CAEE Award

DNS received word this week that our Nature Year Project received the 2007 Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education (CAEE) Award for Excellence in Higher Education. (WAHOO! Can you imagine how giddy we're feeling right now?)

The project started as the brainchild of Leigh Gillette and Jennifer Kleffner, both of whom were rock stars at DNS for many years (Leigh and Jen are now at the Division of Wildlife). Their idea was to combine several DNS programs into a richer, deeper experience for students, while conducting pre- and post-assessment tests to measure the effectiveness of DNS EE efforts.

Based on their work, DNS received a grant from the Anschutz Family Foundation in 2006. Becky Gillette, our program director, changed the scope of the project to create a program that targeted at-risk students and focused on winter topics like habitat, snow physics, and animal adaptations.

What was SO COOL is that the pre- and post-tests of fifth and eighth grade participants showed awesome results. What's even cooler is that the project involved students from Fort Lewis College (FLC) and AmeriCorps from the Southwest Conservation Corps (SCC) as "volunteer naturalists" to serve as field program deliverers.

The FLC students were not necessarily majors in education, ecology, or environmental studies. In fact, most were from non-EE backgrounds who were simply participating in a senior-level English course. Their professor wanted to integrate eco-texts (Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, etc,) with real world venues for connecting to nature and community whether the focus was on volunteerism, kids, teaching, or the environment. SCC used the experience as an early training ground for the work they would do in the upcoming year with at-risk youth.

Each of the participating organizations - FLC, SCC, and DNS - brought something unique to the project, yet none were trying to do the same thing or fill the same niche. Instead, the project was a wonderful synergy of what each of us does well and what each of us needed from the others. For example, FLC needed a venue, SCC needed experience, and DNS needed volunteers. Pretty simple, yet so rich.

While the Nature Year Project had specific goals related to at-risk youth, science standards, and measuring the effectiveness of EE, the richness of the project was enhanced to a level we never thought possible through the participation from and collaboration with FLC and SCC. Even more, FLC and SCC are on board again this year for training, classroom learning, and field program delivery.

Collaboration is cool...

Allison Pease - Executive Director