Region 1: EPA New England
Environmental Education Grants Federal Fiscal Year 1996
Maine | Massachusetts | New Hampshire | Rhode Island | Vermont
Maine
Aroostook Literacy Coalition
P.O. Box 190
Houlton, ME 04730
Contact: Ervin MacDonald
Grant Amount: $9,650
The Aroostook Literacy Coalition is a diverse, non-profit organization that proposes to educate people in the state's northernmost, rural county about pollution prevention by offering a seminar series in each of 6 locations throughout the county. Topics are based upon a statewide survey done under the "Maine Environmental Priorities Project" and include "Eco" tourism, air quality, sustainable forestry practices, drinking water quality, and regulations for recreational vehicle usage. Seminars will enable participants to develop strategies to balance economic development, tourism, recreation, and preserving the areas of natural beauty in their communities.
Houlton High School
P.O. Box 190
Houlton, ME 04730
Contact: Christy Fitzpatrick
Grant Amount: $5,000
This project develops a core of trained students to set up and monitor a pilot project on yard waste composting during the 1996/97 school year. It educates local citizens on the importance of composting yard waste, allows students and teachers a chance to participate in an experimental science class designed around a real-life project, and provides citizens of the Houlton area with a local site to compost yard waste. Students will create experimental plots to test various compost recipes, rates of turning, and physical arrangements for compost formation.
Massachusetts
Appalachian Mountain Club
5 Joy Street
Boston, MA 02108
Contact: Kevin T. Knobloch
Grant Amount: $5,000
This community-based conservation project and environmental careers training program is for youth in the diverse and disadvantaged community of Chelsea. The program is designed to teach outreach and advocacy skills through the process of planning, promoting and implementing a neighborhood environmental service project. The project provides youth with training to become more competitive candidates for employment in the environmental and recreational fields. It also helps young people create a community base for the maintenance of local parks and green spaces and the support of environmental issues of community concern.
Harvard School of Public Health
Building 1, Rm. 1302
665 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
Contact: Marshall Katler
Grant Amount: $9,000
This expansion of an existing Harvard School of Public Health program aims to increase awareness of the environment and its effects on health among fifth grade public school students by sharing technical expertise with teachers and students. The project is a hands-on educational outreach program that brings high quality instruction about human health and its relation to the environment to inner-city school children.
Lowell Public Schools
E.N. Rogers Middle School
89 Appleton Street
Lowell, MA 01852
Contact: Joseph Mastrocola
Grant Amount: $5,000
This project focuses on educating teachers, students, and the general public about human health problems from environmental pollution. The E.N. Rogers Environmental School, in collaboration with several partners, will use an environmental thematic curriculum to have students: 1) compare and correlate the effects of water quality on an urban river; 2) collaborate via the Internet with students from Great Britain on historical comparative research; and 3) develop critical thinking, problem solving, decision making and laboratory skills.
Massachusetts Audubon Society
Arcadia Wildlife Sanctuary
127 Combs Road
Easthampton, MA 01027
Contact: Tony Symasko, Naturalist Program Coordinator
Grant Amount: $5,000
The Arcadia Wildlife Sanctuary is continuing its partnership with local organizations to involve more Holyoke youth in a summer environmental field trip program. Hispanic children between the ages of 5 and 12 who live in Holyoke housing development projects or are served by social agencies will be introduced to environmental science through field trips to nearby natural areas, through hands-on activities, and by performing simple biological testing.
Massachusetts Audubon Society
Broad Meadow Brook Wildlife Sanctuary
414 Massasoit Road
Worcester, MA 01604-3546
Contact: Deborah Cary, Sanctuary Director
Grant Amount: $5,000
The Broad Meadow Brook Wildlife Sanctuary plans to educate the underserved, minority residents of Worcester through their program "Urban Youth: Bridging The Gap to Nature." Participants will be engaged in one of four types of activities: after-school workshops for elementary students, teen parenting programs, summer programs in the parks, and preschool workshops. The emphasis is on hands-on, inquiry-based, self-directed learning.
Massachusetts Department of Fisheries,
Wildlife, & Environmental Law Enforcement/
Riverways Program
100 Cambridge Street, Rm 1901
Boston, MA 02202
Contact: Maria Van Dusen
Grant Amount: $20,000
This project promotes the protection and restoration of rivers in Massachusetts by teaching citizens about the components of healthy rivers and encouraging active stewardship through stream "adoption." Community groups conduct shoreline surveys using Adopt-A-Stream manuals and with assistance from Riverways staff. Each survey provides baseline data on non-point source pollution, stream flow, and riparian habitat so the groups can determine priorities for their stream section and implement their action plan with the assistance of local citizens, municipal governments, businesses, civic organizations, and Riverways staff.
Metropolitan District Commission
20 Somerset Street
Boston, MA 02108
Contact: Karl Pastore
Grant Amount; $4,500
The Environmental Education Obstacle Course will offer metropolitan Boston area teachers and community group leaders an experiential program that fosters an understanding of key environmental concepts and enhances their environmental teaching skills. The project involves a 0.75 mile loop trail with four stations. Using a workbook provided, teams of teachers will perform a variety of tasks (including such things as water quality sampling and map reading) and answer a series of questions related to the environment.
The Thoreau Society, Inc.
44 Baker Farm
Lincoln, MA 01773
Contact: Karen Bowdoin
Grant Amount: $20,000
The Thoreau Society will offer a six-week summer institute to help educators teach environmental studies across disciplines and to raise the environmental consciousness of high school students. During the workshop, high school teachers will learn a multi-disciplinary approach to environmental studies and will have an opportunity to work with world-class Thoreau scholars, botanists, geologists, environmentalists and others to prepare lesson plans for units to be taught the following fall.
University of Massachusetts
Extension Services
Stockbridge Hall
Amherst, Ma 01003-0099
Contact: Robert Schrader
Grant Amount: $5,000
This project will complete the "Taunton River Watershed Connections Curriculum" for grades 6-12, which has been in development for four years. It will serve as a model for watershed outreach in pollution prevention from the school to the local community and businesses. The Connections Project team of scientists and educators will test, evaluate, and finalize the curriculum and disseminate the final product along with resource kits through workshops for teachers in the Taunton River watershed.
Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical School
220 Sandwich Road
Bourne, MA 02532
Contact: Margaret Wise
Grant Amount: $5,000
The goal of this program is to attract students into the school's Environmental Technology Program and ultimately into environmental careers by providing seventh and eighth graders with a summer exploratory education program. They hope that students will: 1.) increase their own awareness of the environment; 2.) become more knowledgeable about careers in the environmental field; and 3.)enroll in an environmental technology career pathway.
Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head
Natural Resource Department
20 Black Brook Road
Gay Head, MA 02535
Contact: Philippe Jordi
Grant Amount:$12,555
This project uses existing environmental curricula and case studies to develop a tribal environmental handbook. The goal of the project is to protect the Tribal Lands' ecologically sensitive watershed from pollution, loss of wildlife habitat, and fisheries decline. It also includes hands-on field investigations and workshops to provide project participants with the skills they need to make informed environmental policy decisions.
New Hampshire
Granite State Association of
the Future Farmers of America
c/o NH Department of Education
101 Pleasant Street
Concord, NH 03301
Contact: Richard Barker
Grant Amount: $4,313
This organization proposes to educate environmental, agricultural, and natural resources high school teachers about integrated pest management (IPM) and pesticides in their environment. The program will feature an initial workshop for 30 teachers on how to integrate into their curriculum instructional materials distributed during the workshop. It also includes on-site, follow-up visits to provide further assistance and gauge additional teacher and student needs.
New Hampshire Association of
Conservation Districts
3 Coombs Rd.
Somersworth, NH 03878-2001
Contact: Dick Obyc
Grant Amount: $5,000
Envirothon is a growing national environmental education program aimed at public and private high school students and their teachers. This program is designed to increase environmental awareness and appreciation for wise management, use and protection of natural resources by our future decision makers. A training workshop and subsequent assistance from natural resource professionals provides students and teachers opportunities for hands-on learning through research, discussion and evaluation of natural resource issues. Students then participate in a statewide competition with winners going on to compete in a national Envirothon.
Rhode Island
The Providence Plan
The Hanley Building
56 Pine Street
Providence, RI 02903
Contact: Jane Sherman
Grant Amount: $5,000
The goal of the Woonasquatucket River Greenway Project is to teach area residents about the benefits of the river and its wildlife habitats and enable them to educate others about the subject. Joined by the Community Outreach Coordinator of the Providence Plan, the RI Audubon Society will work with teachers in elementary and middle schools along the river corridor, train a staff of five from the organization Progresso Latino and adults from communities along the river. The organization will select existing environmental education materials, translate them into Spanish and use them in their trainings. Once trainers have been trained, ongoing outreach programs to additional area residents will be conducted.
Rhode Island Zoological Society
Roger Williams Park Zoo
1000 Elmwood Avenue
Providence, RI 02907
Contact: Anne Savage, Ph.D.
Grant Amount: $4,997
This project expands on an existing one in which teachers and students from Rhode Island and Columbia learn about water quality, perform water quality monitoring, and share information between the two countries involved. This year, seven teachers with nearly 240 6th-10th grade students from Rhode Island and three teachers with 120 students from Columbia will participate in this program by monitoring and working to preserve a river near their respective schools.
Southern Rhode Island
Conservation District
60 Quaker Lane, Ste. 46
Warwick, RI 02886
Contact: Charlotte Spang
Grant Amount: $5,000
The Southern Rhode Island Conservation District will implement the Active Watershed Education (AWEsome!) program in the Narrow River and Saugatucket River watersheds to increase awareness and knowledge about these watersheds. The curriculum provides future stewards of the these areas with the skills needed to make informed decisions about local environmental issues. The program will revise and disseminate existing watershed-specific curriculum guides, train 20 upper elementary and middle school teachers in the uses of this curriculum, and assist teachers and their students in assessing local environmental issues and conducting student-driven, community action projects related to these issues.
University of Rhode Island
Cooperative Extension Education Center
East Alumni Avenue
Kingston, RI 02881-0804
Contact: June Kinigstein
Grant Amount: $4,959
This project provides hands-on training and curriculum materials to 20 1st-6th grade teachers to help them establish and maintain with their students a natural vegetable and herb garden on their school grounds. Project objectives are for children in participating schools to become knowledgeable and skilled in pollution prevention concepts and techniques related to water, soils, and non-polluting alternatives to pesticides and herbicides.
Vermont
Lyndon State College/
Vermont Energy Education Program
RR1, Box 48
Lyndonville, VT 05851
Contact: Frances Barhydt
Grant Amount: $5,000
This project provides teachers and students in grades 5-8 with the opportunity to work with the Vermont Energy Education Program (VEEP) "Energy-Scientist-in-the-Classroom." VEEP provides teachers with workshops, teaching materials, equipment and supplies. It also provides on-site follow-up to empower them to provide their students a thorough thematic approach to teaching about energy efficiency, renewable energy and the environment.
Vermont Association of
Conservation Districts
RD2, Box 3420
Middlebury, VT 05753
Contact: Nancy Allen
Grant Amount: $5,000
Envirothon is a growing national environmental education program aimed at public and private high school students and their teachers. The program is designed to improve environmental awareness and appreciation for wise management, use and protection of natural resources by our future decision makers. Training and assistance from natural resource professionals provides students and teachers an opportunity for hands-on learning through research, discussion and evaluation of natural resource issues. Students then participate in a statewide competition with winners going on to compete in the national Envirothon.