Tag: Oral Session 4CN

Cultivating Connections: Garden-Based Education to Connect with the Willamette Valley

Presenter(s): Katy Roy-johnson − Environmental Studies

Co Presenter(s): Becca Perrin, Sydney Morrison, Gracie Williams, Milo Gazzola

Faculty Mentor(s): Kathryn Lynch

Oral Session 4CN

Research Area: Natural Science

Funding: Robert and Catherine Miller Foundation

The goal of environmental education is to foster an awareness of past, present, and future environmental issues, build an empathetic attitude toward the natural world, and establish a platform for action. Through the Environmental Leadership Program at the University of Oregon, our team partnered with the School Garden Project of Lane County (SGP), a non-profit organization whose mission is to utilize on-site school gardens as outdoor classrooms to promote stewardship for the natural world. Our service-learning project entailed supporting SGP with their in-school lessons for ten weeks, providing a total of 210 hours of hands-on learning experiences in their school programs. Additionally, we developed three lessons on phenology, citizen science, and food and culture, which we facilitated during the after-school BEST program at local schools, collectively teaching for 70 hours. We introduced 1st through 5th grade students to the importance of local food and encouraged attitudes of excitement and responsibility to participate in growing food. Over the course of two terms, we collectively reached 150 students at 5 schools within Lane County. Our students became aware and knowledgeable about seasonal changes in the Willamette Valley, the Three Sisters of northern Native American agriculture, and personally participated in citizen science data collection. By promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion, we have worked to ensure that our lessons are accessible to all, providing space for our students to foster a strong connection to place, enhance self-sufficiency, and empower students to grow their roots in the local food movement.

UO ELP Climate Action Team: Educating Eugene’s Young Adults

Presenter(s): Katie O’connor − Environmental Science, Economics

Co Presenter(s): Maya Vigil, Makena Dandley, Simoan Waldron, Yue Liu, Jackson Darke, Katie Robison, Kelsey Maass

Faculty Mentor(s): Peg Boulay, Kaelyn Polick-Kirkpatrick

Oral Session 4CN

Research Area: Social science

Our mission is to interact with local 16-24 year olds to raise awareness of the local impacts of climate change and encourage citizen action in mitigating it in Eugene. Through research on the most effective ways to communicate climate change issues to members of the community, we have prepared a social media campaign to engage citizens. Through use of Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, we have developed strategies that can involve the community in climate-friendly actions by presenting the cost-effectiveness of these actions. We will use tabling events to target community members of Eugene and University students to promote education and prompt public engagement on the issue of climate change. To track success, we will keep count of how many people are viewing/interacting with posts, tabling events, and surveys. This project provides several benefits for the local community including reducing the impacts of climate change, limiting individual’s carbon footprints, and introducing cost-effective lifestyle changes. We hope our project will educate the local community on climate issues and increase citizen involvement in climate change mitigation by inspiring cost effective lifestyle changes that benefit the environment. We will present our social media framework, strategies, and methods for evaluation in a presentation following the conclusion of the project. It’s our hope the results we collect can be useful for the City of Eugene as they move forward in the fight against climate change.

Amongst the Ancients: Place-Based Experiential Education Within the H. J. Andrews Experimental Research Forest

Presenter(s): Ned Maynard − Environmental Studies

Co Presenter(s): Kiana Seto, Dylan Plummer, Riley Olson, Ariella Dahlin, Kyra Ortiz, Cahill Shpall, Chelsea Sussman, Ned Maynard

Faculty Mentor(s): Kathryn Lynch

Oral Session 4CN

Research Area: Environmental Education

Canopy Connections 2018: The goal of environmental education is to teach through experiential, place-based activity. Through the Environmental Leadership Program at the University of Oregon, the Canopy Connections program partners with the H. J. Andrews Experimental Research Forest and the Pacific Tree Climbing Institute to create day-long field trips for middle schoolers, bringing the classroom to the forest. Our mission is to serve the community by instilling a sense of place in youth, providing our community partners an avenue to educate students about science, and reinforcing the importance of old growth forests. Our program is built around a central theme of natural cycles within the Pacific Northwest. We incorporate storytelling, tree climbing, local research, and citizen science so the curriculum is interdisciplinary and engaging. In building this curriculum, our team developed four individual activity-based stations that take place within H.J. Andrews, along with a pre-trip lesson taught in the classroom. We help the students move from awareness of their local environment to community action by fostering a sense of stewardship, wonder, and scientific discovery. By the end of spring term, we will have reached 290 students across five middle schools. These students will exit the program with a robust understanding of traditional ecological knowledge and the science of phenology, having learned their relationship through the lens of natural cycles. In order to improve the curriculum’s efficacy, we will seek evaluation through methods such as life cycle diagrams, post-trip surveys, and games that assess knowledge retention in the field.

Planting a Seed By Restoring Connections – A Project of the University of Oregon’s Environmental Leadership Program

Presenter(s): Jordan Baker − ENVS

Co presenter(s): Richie Nguyen, ingra buys, Annabelle Lind, Richie Nguyen

Faculty Mentor(s): Kathryn Lynch

Oral Session 4CN

Research Area: Social Science

Nature plays an essential role in a child’s growth-stimulating imagination, creativity, problem-solving, a sense of wonder, and connection to the larger world. Current formal education emphasizes standardized testing and the accelerated use of technology, and it has become increasingly easy for children to miss out on the valuable lessons offered by nature. The Restoring Connections project was established to reconnect children with their local natural areas.

As a partnership of the University of Oregon’s Environmental Leadership Program, Adam’s Elementary School and Mt. Pisgah Arboretum, our mission is to develop a place-based, experiential environmental education program for elementary school children that cultivates a lasting connection to the land based in reciprocity and respect. Our project provides students, K-3rd grade, three opportunities a year to visit Mount Pisgah and use it as an outdoor classroom to learn ecology of the Willamette Valley. Each grade focuses on a different local ecosystem and studies the plants and animals that live there, followed by an opportunity to see these species in person and build a sense of place in their community. This curriculum is interdisciplinary, inquiry-based environmental education that progresses from awareness in to action.

This year, our team developed a third-grade spring curriculum, which focuses on prairies and the biodiversity within them, as well as developing field activities in celebration of Earth Day. Our goal is to create a spark in children’s hearts and impart a sense of wonder, inspiring them to continue their connection with nature and be the change in the world!