This project helps to further the goals of the EPA Strategic Goal of “Cross Agency Strategy: Working Toward a Sustainable Future” through Environmental Education and Outreach (Priority III) by aiming to: • Educate young citizens on the impacts of non-point source pollution to CCB, the importance of water conservations and storm water sequestration, impacts of everyday actions on the acidity of estuaries and the coastal ocean, and how coastal ecosystems relates to the local economy. • Empower teachers and students with knowledge to share with their community on the importance of being stewards of the environment. • Create new classroom lesson plans that focus on the improvement of water quality,preservations of the marine habitat, and coastal community resilience.
Gulf Coast Stewards of Tomorrow: Working Towards a Sustainable Future through At-Sea Learning for South Texas Middle and High School Students
Oceanography; TAMU; https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14641/203; Environmental Protection Agency
Public literacy is the foundation to promote changes in societal views of the relevance of critically important environmental issues that directly effect a local population. Without a clear linkage of how an environmental issue impacts everyday citizens, the desire to take action on improving these issues is often lost. Public literacy oftentimes begins in the middle and high school (grades 6-12) setting, where students are learning to form their own independent opinions on environmental issues. A key way to reinforce these issues is through experiential learning in the classroom and, even more impactful, in the field. When students are emotionally engaged in topics about the natural environment, they experience an overall change in their attitude towards the environment, as well as an increased desire to change their own habits to further protect the environment (Ballantyne and Packer, 2002). In fact, programs that are most effective at engaging students do so by showing students first hand local environmental impacts, combined with hands-on research activities and classroom lesson plans (Ballantyne et al., 2001). This project is designed to educate young citizens on local environmental impacts, and empower them to work towards improving the environment through stewardship. It will focus on Corpus Christi Bay (CCB), a semi-tropical bay on the Texas coast located approximately 136 mi south of San Antonio, and 179 mi southwest of Houston, that is largely used for commercial and recreational fishing. As with most bays and estuaries, human impact on the bay is substantial with wastewater outfalls, storm water runoff, substantial agricultural activity within the watershed (cotton, sorghum and corn) that adds nutrients, and altered freshwater flow due to irrigation needs and loss of wetlands to urban development. This, in turn, leads to poor water quality. This project helps to further the goals of the EPA Strategic Goal of “Cross Agency Strategy: Working Toward a Sustainable Future” through Environmental Education and Outreach (Priority III) by aiming to: • Educate young citizens on the impacts of non-point source pollution to CCB, the importance of water conservations and storm water sequestration, impacts of everyday actions on the acidity of estuaries and the coastal ocean, and how coastal ecosystems relates to the local economy. • Empower teachers and students with knowledge to share with their community on the importance of being stewards of the environment. • Create new classroom lesson plans that focus on the improvement of water quality, preservations of the marine habitat, and coastal community resilience. The three-year project proposed here will educate citizens in two ways. First, it provides Texas middle and high school teachers a training led by the project PIs as well as the Texas Floating Classroom (TFC; http://www.texasfloatingclassroom.com) on the local watershed and current relevant hot topics, including new lesson plans that can be incorporated into their Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) curriculum to reinforce concepts learned in the classroom. Second, the training is followed by an at-sea field trip experience for the teacher’s class in the CCB area aboard the TFC RV Archimedes. The Corpus Christi, TX area, in particular students who attend Corpus Christi schools (CCISD) are predominately from low-income families. During the 2015-2016 academic year, almost 60% of CCISD were economically disadvantaged (Texas Education Agency, 2016), as measured by the number of students eligible for free or reduced price meals. Additionally, in 2015-2016 86% of CCISD students were from underrepresented groups (79.4% Hispanic, 4% African-American, 2.6% non-white; Texas Education Agency, 2016) making it an optimal location to reach a large number of underserved and underrepresented students along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Although the TFC has been operating out of Corpus Christi for the last 4 years, the local CCISD schools have not been able to take advantage of this valuable experiential learning opportunity due to budget constraints. This proposal would give students in the local community the ability to see first-hand the impacts of major Gulf of Mexico issues on their local coast.