Related Topics:

Profiles of Environmental Education Grants Awarded to Organizations in California

Other States and U.S. Territories in EPA Region 9

- Indicates a Headquarters grant

2015 Grants

Merito Foundation   $91,000
Rocio Lozano-Knowlton, 1501 Cardigan Ave., Ventura, CA 93004
http://www.meritofoundation.orgExit
Energy Efficiency to Mitigate Climate Change & Ocean Acidification
The Merito Foundation project provides high-quality energy, climate and ocean literacy programming for students in grades 8 to 12. Students design, demonstrate and present energy efficiency practices or initiate ocean acidification awareness campaigns at their schools and beyond. The project produces an Energy Efficiency, Climate Change, Ocean Acidification Activity Guide – a collection of energy, climate and ocean literacy lesson plans and supporting on-line resources. The project and the activity guide are designed to increase knowledge and capacity of five educator participants, guide 400 students in development of energy efficiency proposals for their schools, and increase awareness among minority youth about careers in environmental sciences.

Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation   $91,000
Megan Snedden, 886 Cannery Row, Monterey, CA 93940-1023
http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/Exit
Watsonville Area Teens Conserving Habitats (WATCH)
The Monterey Bay Aquarium Watsonville Area Teens Conserving Habitats program (WATCH) is a year-long environmental education experience that reaches at least 160 teens over the 2-year grant period. Each year, 70 teens from three high schools participate in an intensive 2-week summer experience and subsequent year-long academic course. Through the program, teens build their knowledge about environmental issues in their community, carrying out research on these issues, and implementing conservation projects. After the program is complete, at least 20 alumni continue to be active in their schools, working together to involve their peers, teachers, and families in conservation activities. In collaboration with the Pajaro Valley Unified School District, the Monterey Bay Aquarium builds deeper connections within the community and extending resources to underserved populations.

The Energy Coalition   $192,200
Melanie Peck, 47 Discovery Suite 250, Irvine, CA 92618
http://energycoalition.org/Exit
PEAK Plus
The Energy Coalition’s (TEC) PEAK Plus program recruits, trains and continuously supports elementary educators to successfully implement innovative, hands-on environmental education and Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) and career development lessons. Through existing relationships with school districts and County Offices of Education, TEC reaches 50 under-represented (urban, low income, rural and minority) school in grades 4 through 5 in California and Nevada. Standards-aligned, high-quality curriculum engages students and provides them with the knowledge and skills to engage in behaviors (and engage others in their home communities to take actions) that address climate change and improve air quality. Students view a career awareness video or a virtual visit from an E-STEM (Environmental Education, Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) professional and participate in activities that create a real-life connection to environmental careers and their impact on the environment. Students learn what educational background is required in these jobs and how to ask the right questions about these careers or fields of work. PEAK Plus partners with a growing network of E-STEM and green professionals who are a resource of encouragement and knowledge for these students.

Tuolumne River Preservation Trust   $91,000
Meg Gonzalez, 829 Thirteenth St., Modesto, CA 95354-0901
http://www.tuolumne.org/Exit
Water Ways: an Environmental Education Pathway Towards Water Literacy in Stanislaus County
The Tuolumne River Preservation Trust project improves water literacy among 2,150 Stanislaus County youth by creating a water education pathway. The educational program reaches kindergarten through grade 12 students and 100 of their teachers through a cohort progression model that infuses environmental science and locally relevant environmental issues related to water at every grade level. Students in the program are also exposed to a range of potential careers in water-related fields.

Top of Page

2014 Grants

Los Angeles Unified School District     $50,000
Yi Hwa Kim, 333 South Beaudry Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90017-1466
http://home.lausd.net/Exit
“One Water LA” Curriculum Implementation
Los Angeles Unified School District will develop and implement curriculum focused on water sustainability in a changing climate. Five middle schools and five high schools in Southern California – a total of 20 classrooms will learn to reduce water use at schools and home and learn about water conservation, recycled water, and storm water run-off management. The project includes training for teachers and staff. LAUSD has partnered with the Los Angeles Sanitation District, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and the Metropolitan Water District on the project under the One Water LA educational initiative.

Top of Page

2012 Grants

Rising Sun Energy Center     $216,000
Rebecca Milliken, 2033 Center St., Berkeley, CA 94704
Risingsunenergy.org
CA Youth Energy Services
The California (CA) Youth Energy Services project is a youth employment and training model that provides 134 young adults (ages 15 to 22) with both job training and direct work experience, while fostering environmental stewardship. As Energy Specialists, youth have one week of intensive training followed by 6 to 12 weeks of field work.

Top of Page

2011 Grants

California ReLeaf – $150,000
Joe Liszewski, 2112 Tenth Street, Sacramento, CA 95818
California ReLeaf Sub-Grant Project
The California ReLeaf Sub-Grant Project seeks to create effective opportunities for EE through hands-on stewardship projects by financially supporting 20 community projects focused on tree planting and tree care. California ReLeaf is building upon its grant administration experience and infrastructure to create a new EE sub-grants program targeted to the locally based organizations of the California ReLeaf Network. Sub-grants are awarded through a competitive process with appropriate review. Sub-grant recipients provide EE programs to a diverse array of audiences, according to the needs and opportunities within that local community. The education programs use neighborhood tree planting or tree care community projects as the primary teaching tool for educating local participants about environmental stewardship. All sub-grant recipients also implement EE curricula tailored to a specific audience. Depending on the most appropriate method for that audience, this may come in the form of webinars, workshops, presentations, classroom activities or other methods. By providing much needed financial support to local organizations, this project educates new segments of California's population with a deeper understanding and appreciation of how urban forestry serves as a critical component to combatting climate change, improving communities, protecting water supplies and improving air quality.

The Marine Mammal Center   $34,693
Ann Bauer, 2000 Bunker Rd, Fort Cronkhite, Sausalito, CA 94965
Marine Science Discovery Program
The Marine Mammal Center's Marine Science Discovery Program introduces low-income high school students to a range of career opportunities in the fields of marine and environmental science. The program offers the diverse target population hands-on experience in marine science laboratory and field techniques. Based on the Center's marine mammal rescue, rehabilitation, release, and research work, this eight-session program is offered twice, providing meaningful opportunities for students to connect with the living environment. Classroom sessions include the Center's scientific research, a two-part hands-on lab featuring marine mammal feeding ecology and animal anatomy, careers in science, and final student-project presentations. Fieldtrips include the Center's rescue hospital and monitoring stations in the Marin Headlands, and Marine Science Discovery Cruise and Aquarium of the Bay. Participants learn how daily behaviors and choices impact the coastal habitats and marine animals, fostering stewardship. In addition to offering insight into potentially rewarding careers, the program fosters an appreciation for volunteerism and community involvement. It also develops web based teacher-education materials and pilots social media as means for staying connected and keeping informed.

The Watershed Project   $20,645
Harold Hedelman, 1327 South 46th St, Building 155, Richmond, CA 94804
Wild! Oysters: Habitat Restoration in San Francisco Bay
The Watershed Project is installing four pilot native oyster reefs in high-priority public open space to connect visitors to nature and involve them in science and stewardship. It’s Wild! Oysters project is part of an initiative to restore over 8,000 acres of native oyster and eelgrass habitats. Outreach particularly targets underserved urban high school students who generally have little opportunity to bond with nature. During fieldtrips, students work directly with Marine biology graduate students to construct reef modules, deploy them in the San Francisco Bay, and monitor their progress. Curriculum based activities during seven in-class visits by stakeholders in the Bay include creating posters that promote marine literacy, participating in a game that reflects the interconnection between oyster reef balls and their habitat, and holding a mock town-hall meeting to discuss the merits of oyster-bed restoration. This subtidal restoration and environmental education program incorporates diverse disciplines to teach about the impact of human behavior on marine habitats and the benefits of healthy watersheds.

Top of Page

2010 Grants

Cool the Earth, Inc.   $15,000
Chloe Martin, P.O. Box 694, Kentfield, CA 94914
San Francisco Bay Area Expansion Program
Cool the Earth, Inc. (CTE), a climate change education program recognized for excellence by the California Air Resources Board, partners with The Climate Project and Safe Routes to School in response to evidence that changes in household actions can significantly reduce a population's greenhouse gas emissions. Safe Routes to School empowers communities to make biking and walking to school safe and routine. The CTE project educates students, and ultimately their families, about climate change through multiple interactive education components, including a conservation pledge program and other monthly activities. It recruits and provides training resources for volunteer coordinators at kindergarten through grade 8 schools and mounts a campaign for up to 6 months, based on the program's motto: Every action counts. Students learn skills for assessing what actions lead to greenhouse gases and become catalysts for adjustment of household priorities.

Cycles of Change   $21,450
Maya Carson, P.O. Box 70292, Oakland, CA 94612
School-Based EE and Stewardship
Cycles of Change (CC) works to build healthy and sustainable urban communities by connecting youth with the natural world. The project offers programs in public schools and community centers of low-income East Bay neighborhoods, where up to 80 percent of residents are reported as socioeconomically disadvantaged and up to 25 percent are reported as limited in English proficiency. CC promotes bicycles as the primary transportation for youth to make use of local parks and open spaces. Watershed field studies are the basis of its stewardship programs. To significantly increase elementary and middle school student participation, the project partners with the East Bay Asian Youth Center and adapts a field-study curriculum module for after-school implementation. The project provides on-the-job training for teachers and after-school providers. It is a replicable model for school districts throughout the area, supporting shifts in community strategy relative to the logistics of connecting urban youth with ecosystems and integrating habitat restoration into education practices.

Landpaths-LandPartners through Stewardship   $13,040
Bree Lynn Benton, 618 4th Street, Suite 217, Santa Rosa, CA 95404
Poppy Creek Community Powered Stewardship Project
Landpaths-LandPartners through Stewardship partners with the Sonoma County Water Agency, the City of Santa Rosa's ArtStart, and Steele Lane Elementary School to engage third graders in restoration of a portion of Poppy Creek. Returning the creek to a vital riparian habitat provides a migration corridor for birds and mammals, critical for offsetting the potential dramatic effects of climate change in this urban area. Students engage in habitat restoration field trips, classroom presentations, and community stewardship days for project maintenance. In addition, a nature-based art program reinforces students' interactive exposure to the natural world.

Literacy for Environmental Justice   $29,525
Pamela Calvert, 800 Innes Avenue, 11, San Francisco, CA 94124
Environmental Justice Training at the EcoCenter
Literacy for Environmental Justice (LEJ) is an urban environmental education and youth development organization created specifically to address the ecological and health concerns of Bayview Hunters Point and the surrounding neighborhoods of Southeast San Francisco. LEJ opens the EcoCenter at Heron's Head Park, the culmination of a decade of effort by LEJ in partnership with the Port of San Francisco, the San Francisco Department of the Environment, and the State Coastal Conservancy. Drawing on concrete linkages among human health, the environment, and urban quality of life, LEJ offers nine teacher training sessions and a minimum of 30 co-teaching sessions in classrooms and on field trips. In addition, participating teachers bring their students to this former Brownfields cleanup site, now a vibrant wetland. LEJ manages Heron's Head Park through a community stewardship program that relies on thousands of local volunteers.

Orange County Coastkeeper   $20,960
Briana Madden, 3151 Airway Avenue, Costa Mesa, CA 92626
Back Bay Eelgrass Project
Orange County Coastkeeper partners with the California Department of Fish and Game and the City of Newport to protect and preserve Orange County's marine habitats and watersheds. This two-part expansion of the Back Bay Eelgrass Project, initiated in 2009, provides hands-on learning experience to local low-income middle and high school students, while working to preserve and restore diminishing eelgrass habitat in Upper Newport Bay. It pilots an eelgrass cultivation program in school classrooms, giving students a daily opportunity to augment their knowledge of eelgrass and natural resource management. Critical to estuary ecology and protected by the Clean Water Act, eelgrass habitat is a natural water treatment system and source of nutrients for other organisms. Field trips to the Back Bay allow students to participate in habitat restoration and to harvest eelgrass for cultivation at school. Coastkeeper facilitates lectures, activities, and classroom laboratory setup, as well as laboratory operation.

Plumas Rural Services   $25,473
Elizabeth Powell, 586 Jackson Street, Quincy, CA 95971
Digging In: Experiential Agroecology
Addressing community food and farming issues in Northeastern California since 2006, community-based Plumas Rural Services (PRS) partners with Women's Mountain Passages, which empowers women and youth for improved quality of life. Other partners for Digging In: Experiential Agroecology include land and resource management organizations. The project introduces students in grades 3 through 6 with careers related to sustainable agriculture. Through two growing seasons, students practice food production and are introduced to concepts of ecology, society, and agriculture. Eleven weekly 3-hour sessions engage youth in inquiry during summer break. Students participate in three field trips that teach them about native plants and watershed restoration, American Indian agricultural practices, identification of wild edibles, and ranchland indicators of healthy hydrologic function. Ongoing lessons in Quincy Elementary School and practice of agroecology provide food for students to take home, empowering them to improve their health and lifelong stewardship skills.

The Watershed Project   $13,819
Harold Hedelman, 1327 South 46th Street, Richmond, CA 94804
Riparian Lab
The Watershed Project established the Riparian Laboratory (RL) to address water quality issues in creeks and watersheds of two under-served communities in the East San Francisco Bay Area. Partnering with the Davis Park Recreation Center and two elementary schools, its purpose is to break the cycle of apathy in local culture to environmental issues, as result of the long-term history of industrial environmental abuse and general urban misuse. Eight after-school and summer-break sessions at local creeks engage students in problem-solving and stewardship activities, including habitat restoration and cleanup. Among the activities for students are field journaling, mapping the creek, water quality testing, a field trip to creek headwaters, an aquatic bug safari, and community outreach. The population to be served is approximately 70 percent African American and Hispanic, with a per capita annual income of under $20,000 for residents of Richmond.

Top of Page

2009 Grants

Alameda County Waste Management Authority   $15,000
Michelle LeBeau, 1537 Webster Street, Oakland, CA 94612
Regional Bay-Friendly Sustainable Gardening Project
The Regional Bay-Friendly Sustainable Gardening Project of Alameda County conducts three workshops and distributes guidebooks on best management practices for home gardeners, addressing a wide range of environmental concerns. The Bay-Friendly approach to landscaping and gardening is holistic and is based on principals identified to foster the health of the soil and conserve water and other valuable resources, while reducing waste and preventing pollution. It protects California's unique ecosystems, including the San Francisco bay watershed, which covers 40 percent of the state. Workshop topics include composting and soil health, integrated pest management, planting for pollinators, selecting appropriate plants, water conservation, and sustainable garden design. The program's guidebook, a comprehensive reference on the design and day-to-day maintenance of sustainable gardens, is distributed more broadly to the general population of home gardeners.

California Institute for Biodiversity   $56,000
Carol Baird, 1660 School Street, Suite 105, Moraga, CA 94556
Sierra Nevada Climate Change Program
Through field experiences and an interactive multimedia curriculum, the Sierra Nevada Climate Change Program provides teachers with direct experience and tools to develop their skills and apply them to the classroom. The 10-day program, hosted by the California Institute for Biodiversity, is for middle and high school teachers from across California. The program includes a 6-day institute held at the Jack L. Boyd Outdoor School in Fish Camp, California, led by an instructional team consisting of scientists, educators, and instructors. During the program, teachers participate in a hands-on curriculum focused on the Sierra Nevada ecosystem, watershed dynamics, and the impact of climate change on these ecosystems. The program includes guided experimental design, science activities, and role-playing exercises. Participants receive curricula and materials they can use during the school year. After they participate in the program, teachers are eligible for a student transportation grant so that their students may participate in outdoor scientific and stewardship projects. The program seeks to provide teachers with a professional development experience that directly affects their ability to address environmental education issues with the students, especially the impact of climate change. Key partners include California State Parks, California Department of Parks and Recreation, and the California Academy of Sciences.

Center for Land Based Learning   $15,000
Mary Kimball, 5265 Putah Creek Road, Winters, CA 95694
Restoring Ecosystems with High School Students
The Center for Land Based Learning expands its Student and Landowner Education and Watershed Stewardship (SLEWS) high school program by bringing together high school classes from Sonoma and Napa Counties. The environmental issues addressed are cross cutting and include sustainability, clean water, ecosystem protection and restoration, wildlife habitat, watershed management, and reduced erosion. Each SLEWS high school adopts a habitat restoration project for the duration of the school year. The program develops an intra-school dynamic in keeping with the basis of the center's work: "A strong connection to the natural world is a foundation of community." The experiential nature of the learning supports understanding of the critical interplay of agriculture, nature, and society. The intra-school community is primarily composed of high school sophomores and juniors. The expanded program engages young people in real projects that improve environmental quality while promoting stewardship skills, values, and behaviors.

Coastal Watershed Council   $24,856
Nik Strong-Cvetich, 345 Lake Avenue, Suite F, Santa Cruz, CA 95062
Trees to Sea Watershed Education Program
The Trees to Sea Watershed Education Program maintains a living classroom onboard a catamaran sailing the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. This catamaran is the schoolhouse for a segment of the Coastal Watershed Council's 5-day comprehensive summer watershed education pilot program serving students in grades 4 through 6. Hands-on lessons about the marine habitat and its ecological importance are directly linked to the idea of watershed connectivity with the ocean. The program is broken down in phases according to the watershed with field trips to its various features. The curriculum balances science skills, recreation, and topical learning, covering ecosystems of the upper watershed, the urban watershed, the estuary, and inter-tidal areas. In this extraordinary setting, students are equipped with environmental science and leadership skills, which foster a sense of stewardship in their local watershed.

Earth Team   $24,563
Maggie Fleming, 2530 San Pablo Avenue, Suite L, Berkeley, CA 94702
Something's in the Air
Earth Team is a community-based education organization that engages teens and teachers in dynamic media, health, and environmental restoration projects. Something's in the Air (SITA), a health science unit, educates high school students on asthma and air quality in their schools and communities. SITA students volunteer in an after-school workshop to develop action plans for educating others. The program engages students in environmental science investigations that promote inquiry skills. Research includes interaction with four guest experts in relevant fields. The students develop and implement action plans for community education, produce a television documentary for the public, and provide curriculum, resources, and assistance to eight classroom teachers at four high schools. The program engages in community stewardship, using youth leadership, to increase awareness of asthma mitigation techniques. The SITA classroom component (under development) raises awareness of the relationship between air quality and asthma and ways to improve the indoor and outdoor environments for improved respiratory health.

Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation   $19,020
Mark Green, P.O. Box 7886, Santa Rosa, CA 95407
Public Watershed Education
The Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation works to protect, restore, and encourage public appreciation and stewardship of the North Bay Area region of California's most biologically diverse area. Volunteer educators are recruited for a 10-week training course in ecology, ecosystems, characteristic species, and ecosystem services provided by the Laguna de Santa Rosa wetland complex. When they have completed the training, the new recruits teach in the Learning Laguna classroom and field trip program serving local elementary students in grades 2 through 5. They also provide guided tours for members of the public annually. The education program, which is based on a curriculum that meets California teaching standards, typically results in at least 1,300 hours of docent service over the 2-year commitment period. This estimate is conservative, as many education volunteers stay in the program. One of Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation's goals in raising public awareness of the wetland ecosystem is to encourage household behaviors that reduce pollution, and to increase environmental literacy and promote environmental stewardship. Project partners include the City of Santa Rosa and area elementary schools.

Pro Peninsula   $13,285
Frances Marie Kinney, P.O. Box 3953, San Diego, CA 92163
Ocean Connectors
Pro Peninsula is an organization dedicated to empowering individuals, communities, and other organizations throughout San Diego and the Baja California Peninsula to protect and preserve the environment. Ocean Connectors, its environmental education program, crosses borders and cultural boundaries by linking elementary students in the U.S. and Mexico to create a shared learning environment and a shared sense of stewardship of coastal resources. Ocean Connectors promotes a bi-national pen-pal letter exchange and conducts three field trips, introducing students to national wildlife refuges and allowing them opportunities to form personal connections with nature. Classroom presentations support field learning. Study of migratory aquatic species and their habits is used to teach ocean conservation principles and to connect the student populations, grades 4 through 6, on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Through the program, students in low-income schools are able to study the connections between terrestrial and oceanic ecosystems. Extended learning, once the project is completed, takes place through an online children's Web page.

Sierra Institute for Community and Environment   $25,000
Jonathan Paul Kusel, 4438 Main Street, Plumas, CA 95983
Natural Resource Academy's Stewardship and Field Research Program
The Sierra Institute for Community and Environment is an education organization dedicated to advancing rural community health and sustainable ecosystem management. This organization developed and implemented the Natural Resources Academy (Academy) for grades 7 through 12, in partnership with the Plumas Unified School District and staff at Greenville Junior/Senior High School. As a result, the education program is based on California teaching standards. Sierra's key partners include the Plumas National Forest and the California Department of Transportation. The academy is developing a field program to advance outdoor learning and promote environmental stewardship as well as, secondarily, to encourage career development. Through rigorous focused field studies, students connect to their rural landscape, which was significantly impaired by a fire in 2007. The field program powerfully combines learning and on-the-ground action through work in the watershed and restoration of portions of 65,000 fire-damaged acres. Students in grades 7 through 12 are given the motivational opportunity to improve in all subjects as a result of their dynamic involvement with the environment. Lead teachers receive training, along with staff and administrators. As the academy is shared with other school districts, the stewardship force is expected to expand, benefiting the damaged landscape.

Top of Page

2008 Grants

Art From Scrap   $9,249
Cay Sanchez, 302 East Cota Street, Santa Barbara, CA 93101
AFS Green Schools Teacher Training Workshops
Getting “back to the garden” is the method Art from Scrap uses to teach elementary school children in Santa Barbara County to foster appreciation of the natural world. This teacher education program is the first step to promoting positive messages about environmental stewardship in Santa Barbara County schools. It offers the beginnings of a social foundation for encouraging environmental practices that enhance land use for tourism and mitigate the potential for groundwater contamination from commercial use of pesticides and fertilizers in regional agriculture. Art from Scrap sponsors workshops in organic gardening and in composting to classroom teachers, student teachers, classroom aides, parent volunteers, and administrators. Program partner Healing Grounds Nursery provides free plant seedlings and composting worms, the living beginnings for a laboratory where age-appropriate experiments are conducted every day in the most natural way, as children cognitively and physically engage with nature. The fruit of the garden for the community is the opportunity it provides children to internalize positive associations with stewardship of the environment.

California Integrated Waste Management Board   $103,100
Christy Humpert, 1001 I Street, P.O. Box 4025, Sacramento, CA 95812
Strategies for Incorporating the EEI Curriculum into California Classrooms
The California Integrated Waste Management Board (CIWMB) is responsible for implementing the Education and the Environment Initiative (EEI), a program developed under a California law that was enacted in 2003. It requires development and dissemination of a kindergarten through grade 12 environment-based education program for all students in the state’s public schools. The EEI curriculum focuses on the relationship between humans and the environment and addresses various environmental issues, including sustainability, water, air, and pollution prevention. Under this project, CIWMB is developing and implementing a strategy for incorporating the EEI curriculum into California school districts to produce more environmentally literate students. In addition, CIWMB is developing a professional development plan for training educators in use of the EEI curriculum. Teachers attend workshops to learn about EEI and participate in focus group meetings. This project serves as a model for bringing environment-based education into public schools nationwide, institutionalizes environment-based education, and helps to develop more environmentally literate students. Partners in this project include the California Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the California Department of Education, the State Education and Environmental Roundtable, and the National Geographic Society.

Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose   $39,800
Jenni Martin, 180 Woz Way, San Jose, CA 95110-2780
BioSITE: Students Investigating Their Environment
The Guadalupe River in San Jose is adapting to massive ecological change after the completion of a $100 million urban park and flood control project. BioSITE (BioStudents Investigating their Environment) is dedicated to engaging students in grades 4 through 12 in the ecological restoration of the river, including research and observation of water issues, animal adaptation, fish habitats, life cycles, and bird migration. Its parent organization, the Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose, promotes “volitional learning through interactive exhibits and programs that engage children in a meaningful inquiry process.” This comprehensive environmental education program, including teacher training in support of learning that is contextualized and concrete, provides high school students with opportunities to gain practical understanding of natural systems, while participating in journaling, cross-age mentoring, public outreach activities, and service projects. Elementary grades 3 through 6 are served by an after-school program and a curriculum that includes water research activities. BioSITE, if not the Guadalupe River, is a persuasive force and model for educational reform: more than 50 percent of its students are considering careers in environmental science or science teaching.

Earth Island Institute   $20,000
Krista Mendelsohn, 1771 Alcatraz Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94703
Watershed Action Program: Safe Bay Food Consumption Project
Concern for the decline of the ecology of the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas—the San Francisco Bay Estuary—and its threat to human health from toxic pollution drives the Kids for the Bay teaching program for health awareness and educator skills. Fish and shellfish from the bay are contaminated with toxins, including pesticides at concentrations above thresholds. Studies indicate a significant percentage of bay anglers know nothing about a health advisory, and children particularly are at risk for developmental abnormalities and cancer. Kids for the Bay partners with low-income urban schools that demographically represent the at-risk fishing population. Students and teachers participate, including fourth grade classes, from schools within 5 miles of the bay. Students learn about toxins, watersheds, food chains, and associated risks to human health and transfer that knowledge to the community through demonstrations to their schools and families and to local fishing people. Teachers trained in hands-on environmental activities for the classroom and in the field, including cleanup, learn alongside their pupils and have the opportunity to earn university credit. This program empowers students as the messengers of toxics reduction for their communities, with the advantages of cultural and first-spoken language fluency and Kids-for-the-Bay science literacy.

Friends of the Children's Museum at La Habra   $20,000
Kimberly Powell Albarian, 301 S. Euclid Street, La Habra, CA 90631
Clubhouse H2O
With limited regional water resources, two-thirds of California’s population, and a drought-prone climate, Southern California stands to benefit from The Children’s Museum at La Habra’s plan to make awareness of water conservation a way of life for students and teachers in kindergarten through third grade. A permanent interactive exhibit featuring a downscaled Clubhouse H2O, with kitchen, bathroom, garden, and replica of the municipal water system, is incorporated into the existing mountain watershed display. Reflecting accepted childhood developmental theory, as well as the museum’s ethos, the design of the new exhibit encourages age-appropriate sensory and motor encounter. Envisioned as a destination point for school field trips, the Clubhouse H2O project educates broadly to the community, as the museum receives 95,000 visitors each year. The museum partners with school districts where half the children are impoverished and one-third learn English as a second language. Teachers in the program receive professional training in how to integrate new ways of teaching science into the daily curriculum. The completed project features bilingual standards-based science instruction. Increased benefit to the community is achieved, particularly for low-income households, when conservation-savvy consumers reduce the burden of their water costs.

Friends of the Dunes   $15,000
Margaret Stoudnour, P.O. Box 186, Arcata, CA 95518
Kid's Coastal Education and Collaboration Initiative
The Humboldt Bay beaches and dunes are the largest continuous dune system in northern California, with a variety of wildlife habitats. They provide an ideal outdoor classroom for environmental education along 34 miles of coast. For 25 years, Friends of the Dunes has supported environmental education and stewardship programs on the Samoa Peninsula, with its dune forest, beach, and freshwater wetlands. With the recent purchase by Friends of the Dunes of a 35-acre property on the peninsula, the outdoor classroom gains something akin to university stature among natural teaching settings. The Humboldt Bay Coastal Education Center and Reserve, including a trail system, has been created there as a center for regional coastal education. The current community stewardship project overhauls and adapts all programming to meet the project’s expanded scope. Stronger connections with schools and a weeklong non-residential summer camp for 8 to 12-year-olds are planned. Guides trained for field trips develop games based in concepts such as predator and prey. A daylong fall and spring elementary school field-trip program, an Adopt a Dune service program, and an annual Ocean Day event currently serve students in grades 3 through 6 and their teachers. The “campus” that is the Humboldt Bay coastline and the new center accommodate the need for increasing numbers of kids to have graduated from nature’s school of environmental stewardship.

Placer Nature Center   $6,937
Linda Anne Desai, 3700 Christian Valley Road, Auburn, CA 95602
Science and Stewardship in the Schoolyard
“You need look no further than your own backyard to learn about ecosystems and the interrelationship of all things.” That is the first lesson the fourth and fifth graders attending Placer County public schools learn through the Science and Stewardship in the Schoolyard program. The spirit of the field trip resides in the hands-on exploratory nature of this learning opportunity, where students are outfitted with such scientific tools as microscopes by The Placer Nature Center. Students examine both living and nonliving aspects of the environment in pursuit of knowledge about processes such as photosynthesis and decomposition. They are introduced to larger environmental concepts, such as watersheds, and observe animal life within the context of habitat. Applying science concepts, the students take an active role in restoration and stewardship of the schoolyard ecosystem, evaluating the daily results of their actions. Teachers have the opportunity to gain expertise and access to naturalists and volunteer docents. The immediate goal is to bring more science into the curriculum and improve assessment scores, as surveys reveal that science is being taught minimally or not at all. The journey to the schoolyard culminates in stewardship service, which might be planting trees or native grasses or otherwise enhancing wildlife habitat.

The Regents of the University of California   $29,897
Penelope Walgenbach, Office of Research, Sponsored Programs, 1850 Research Park Drive, Suite 300, Davis, CA 95616
Envirovet Summer Institute 2009
The Regents of the University of California at Davis see the paradigm shift in veterinary medicine under way as an opportunity to respond to the large and looming environmental crises of the day—climate change, habitat degradation, loss of biodiversity, chemical and biological contamination, and specie invasion. The Envirovet Summer Institute is phase 1 in meeting the commitment to training and preparing promising individuals who can assume leadership roles in programs that work toward more sustainable ecosystems for man and animal. It provides veterinary students and professionals with career paths and the initial tools for making long-range investments in environmental research and protection. As it moves closer in focus to its agrarian origins, ensuring food safety, and crop production and transportation, veterinary medicine is fertile ground for developing future environmental leaders. During an 8-week immersion, veterinarians and veterinary students engage in didactic and experiential learning on topics ranging from environmental toxicology to wildlife conservation, and from ecological economics to environmental law and global citizenship. Ultimately, the desired outcome is that veterinarians tend not only to domestic animal companions and to livestock but to all wildlife.

Top of Page

2007 Grants

Our City Forest   $21,100
Rhonda Berry, 595 Park Avenue, Number 100, San Jose, CA 95110
Planet Tree
The urban forest is central to the urban ecosystem, so understanding it, as well as how to care for it, is paramount. Education – teaching not only the importance of trees, but the importance of citizen involvement – is the key to a healthy urban forest and, in turn, a healthy ecosystem. Planet Tree is an environmental education and action program for students in kindergarten through grade 12. It is designed to teach and inspire students to be stewards in the community by providing interactive education in urban forestry in the classroom, through Planet Tree curriculum tailored for each grade level in kindergarten through grade 12, and by experiential learning through tree planting at their schools. The first phase of the project recruits and trains volunteers to be Planet Tree teachers. In the second phase, these teachers will offer training at schools. Train-the-Trainer workshops will be used to train the program teachers. In turn, they conduct interactive Planet Tree classes in schools throughout the county. On-site tree plantings, including tree care and stewardship teachings, are provided. The program provides students the opportunity to design their own tree planting projects and offers the schools free shade trees and technical assistance to implement the projects. A key outcome of Planet Tree is increasing the students’ awareness of the need for environmental stewardship. Planting a tree is important, but it is the easy part. Caring for it takes commitment. The slogan, “It takes 5 years to plant a tree,” makes the point. By becoming involved and taking responsibility for our environment, we can build healthy, sustainable communities.

The Bay Institute of San Francisco   $92,882
Grant Davis, 500 Palm Drive, Suite 200, Novato, CA 94949
The Students and Teachers Restoring a Watershed (STRAW) Project
The STRAW Project educates kindergarten through grade 12 teachers, community educators, and students about environmental issues specific to the San Francisco Bay region. Participants gain knowledge, skills, and experience in environmental science and place-based learning methodologies that ultimately improve community environmental stewardship. Teachers and community educators participate in a 3-day training institute and subsequent workshops that focus on hands-on scientific studies of riparian and wetland ecosystems, restoration methodology, and local land use history. STRAW helps teachers develop methods for integrating environmental topics into the standard curriculum. Students attend presentations that explain the land use history, environmental problems, and objectives and methods of restoration for the specific watersheds where they will be working. The presentations prepare students to participate in professionally designed restoration projects on rural and urban creeks, including revegetation with native plants; removal of non-native invasive species; and sophisticated biotechnical work for erosion repair in riparian corridors. Students develop presentations based on data collected in the field and deliver them to other classes and STRAW staff members. Key project partners include the Marin County Stormwater Pollution Prevention Program, Marin Resource Conservation District, Sonoma County Water Agency, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Point Reyes Bird Observatory.

Tuolumne River Preservation Trust   $42,900
Patrick Koepele, 914 Thirteenth Street, Modesto, CA 95354
Tuolumne River Education Project
The Tuolumne River is an invaluable natural resource to Stanislaus County. It is a source of drinking water, irrigation water, and hydroelectricity. It also supports an important ecosystem that is a habitat for several listed species. The objective of this project is a community that is well-informed about the river’s importance and is able to make educated choices about its stewardship and management. To help achieve this goal, the Tuolumne River Preservation Trust offers students, teachers, and parents a series of field trips, classroom lessons, tours of the watershed itself, and a service learning project related to stewardship of the river. Additionally, teachers undergo a separate training program that will include “Trekking the Tuolumne River” curriculum activities, use of “science suitcases” on water-related topics, and a service learning training. The audience includes students in grade 4, teachers, and parents trained as field trip chaperones. This project has at its foundation an existing California Science Standards-based curriculum (“Trekking the Tuolumne River”) designed to educate people about the river’s ecosystem and encourage its stewardship through hands-on experiences at the river and participation in restoration projects at local sites. The project is designed to encourage students to draw conclusions and evaluate their impact by monitoring and evaluating their own field work based on basic scientific constructs taught in pre- and post-field classroom lessons.

University of the Pacific   $69,626
Carol A. Brodie, 3601 Pacific Avenue, Stockton, CA 95211
Environmental Education at the Terrestrial-Marine Interface
This project is a collaborative effort that links the curriculum agendas at the University of the Pacific and the University of California, Davis, to foster interest in environmentally related career paths and to broaden societal awareness about environmental issues and the need for stewardship. The project provides formal environmental education experiences for undergraduate and graduate students through summer research projects and three class modules. During the modules, the students measure three beach profiles at locations along the Northern California coastline to evaluate beach erosion and monitor water quality and water flows in several watersheds along the Northern California coastline and in the coastal ocean. The students also learn about environmental careers during panel discussions with environmental professionals. The modules promote critical thinking and decision-making skills, cultivate stewardship, and encourage environmental careers. Each module concludes with student participants creating displays for community interaction and education and developing fact sheets and teaching packets for high school educators. A project Web site is also developed to provide a central clearinghouse for downloadable versions of teaching materials to ensure they are widely available and applied.

Top of Page

2006 Grants

Aquatic Adventures Science Education Foundation   $18,542
Shara Fisler, 2211 Pacific Beach Drive, San Diego, CA 92109
SEA Series Initiative
The SEA Series Initiative, a hands-on science classroom program, is provided to students in grades 3 through 6 in the San Diego region. The program at each grade level includes professional development provided to classroom teachers, experiential classroom learning, field trips, and thematic units (incorporating language arts, math, and social studies lessons that build off the environmental science theme). In addition, the program encompasses lending libraries and a community service component that enables students to translate environmental awareness into action. Through the community service component, students, families and others are engaged in environmental stewardship activities such as urban canyon restoration, street cleanups, and on-campus recycling campaigns. The program fosters education on environmental issues, demonstrates how students and families can take responsibility for the health of their community’s environment, and builds a lifetime stewardship ethic.

Catholic Charities CYO   $5,000
Deidre Rettenmaier, 180 Howard Street, Suite 100, San Francisco, CA 94105
Developing Youth as Environmental Leaders and Stewards
This project, “Developing Youth as Environmental Leaders and Stewards,” addresses challenges to the riparian corridor of two discrete stretches of Salmon Creek and one of its tributaries that run through 220 acres of coastal redwood forest in Sonoma County. The program will serve students and teachers during 5-day retreats offered 24 times throughout the year. A new creek and watershed curriculum has been introduced, emphasizing on-the-ground restoration activities that are the direct result of student field study, observation, evaluation, decision making, and problem solving. The goal is to develop the environmental leadership and stewardship skills of the students through direct exposure to local environmental challenges.

Coyote Point Museum Association   $6,900
Carl Oosterman, 1651 Coyote Point Drive, San Mateo, CA 94401
Youth Environmental Stewards (Y.E.S.) Club
This organization has launched the Youth Environmental Stewards (Y.E.S.) Club for middle school students and their families, with emphasis on weekend marine cleanup and recycling projects. The Y.E.S. Club is intended to inspire each young person to protect and preserve the local Shoreline Park by involving them in hands-on, place-based environmental works that will assist them in learning about the park’s coastal and marine ecosystems. Participants in the Y.E.S. Club learn, among many other things, the value of a healthy environment, as well as principles of scientific inquiry and how they can make a difference in the community. It is believed these rewards will encourage youth to consider environmental careers. Projects include soil and water quality monitoring; wildlife population monitoring; and marine and debris recycling. Through these activities, students are able to develop a deeper connection to the environment and begin to understand how the choices they make in their daily lives affect the natural treasures around them.

Friends of the Sea Otter   $6,000
D'Anne Albers, 125 Ocean View Boulevard, Suite 204, Pacific Grove, CA 93933
In-School Sea Otter Education Program
The In-School Sea Otter Education Program is a tool for local schools to increase the breadth of academic disciplines their students experience, emphasizing key issues such as endangered keystone species, conservation, and ecosystems. Friends of the Sea Otter plans to reach students with their in-class instruction, which includes PowerPoint presentations and hands-on stations. The objectives are to increase students’ understanding of sea otter biology and the adaptations and impediments to species recovery, thereby giving students the tools they need to protect sea otters and their habitat. Protection of this valuable species depends on the continuing education of youth by fostering awareness and introducing the concept of stewardship to younger members of the community.

Generation Green   $4,900
R.C. Ferris, 2066 Donald Drive, Moraga, CA 94556
Traveling Trash Transformations
Generation Green will provide at least 20 hands-on workshops on recycled art at libraries and farmer’s markets throughout Contra Costa County. The objective is to inspire people, through creative endeavors, to see the potential value of the raw materials that are recycled. The organization hopes to attract participants at the farmer’s markets and students at county and school libraries, who will take part in “eco art” activities that generate enthusiasm and fun, while teaching folks to use unused, recycled materials, and to think before it is thrown away. Generation Green wants to enable people to create, make, and make do; to inspire people to experiment with junk. The organization wants to help create a generation of recyclers so that it will be second nature to look at something discarded and wonder, “What else can this be?” or “What can I make with this?”

ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability, USA   $75,000
Abby Young, 436 14th Street, Suite 1520, Oakland, CA 94612
Climate Protection Decision-Making Tool Development and Training Project
The International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI)-Local Governments for Sustainability is developing a climate protection decision-making tool that enables mayors and other local officials to consider the impacts of policy decisions on local air pollution. Developed in response to the need for better tools to enhance climate protection, ICLEI based the design of the tool on greenhouse gas quantification protocols established for local governments. The tool, targeted for use by mayors throughout the U.S., provides local government staff with the analytical framework necessary to determine the impact of specific decisions on increasing or decreasing emissions of greenhouse gas and regulated air pollutants. Developed in close consultation with the extensive network of local government staff and elected officials who participate in ICLEI’s Cities for Climate Protection campaign, the tool is a stand-alone electronic survey. The survey guides the user through a series of questions that lead to an estimate of the quantity of emissions of greenhouse gases and criteria air pollutants that will be increased or decreased by appropriate policy recommendations. By using the tool, mayors and other local government officials gain decision-making skills that result in improved local air quality, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and a better understanding of the long-term ramifications of policy decisions. Training on the use of the tool is provided at ICLEI’s annual Sundance Summit: A Gathering of Mayors for Climate Protection. The key partner in the project is the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Mono Lake Committee   $9,261
Bartshe Miller, P.O. Box 29, Lee Vining, CA 93541
Mono County Eastern Sierra Watershed Program
Field trips to local creeks and classroom activities combine to educate grade 6 students in the towns of Mammoth Lakes and Lee Vining, California. The program trains volunteer docents from the Stand By Me Mentor Program and teachers at a workshop to increase staff capacity to provide an appropriate ratio of students to supervisors in the field. The idea of the program is to educate students about the importance of scientific research in land stewardship. Students are introduced to field monitoring techniques and the specific topics employed in monitoring. They also learn fish surveying, stream flow measurement, and greenline transect. The results of their activities are gathered into a database that future classes can use and expand. The work that the students engage in is similar to a range of activities that local area professionals conduct in the field. These professionals, who lead the programs, have an opportunity to explain their jobs to students before they demonstrate the monitoring techniques so that students see how these activities can be part of a career in the environmental field.

Northern California Society of American Foresters   $10,000
Heather Morrison, P.O. Box 339, Camptonville, CA 95922
Forestry Institute for Teachers
The Forestry Institute for Teachers will reach teachers in kindergarten through grade 12, using the forest ecosystem as a tool to provide them the skills and knowledge needed to teach their students about the intricate relationship between forest ecology and sustainable forestry, and to use the ecosystem to teach universal concepts. The institute offers three workshop sessions per year in forested areas in various Northern California settings. Each session is a 6-day, hands-on field workshop. Participants are trained and encouraged to use existing materials such as Project Learning Tree, Project WILD, and Project Aquatic WILD. Field trips include a tour to spotted owl habitat, a lumber mill, an actively managed forest, a salmon-bearing stream, and a meadow restoration site.

Rising Sun Energy Center   $15,000
Ori Skloot, 2033 Center Street, Berkeley, CA 94704
Solar Education Workshop
Rising Sun Energy Center sponsors 1-day Solar Education workshops four times a year for the professional development of teachers in grades 4 through 12 to teach them how to lead conservation and renewable energy projects for their students. The workshops cover energy-efficient home design, home energy conservation, solar electricity, and solar water pumping. The teachers receive a guidebook with grade-specific curriculum and projects. Furthermore, the teachers have on-going access to an online library of solar energy and energy conservation technologies, which they can borrow to use in their classrooms. They also learn how to use solar energy technology and receive background information on the global, national, and state energy situation. This effort brings students a hands-on experience of energy education through projects such as solar race car building, passive solar home model building, solar electric wiring and circuits, and home energy efficiency retrofitting.

San Diego County Office of Education   $77,936
Brian Swagerty, 6401 Linda Vista Road, Outdoor Education, Room 410, San Diego, CA 92111
San Diego Environmental Literacy in Action
The San Diego Environmental Literacy in Action (SanDELA) project increases opportunities for professional learning in environmental literacy for educators in kindergarten through grade 12 and engages students in opportunities that build awareness of environmental issues. This program also promotes access to and participation in activities that foster environmental stewardship. To implement the project, teachers in kindergarten through grade 12 work together to develop a guidebook based on the California Science Standards and the California Education and the Environment Initiative. The guidebook, which identifies an environmental literacy issue at each grade level, describes a grade-specific stewardship project or field-based learning experience that supports the targeted environmental issue. Teachers who use the guidebook will gain hands-on, science-based examples of how to implement an environmental education program that aligns with state education standards. The guidebook is being drafted during SanDELA Academy workshops and will be tested in the field by participants. The final guidebook is being disseminated to kindergarten through grade 12 schools in 42 school districts in San Diego County and will also be available online. Four teacher workshops will be conducted on use of the guidebook. The key partners on this project are the San Diego County Office of Education’s Outdoor Education Department and the Science Department and the San Diego Science Alliance.

STAR, Inc.   $9,938
Katya Bozzi, 10117 West Jefferson Boulevard, Culver City, CA 90232
STAR Kids Lead L.A.
This program explores environmental issues pertaining to the Santa Monica Bay Watershed through hands-on watershed classes, field trips to Santa Monica Bay habitats, and real-world stewardship projects, all through daily after-school programming. The idea is to develop a model program that educates students about local environmental issues surrounding the watershed. Nine-week after-school courses are delivered centered on laboratory activities and encounters with wildlife rescues. Field trips are included to various living habitats in the Santa Monica Bay Watershed. The program culminates in a community action project, where students test their newly acquired knowledge in the real world by undertaking a service learning action project that manifests their personal concerns and visions for their own health and of the community. Examples of action projects are local beach, school, or neighborhood cleanups, wetland restorations, recycling projects, and educational murals.

The Watershed Project   $6,000
Wendy Strickland, 1327 South 46th Street, #155, Richmond, CA 94804
Healthy Schools Inside and Out
The Watershed Project is offering its “Healthy Schools Inside and Out” program in a new location: Contra Costa County. “Healthy Schools Inside and Out” is a program that builds on California’s Healthy Schools Act of 2000, which established requirements for notification on pesticide use in school buildings and on school grounds. Its 1-day workshop for teachers offers activities that will dramatically and effectively illustrate the impact of toxins on the environment and human health in ways that excite participants and stimulate them to learn and think critically. It also gives them both the tools and support to implement what they have learned with their students and communities.

Yolo Basin Foundation   $10,000
Donald Morrill, P.O. Box 943, Davis, CA 95617
Discover the Flyway Educators' Workshops
The Yolo Basin Foundation’s “Discover the Flyway” educational program is intended to make wetlands and their stewardship, in the context of the Yolo Basin, a consistent educational component of the schools of Sacramento. This project’s goal is to train teachers, volunteers, and interns so they become skilled educators for the program. Seven workshops will be delivered throughout the year. The workshops focus on many of the ecosystem processes and beneficial aspects of the Yolo Wildlife Area and nearby City of Davis Wetlands. The program seeks to expand educators’ awareness of local conservation efforts, the compatibility of urban life and agriculture, flood control, effective wildlife management, and how all these factors contribute to a healthy delta ecosystem.

Youth Employment Partnership   $13,550
Michele Clark, 2300 International Boulevard, Oakland, CA 94601
Team Oakland Environmental Stewardship Program
Youth are engaged in hands-on, nontraditional environmental education, as well as introduced to careers in the environmental field through the Team Oakland Environmental Stewardship Program. It provides a comprehensive environmental and science educational program to youth enrolled in Youth Employment Partnership’s (YEP) Team Oakland program and to students in the YEP Charter School. These youth take part in 25 hours of classroom-based education on the local marine and coastal environment, 25 hours of in-field education on coastal and marine resources and ecology, and 50 hours of cleanup at Lake Merritt and sites along the Oakland Estuary. In addition, they participate in a public awareness campaign to educate local merchants and businesses about how they can help prevent drainage of toxins to the San Francisco Bay. Educational programming is delivered by graduate students from the University of California, Berkeley’s, College of Natural Resources, and from a credentialed science teacher from the YEP Charter School.

Top of Page

2005 Grants

Ballona Wetlands Foundation   $7,812
Abby Fox, 1 LMU Drive, North Hall, MS 8160, Los Angeles, CA 90045
The WOW Team
The Wonders of Wetlands (WOW) Team teaches students about the diverse habitats, biology, cultural history, and functions of the Ballona Wetlands. Students first encounter the WOW Team program during an interactive presentation that features illustrations, experiments, and activities in the classroom. The students then experience the Ballona Wetlands on a guided field trip through the wetlands’ unique habitats, where they observe a wide variety of wildlife. Hands-on activities, such as exploration and observation, experiments, and restoration work at the wetlands, also reinforce key ecological concepts. This educational program reaches kindergarten through grade 5 children across the Los Angeles region each year.

California Integrated Waste Management Board   $91,276
Joanne Vorhies, 1001 I Street, P.O. Box 4025, Sacramento, CA 95812-4025
Education and the Environment Initiative Implementation Project
In an effort to improve implementation of the Education and the Environment Initiative (EEI), the California Integrated Waste Management Board (CIWMB) provides environmental nongovernment organizations (NGO) in the state with professional development opportunities and technical assistance. Established by a state law in 2003, the EEI requires CIWMB, the California Environmental Protection Agency (Cal/EPA), and the California State Department of Education to develop principles and approaches for incorporating environmental education into elementary and secondary school curriculums. The EEI also requires the agencies to create a model environmental education curriculum based on California’s academic content standards. As part of the EEI implementation project, representatives of environmental NGOs attend professional development workshops conducted in six regions across the state followed by a series of technical assistance workshops. These workshops are intended to help the NGO community revise existing environmental education materials in order to better align them with California’s model curriculum. The workshops also provide increased opportunities for the NGOs to collaborate with schools on environmental education reform. As a result, environmental concepts are being further integrated into the education of California’s elementary and secondary school students. Each environmental NGO works with California teachers to help them integrate the revised materials into their curriculums, a process that also builds the capacity of the NGOs. As another element of the project, CIWMB is creating a Web-based environmental education provider database that gives teachers and organizations the ability to communicate and exchange expertise. Key CIWMB partners in the project include Cal/EPA, the California Resources Agency, the California State Department of Education, the Office of the Secretary for Education, and the State Board of Education. The project is also supported by a large number of associated partners.

Central Modoc Resource Conservation District   $17,675
Abby Kingdon, 804 West 12th Street, Alturas, CA 96101
The Pit River Watershed Adoption Project
The Pit River Watershed Adoption Project is a cooperative effort to offer students in Modoc County a hands-on opportunity to learn more about the watershed where they live and what it takes to maintain a healthy watershed for the wildlife and people who depend on it. The strategy is for students at each grade level to be responsible for a minimum of one service-learning project each year. Goals are to increase awareness of the Pit River and its watershed and toafford students and the community a sense of ownership and pride in its natural resources. The program also is intended to promote good land use decisions and choices among emerging leaders, promote cooperation among competing interests, and create a shared vision of watershed enhancement in the region. Instructors include biologists from the Modoc National Wildlife Refuge, Modoc National Forest nature resource specialists, Bureau of Land Management specialists, and parents and volunteers from the community.

Community Environmental Council   $8,410
Cay Sanchez, 930 Miramonte Drive, Santa Barbara, CA 93101
CEC Teacher Training Series
The Community Environmental Council’s (CEC) Teacher Training Series addresses the inter-connectedness of environmental systems with a focus on waste reduction and water quality issues, which are of specific importance to the Santa Barbara community. CEC will conduct nine teacher training workshops and field trips and will train teachers, student teachers, and nonformal educators. These educators will transmit the knowledge gained in the workshops and field trips to students over the course of their teaching careers. The series provides information, curriculum, methodologies, and resources for teaching environmental education in subjects such as service learning, waste reduction, water quality, school gardens, and composting techniques.

Coral Reef Alliance   $20,000
Brian Huse, 417 Montgomery Street, Suite 205, San Francisco, CA 94104
Improving the Teaching Skills of Marine Recreation Providers
The Coral Reef Alliance (CORAL) organizes and leads workshops on the islands of Hawaii, Lanai, Maui, and Oahu. The first section of the workshop provides an overview of reef ecology, threats to the reef, and reef conservation strategies. The second section focuses on sustainable tourism for marine recreation. The third section focuses on public speaking and communication skills and on how to give an effective pre-dive and snorkel briefing. Participants practice in front of each other and are taped for feedback. The workshops are interactive and incorporate a range of group exercises, such as threat ranking, solution trees, and group evaluation. The goal of the workshops is to promote critical thinking among the participants so that they make an informed decision to educate their clients.

Friends of Deer Creek   $10,000
Joanne Hild, 132 Main Street, Nevada City, CA 95959
The Bug Book
The goal of this project is to develop and distribute a supplemental benthic macroinvertebrate identification manual for volunteer water quality monitors. Friends of Deer Creek (FODC) science staff work with volunteers from the Deer Creek Water Quality Monitoring Program who have been involved in identifying aquatic insects over the last 4 years. FODC is developing an easy-to-use publication to assist citizens with the classification of biological data collected in their watersheds using the lessons learned from this program and the knowledge of two expert entomology experts and a state-approved technical advisory committee. The outcome is a cost-effective, supplemental method for identifying benthic macroinvertebrates in the Sierra Nevada to provide viable data to state and federal water regulatory agencies. The manual includes “lessons learned” from FODC and is used to train other watershed groups through its distribution as well as workshops and training days.

Golden Gate Audubon Society   $10,000
Elizabeth Murdock, 2530 San Pablo Avenue, Suite G, Berkeley, CA 94702
Eco-Oakland Project
The Eco-Oakland Project targets East Oakland elementary students and their teachers and families. The project involves students in hands-on, watershed-wide experiences in environmental education and restoration. Both in-class presentations and field-based activities are included in this program. Cleanup and native plant restoration take place at several points in the local watershed. The goals are to provide opportunities for East Oakland residents to invest in local resources, address the severe shortage of environmental education programs in the East Oakland community, foster community-based environmental stewardship within the community through hands-on activities, and improve academic achievement in science, math, and literacy through place-based education.

Los Angeles County Education Foundation   $9,000
Roberta Gerarde, 9300 Imperial Highway, Room 106, Downey, CA 90242
EarthWorks - Careers That Serve the Earth
Earth Works – Careers that Serve the Earth is a new program that educates students in grades 10 and 11 about environmental careers such as forestry and the atmospheric, space, and earth sciences. Earth Works addresses crosscutting topics using presentations by career professionals and small group work through use of the property known as Blue Sky Meadow in the San Bernardino Mountains. These presentations emphasize local environmental issues, field study, and service learning projects, such as habitat improvement and modification or native plant restoration. Through interactive discussions, written materials, and guided activities, students learn how to identify and achieve their academic and vocational goals. The students learn about the steps that lead to careers in geology, meteorology, astronomy, teaching, environmental engineering, and forest management.

Mono County Office of Education   $5,500
Margina Rhyne, 1651 Merdian Boulevard, P.O. Box 130, Mammoth Lakes, CA 93546
Eastern Sierra Environmental Video Project
Middle and high school students working in groups examine different views and investigate various solutions to an environmental issue of local concern under this grant. The students then use this information to plan and script a brief videotape project. In planning the videotape, students enhance critical thinking skills by deciding how to present an informative, appealing message to a community of diverse interests. The project promotes environmental stewardship by educating the participating students and the local community in recycling, conservation, and pollution reduction practices.

Trinity County Resource Conservation District   $35,773
Pat Frost, 1 Horseshoe Lane, Weaverville, CA 96093
Trinity County Environmental Education Project
This environmental education project focuses on teaching about the role of wetlands and riparian zones as critical components of healthy watersheds. Students take part in an actual wetland restoration project as a living laboratory. Objectives of the project include building a mentoring relationship between high school and elementary school students for the salmonid education program; providing students with natural resources professionals as role models; and involving more teachers and parents in restoration and water quality education, thus broadening community buy-in for watershed restoration. The project also provides opportunities in environmental education opportunities, and sponsors the Salmon Festival. In addition, high school students provide environmental education activities for elementary school children at the summer day camp.

Top of Page

2004 Grants

Bay Area Wilderness Training   $8,000
Kyle Macdonald, 300 Broadway, Suite 28, San Francisco, CA 94133
Wilderness Leadership Training and Environmental Stewardship Education
Bay Area Wilderness Training (BAWT) trains education leaders, supplies wilderness gear, and provides urban youth with opportunities for educational and life-changing experiences. The core program includes a Wilderness Leadership Training course and supplementary 1-day seminars in first aid, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and use of a map and compass for adults who work with urban youth. In 2003, BAWT initiated three new programs, including a Youth Wilderness Leadership Training course modeled on the adult course and a 3-day Mt. Diablo Complete course held for adults in the Bay area and designed to be easily replicated with young people.

Community Resources for Science   $20,024
Anne Jennings, 1375 Ada Street, Alameda, CA 94702
Environmental Learning Partnership
The purpose of the Environmental Learning Partnership project is to help both classroom teachers and non-formal educators maximize and measure the impacts of environmental education on elementary school students. As part of the project, 40 teachers and 20 environmental education program providers are being trained to effectively integrate environmental education into elementary school curriculums in order to provide thousands of students with more engaging environmental learning experiences.

Earth Team   $5,000
Sheilah Fish, P.O. Box 4686, Walnut Creek, CA 94596
Earth Team Restoration Initiative
The Earth Team Restoration Initiative (ETRI) is a project-based learning program designed to involve high school students in local habitat restoration projects. Through ETRI, students are educated about the environment and habitat restoration in the context of their local watershed and natural community, and provided with opportunities to take action as environmental stewards. ETRI bridges the gap between teachers, young people, and community organizations by reaching out to schools and linking them to local service projects.

Imperial Valley Regional Occupational Program   $23,109
Madaleine O. Macholtz, 687 State Street, El Centro, CA 92243
Imperial Valley Student Entrepreneurs for Recycling
The Imperial Valley Student Entrepreneurs for Recycling program raises students' awareness about recycling and resource management to improve their overall academic performance. Another goal of the program is to help students explore environmental careers and find ways to make positive contributions to the local environment. As part of the program, middle and high school teachers are being trained using the California Integrated Waste Management Board's "Closing the Loop" curriculum guide. The teachers work with six middle and high school groups to develop school-based recycling businesses. Information about the students' efforts is disseminated throughout the community. The target audience for this grant includes students from a low-income, culturally diverse, rural community.

Inner City Business Association   $24,015
James Justus, 2208 Imperial Avenue, San Diego, CA 92102
Negocio Verde Project
The Negocio Verde project links college students with owners of small automotive businesses through multi-media educational workshops that focus on pollution prevention in the underserved minority population centers of San Diego and National City. The goal of the project is to provide cross-media education and skills to owners of small businesses in environmental justice communities in order to help them make environmentally responsible choices that also bring cost savings. The college students meet with the owners of small automotive businesses, participate in the workshops, and gain important experience in interacting with the owners of small businesses. The multi-media workshops use the San Diego Area Green Business Automotive Self-Audit Checklist and educate both the business owners and students about pollution prevention.

National Wildlife Federation   $10,721
Stephanie Stowell, 3500 5th Avenue, Suite 101, San Diego, CA 92103
Community Workday for Wildlife
The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) is launching a Community Workday for Wildlife, which is part of the larger Community Wildlife Habitat Initiative. NWF engages Los Angeles urban, low-income neighborhoods in long-term environmental education regarding water conservation, air pollution, and local wildlife and habitat. As part of this effort, the project is helping residents create habitats by building bird baths, rockpiles, and bat homes and planting native plant species around their homes, schools, businesses, and other community locations. The results of the project include a growing network of functioning wildlife friendly habitats throughout the community and increased resident awareness about community environmental health.

Placer Land Trust & Nature Center   $4,550
Linda Desai, 3700 Christian Valley Road, Auburn, CA 95602
Waste Busters
In this project, the Waste Busters program will be added to the Environmental Science Travels (EST) program, which is a set of five interactive programs for elementary school students that brings environmental science into the classroom. Subjects of the EST program include water resources; recycling; food chains; and birds, bats, and bugs. For example, the Water Basins program enhances middle school science curriculums by making connections between the physical science concepts that students learn about in the classroom and the energy and natural resources that they use in everyday life. Although a traditional science curriculum addresses the concepts of energy and its application, it does not make energy issues personal for students. The EST program connects the concepts taught in the classroom with students, their homes, and their community. Thus, the program offers students a fuller understanding of energy and natural resources and their application in every aspect of the students' lives.

Project Understanding   $2,400
Lynn Austin, 43 East Vince Street, Ventura, CA 93001
This Land Is Your Land
Using volunteer tutors, the This Land Is Your Land program helps students improve their academic performance, learning skills, self-esteem, and motivation. Students learn about key environmental issues by creating a land-use map for the county. The program gives each student a basic understanding of the various uses that compete for land in the county. As a result of the program, students are better able to interpret the news and events of the day that presumably involve changes in the local environment and to form their own conclusions.

Redefining Progress   $79,030
Dahlia Chazan, 1904 Franklin Street, 6th Floor, Oakland, CA 94612
The Shadow We Cast: Strengthening Environmental Education with the Ecological Footprint
The goal of this project is to help teachers develop skills and knowledge that they can integrate into their classroom instruction on the scientific and social aspects of society’s use of renewable resources. The project is based on the use of the Ecological Footprint™ analysis. Footprint, which was developed by Redefining Progress, is a tool for measuring sustainability. The project builds on two earlier phases that focused on the study of use of the Footprint in the classroom and development of educational materials. For this project, more than 100 geography and social studies teachers for grades 5 through 8 in California are trained in the use of Footprint training materials. Lesson plans and other materials are made available to educators at workshops and at a national conference. An online community for teachers also provides support for teachers across the state. Partners of the project include Creative Change Educational Solutions and the California Geographic Alliance.

Save San Francisco Bay Association (Save the Bay)   $20,000
Jason Morris, 1600 Broadway, Suite 300, Oakland, CA 94612
Wetland Restoration and Bay/Watershed Education Programs
Save the Bay began its Canoes in Sloughs Watershed Education Program in 1996 to address a lack of San Francisco Bay-related experiential education for middle and high school students. The program combines hands-on bay wetland restoration activities with educational canoe trips, in-class sessions, teacher training, and use of the program's San Francisco Bay Watershed Curriculum. The students learn to identify non-native plants, collect native seeds, and test water quality while building their knowledge of and connections to the bay and the community as well as help to improve water quality and wildlife habitat.

Solano Land Trust   $5,000
Karen Swan, 744 Empire Street, Suite 112, Fairfield, CA 94533
Young Stewards
Solano Land Trust's Young Stewards watershed education program helps fourth-grade students and their teachers become stewards of their watershed and sets stewardship examples for their families and community. Students and teachers discover what a watershed is, how the water cycle works, what pollution is, and where pollution comes from. They also learn about wetlands.

Venice High School   $15,077
Julie Mann, 13000 Venice Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90066
The Learning Garden Composting Demonstration Site
The Venice High School Learning Garden includes a functional and educational composting demonstration site that serves as a learning center for students and community members. The Learning Garden is a green waste reduction post for the high school and surrounding neighborhoods, and it produces rich soil amendment for its own use. The goal of the project is to incorporate the theory and practice of composting into the school system and the curriculum by utilizing existing environmental education materials. Local businesses are encouraged to compost their wastes at the site. Weekend workshops are held every two months targeting different areas of the community. The workshops educate residents about composting options and landfill issues. Through community use of the composting site, participants learn how to reduce the amount of waste being landfilled while producing a beneficial soil amendment that can be used to green their homes and neighborhoods.

Youth Employment Partnership, Inc.   $10,000
Michele Clark, 2300 International Boulevard, Oakland, CA 94601
Team Oakland Environmental Training Program
The Team Oakland Environmental Training program is a 6-month employment training and education program that provides 100 high-risk, low-income young people (ages 14 through 17) with paid employment in environmental cleanup and beautification projects. The program provides the participants with environmental education, field trip experiences, and opportunities to develop environmental leadership skills. More than 90 percent of the program's participants are people of color who live in households at or below the federal poverty level. The program is specifically designed to meet their needs and to enable them to understand the critical connection between their urban environment and the surrounding coastal, marine, and wilderness environment.

Top of Page

2003 Grants

American Lung Association of San Diego and Imperial Counties   $18,595
Janie Davies, 2750 Fourth Avenue, San Diego, CA 92103
Kids for Clean Air
The goal of the Kids for Clean Air program is to educate young people about the causes of air pollution and how individuals can take personal action to make the air cleaner. The program is targeted toward low-income elementary school students throughout San Diego is an important pollution prevention and environmental literacy initiative. Through the program, students achieve an increase of at least 25 percent in their knowledge of how their lungs work, how contaminants affect their lungs, what causes air pollution, and what they can do to help create cleaner air.

California Academy of Sciences   $5,000
J. Patrick Kociolek, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA 94118
Wild City! Urban Environmental Education
Wild City! Urban Environmental Education activities are for fourth- and fifth-grade public school students in San Francisco communities where residents are traditionally underrepresented in the sciences. The project connects scientific and environmental concepts to everyday life and experiences in order to make learning science fun and interesting for children, many of whom have had little or no previous experience in the natural world. Wild City! helps participants understand biodiversity at the species and ecosystem levels, emphasizes the importance of local biodiversity as well as the problems facing biodiversity and possible solutions, gives each child the opportunity to contribute personally to the preservation of biodiversity through a restoration or cleanup project, and establishes a connection and a potential ongoing relationship between each child and the resources of the California Academy of Sciences.

California State University, Chico Research Foundation   $10,000
Roxanne Baxter, 1163 East Seventh Street, Chico, CA 95928
Kids and Creeks
In the Kids and Creeks project, student activities include raising salmonids to the fry stage in the classroom, participating in riparian restoration field trips, and studying creek ecology. Fifteen classes raise salmonids in their classrooms and attend at least one riparian restoration field trip and one Creek Ecology Day field trip. California State University's objective is to help teachers by providing them with in-service training workshops, materials, mentors, and field trips to support curriculum development. Teachers play key roles in planning field trip activities, especially Creek Ecology Days. In addition to 2nd- through 12th-grade teachers and students, at least 200 community members, including college students, parents, teacher’s aides, and community volunteers, participate in the project.

Ecological Farming Association   $10,750
Kristin Rosenow, 406 Main Street, #313, Watsonville, CA 95076
South-Central Coast Strawberry Conference Series
This project involves holding a Strawberry Conference Series and farm tour for south-central coast growers in spring 2004. The project’s focus is on promoting successful post-methyl bromide production methods and on providing outreach to underserved Spanish-speaking and low-income growers. The conference series is similar to activities for Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties funded by EPA in 2002. The objectives of the conference series are to help farmers evaluate different production methods based on economic and environmental criteria and to increase their understanding of the tools, techniques, and resources available to help them make responsible production decisions for themselves and the environment. The goal of the conference series is that growers implement practices that meet economic and management requirements while reducing negative environmental and health impacts.

Friends of Famosa Slough   $5,000
James Peugh, P.O. Box 87280, San Diego, CA 92138
Rolling Wetland Laboratories
This project involves the purchase or fabrication of mobile research wagons and interactive wetland assessment tools. Together with presentations, these items provide students and the public with a better understanding of watersheds, water quality, and plant and animal communities. Moreover, the project furnishes teachers with a comprehensive, “turnkey” means of maximizing the educational value of Famosa Slough. The interactive tools help students develop problem-solving and decision-making skills and impart enduring impressions of watershed investigations.

Mattole Restoration Council   $5,000
Chris Larsen, P.O. Box 160, Petrolia, CA 95558
Mattole Ecological Education Program
The Mattole Restoration Council is supporting career development projects for Mattole students. The council’s Mattole Ecological Education Program is expanding its career development services for high school students, providing 25 in-class visits and five field trips for six Mattole Watershed public schools and hosting the annual Watershed Week event. Each of these components ensures that students receive an adequate level of ecological education and that they are exposed to potential careers in local and regional watershed restoration.

North Tahoe Middle School   $3,455
David B. Curry, 10096 Olympic Boulevard, Truckee, CA 96161
Community Water Watch
This cross-curricular, multidisciplinary, and cross-grade-level project is linking two school districts in two states to examine the environmental issues of different communities from the economic, political, social, and cultural viewpoints. The project is designed to improve the investigative skills of all the participating students and to encourage collaborative research on local, national, and global environmental issues. Community Water Watch focuses mainly on capacity building. Students connect with students from another community while studying environmental science. Students also work closely with partner agencies through use of web conferences, guest speakers, field studies, and field trips. Teachers involved in the project collaborate with one another and with the partner agencies.

Placer Land Trust and Nature Center   $4,580
Linda Desai, 3700 Christian Valley Road, Auburn, CA 95602
Learning from the Land
The Learning from the Land outreach program provides a 1-day field study educational experience for fifth- through eighth-grade students at the Traylor Ranch Nature Reserve and Bird Sanctuary. The program addresses the history of local land use, stream and grassland ecology concepts, and restoration projects at the sanctuary.

San Gabriel Mountains Regional Conservancy   $55,350
Rick Thomas, P.O. Box 963, Glendora, CA 91740
Think River! Interactive Youth Watershed Education Program
Developed by the San Gabriel Mountains Regional Conservancy, this project educates students and teachers through hands-on lessons about watershed topics and includes visioning exercises to obtain the input of young people for a watershed management plan for the San Gabriel River. The "Think River!" program promotes collaborative partnerships with local municipalities, schools, clubs, and businesses and provides a forum for ongoing evaluation of the watershed education curriculum. The project includes a high school mentor program for 11th- and 12th-grade students, a teacher education workshop for 5th-grade teachers, and a youth watershed conference for 5th-grade students. The key partners in this project are the City of Azusa and a formal planning committee made up of representatives from local organizations.

Santa Barbara Zoological Foundation   $5,453
Jill Rode, 500 Ninos Drive, Santa Barbara, CA 93103
The Zoo Explorers Program
The purpose of the Zoo Explorers program is to encourage students in grades 9 through 12 to pursue environmental careers. The program provides the students with opportunities to meet conservation professionals and participate in hands-on conservation projects. In the year-long program, Zoo Explorers meet with professionals involved in various aspects of environmental conservation. These professionals range from plant biologists to gorilla behavior researchers to zookeepers, and the students meet a different professional each month. In addition to listening to lectures given by the environmental professionals, the students participate in hands-on activities that allow them to actually practice conservation. Throughout the program, the students develop and implement conservation projects for their homes, schools, or community. The projects are implemented at the middle of the year, evaluated at the end of the year, and judged based on the students’ development of the projects. The three students who display the best use of their critical thinking and problem-solving skills in their projects receive Youth Conservation Scholarships for college in the amounts of $1,000; $750; and $500.

Save San Francisco Bay Association   $10,000
David Lewis, 1600 Broadway, Suite 300, Oakland, CA 94612
Canoes in Sloughs Watershed Education and Community-Based Restoration Program
The Save San Francisco Bay Association launched this program in 1996 as the first experiential education program in the San Francisco Bay area that was “on the water” and tailored to middle and high school students. The hands-on educational and restoration activities offered through the Canoes in Sloughs program help to restore wetland habitat, improve water quality and the overall health of San Francisco Bay, and build understanding of and support for the bay and its ecosystems among a new generation of bay area residents.

South Yuba River Citizens League   $5,000
Janet Cohen, 216 Main Street, Nevada City, CA 95959
River Teachers Science Docent Program
The goal of the South Yuba River Citizens League River Teachers Science Docent Program is to train volunteers to work with teachers in order to expand education about water quality and salmon habitat in local first- through sixth-grade classrooms. To accomplish this goal, the Science Docent Program is providing monthly training sessions for volunteer educators. Each of these workshops trains the volunteers to present an enjoyable, hands-on lesson related to water quality or salmon habitat that is consistent with California Content Standards. After each workshop, volunteers visit their partner classrooms in pairs to present the interactive lesson to the students. The lessons give students the opportunity to learn about the natural world while developing their skills for observing, communicating, investigating, and thinking critically about the environment. By the end of its pilot phase, the program is scheduled to reach approximately 20 volunteer educators, 300 first- through sixth-grade students, and 10 classroom teachers with three hands-on lessons on water.

TreePeople Inc.   $2,000
Richad Wegman, 12601 Mulholland Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90210
Campus Forestry Program
The TreePeople Inc. campus forestry professional development program trains teachers to use environmental service-learning as a hands-on teaching tool through which state-mandated academic requirements can be taught.

TreePeople Inc.   $10,000
Richard Wegman, 12601 Mulholland Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90210
Environmental Education - CREEC Network for Los Angeles County
The project expands the California Regional Environmental Education Community (CREEC) Network for Los Angeles County, or “CREEC-LA.” CREEC-LA is part of a statewide network supervised (and funded in part) by the California Department of Education, Office of Environmental Education. Through this clearinghouse network, public and private educators gain quick access to a wide range of environmental education providers to support their classrooms. These environmental education providers include nonprofit organizations, resource agencies, and commercial entities that offer educational programs, curricula, and materials. At present, CREEC-LA provides 8,000 Los Angeles County teachers with a database of 250 prescreened environmental education programs. During the 2003-2004 program year (September to August), CREEC-LA is doubling the number of resources in the database, and through a series of six leadership workshops, CREEC-LA is enhancing the effectiveness of the environmental education programs. At the same time, CREEC-LA is supporting the connections between programs and teachers through marketing and by providing one-on-one support to teachers.

Top of Page

2002 Grants

Calaveras County Water District   $4,069
Kristin Coon, 423 East Saint Charles Street, P. O. Box 846, San Andreas, CA 95249-0846
Calaveras County Water District's Adopt-A-Watershed Program
Calaveras County Water District manages an Adopt-A-Watershed program based on the Streamside Community Primary Unit. The program involves teachers, elementary school age children, and their family members from each of the ten elementary schools located throughout Calaveras County. The project familiarizes participants with the Calaveras River and its tributaries. On field trips conducted along the river system, students examine evidence of plants, trees, animals, and other natural phenomena, and write their results in field journals. Students collect tiny insects and micro invertebrates from the river, examine them to evaluate the health of the river, discuss their observations as a group, and complete follow-up essays after the field trip.

California Public Interest Research Group (CalPIRG) Charitable Trust   $25,000
Sujantha Jahagirdar, 3435 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 385, Los Angeles, CA 90010
Project WET Program for Southern California Schoolchildren
California Public Interest Research Group (CalPIRG) Charitable Trust's Water Watch Program partners with the Water Education Foundation to conduct teacher-facilitator workshops for project participants and college student volunteers on the Project WET (Water Education for Teachers) Program. Project WET facilitates and promotes awareness, appreciation, knowledge, and stewardship of water resources through the development and dissemination of teaching aids and programs. Participants and college student volunteers teach the Project WET curriculum in elementary schools (kindergarten through grade 6) throughout the southern California counties of San Diego, Orange, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara.

California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB)   $24,725
Laura Lee Lienk, 100 Campus Center, Seaside, CA 93955-8001
Integrating Environmental Education with Service Learning
California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB) and the Return of the Natives (RON) Restoration Education Program combine their teaching methodologies of environmental education and service learning to teach local schoolchildren about environmental community service. The plan includes conducting training for 5 local kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers and 5 CSUMB students who are interested in teaching. Following training at 5 nationally recognized environmental education curriculum training sites, the 10-member team shares various curricula and incorporates ideas into a learning sequence. The team then facilitates staff development training using the learning sequence to reach a greater number of local kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers.

Contra Costa Earth Day   $5,000
Sheilah Fish, P. O. Box 4686, Walnut Creek, CA 94596
Earth Team Restoration Initiative
The Earth Team Restoration Initiative offers environmental community service and environmental education opportunities to high school students. The project identifies four sites near participating high schools in Contra Costa, Alameda, and San Francisco counties where restoration work will be performed over a 9-month period. A monthly restoration project, conducted at each site, fosters a sense of ownership and responsibility among participating students. Appropriate science curricula and service learning concepts add structure to monthly projects. Specific tasks include non-native plant removal, shoreline cleanup, water and bird monitoring, and native plant propagation. Project results and highlights are posted on an Earth Team website. Participating organizations include Youth for Environmental Service (YES) and eight leading San Francisco Bay Area environmental, educational, and restoration programs.

Ecological Farming Association   $7,745
Kristin Rose, 406 Main Street, #313, Watsonville, CA 95076
Strawberry Grower's Conference
The Ecological Farming Association conducts a Strawberry Growers' Conference and Farm Tour for Central Coast growers, teaching them about successful post-methyl bromide production methods. Methyl bromide, which is currently in extensive use in strawberry farming, is directed to be phased out under the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act. Outreach is directed towards underserved Latino and small-scale farmers in the strawberry production regions around Watsonville and Salinas, California. The project addresses concerns posed by the phase out of methyl bromide by educating growers about the environmental and health risks of different production methodologies and how to reduce these risks. Project partners include the nonprofit Agricultural Land Based Association of Salinas.

Foundation for Global Community   $5,000
Susan Stansbury, 222 High Street, Palo Alto, CA 94301
Getting Going Growing
The Foundation for Global Community is engaging in a collaborative partnership with five local gardening and youth service organizations to create six sustainable school gardens in East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, Atherton, and Menlo Park, California. School gardens provide laboratories for project-based interdisciplinary learning. The garden project offers real-world experiences such as counting leaves on a stem and extrapolating yield-per-acre based on statistical sampling. A plan derived from a needs assessment guides each site in workshop staff development, curriculum selection, and technical support for teachers, students, and parent volunteers. Monthly on-site garden visits and community forums address assessment and support, information sharing, and problem resolution.

Klamath Trinity Joint Union School District   $5,000
Pam Olson, P. O. Box 1308, Hoopa, CA 95546
Norton/Weitchpec Elementary Schools Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Project
Klamath Trinity Joint Union School District is working with the Yurok Tribe to establish the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) curriculum at Jack Norton and Weitchpec Elementary Schools. Both schools are located in a remote area with scarce public services. Using GLOBE, students in kindergarten through 12th-grade can make scientific observations concerning climate and weather near their schools, interpret the data, and report findings via the Internet. The GLOBE curriculum is geared to improve academic achievement through environmental science activities.

Land Partners Through Stewardship (LandPaths)   $4,991
Alison Peticolas, P. O. Box 4648, Santa Rosa, CA 95402
Watershed and Creeks in Our Backyard
Land Partners Through Stewardship (LandPaths) and its partners, Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District, California Fish and Game, City of Santa Rosa, Sonoma County Water Agency, Sierra Club, and Committee to Restore Santa Rosa Creek, are conducting a 3-day field trip for 22 third-through 12th-grade educators. The training is designed to build knowledge of creek ecosystems, develop skills for teaching in the outdoors, and integrate acquired skills and knowledge for classroom learning. Day one features an overview of watersheds and their interplay with land choices. The second day focuses on physical and chemical characteristics, such as channel cross sections, bank load, pH, and dissolved oxygen. The third day highlights biological features, such as invertebrates, fish, and riparian vegetation. LandPaths provides follow-up support throughout the academic year to help teachers to implement the "In Our Own Backyard" curriculum. Teachers from 16 schools in Sonoma County reach approximately 475 students and 200 parent volunteers.

Los Angeles Educational Partnership   $25,000
Patricia Dung, 315 West Ninth Street, #1110, Los Angeles, CA 94015
Bring Back the Butterflies
Los Angeles Educational Partnership and its project partners, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, Baldwin Hills Conservancy, and Los Angeles Unified, join together to educate kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers in inner-city South Central schools in Los Angeles on a science curriculum called "Bring Back the Butterflies." The project introduces students to the museum's insect zoo and butterfly pavilion, and field research is conducted at the Baldwin Hills Conservancy property. The project fosters awareness of habitats in the city as dynamic ecosystems, and increases knowledge about the human impact on ecosystems. The project partners adapt existing standards-based science activities around urban parks while incorporating classroom and field lessons and resources.

Resource Conservation District of Monterey County   $92,000
Emily Hanson, 744 La Guardia Street, Building A, Salinas, CA 93905
North Monterey County Soil Erosion and Nutrient Management Education
Through direct outreach to growers and landowners, local communities in the Elkhorn Slough watershed learn about the mutually beneficial relationship between resource conservation and sustainable and economically viable agricultural practices. The project targets the historically underserved, low-income minority growers by increasing public awareness and knowledge of best management practices, and by providing the resources to make informed decisions. The environmental issues addressed by this project are surface and ground water quality, enhancement of threatened and endangered wildlife populations, and protection of critical and unique coastal habitats. Supporting organizations include the Agricultural Land-Based Training Association; the Natural Resources Conservation Service; the University of California Cooperative Extension; the Monterey County Agricultural Commissioner Office; the Monterey County Department of Planning, Building and Inspection; and the Monterey County Department of Environmental Health.

San Joaquin Adopt-a-Watershed Sea Scout Ship #209   $5,000
Linda Driver, 1545 St. Mark's Plaza, Suite 7, Stockton, CA 95207
Adopt-a-Watershed Training for Teachers
Twenty kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers are trained on the identification of environmental issues that impact the San Joaquin river delta. The sponsoring organization, in cooperation with the San Joaquin Office of Education, Lodi school district, storm water offices of San Joaquin County and City of Stockton, Boy Scouts of America, Stockton Sailing Club, and the national Adopt-a-Watershed organization, conducts a 3-day training workshop where teachers develop a plan (with student input) to implement service learning projects to address priority issues. More than 900 students participate in the program and share results with the community at local Earth Day observances.

Sonoma State University   $4,989
Richard Zimmer, 1801 East Cotati Avenue, Rohnert Park, CA 94928
High School Students as Environmental Education Resources for Elementary School Classes
Sonoma State University and Waste Management Inc. (WMI), Sonoma County's largest waste collector, are coordinating a peer/team teaching approach linking seven Piner High School students with Biella Elementary School faculty to deliver waste management and recycling lessons to the lower-grade classes. A workshop taught by WMI provides background for the high school mentors and prepares them to work with the elementary school teachers to develop a set of grade school lessons. University staff and site administrators monitor and support the project over the 8-week presentation period.

TreePeople, Inc.   $5,000
Richard Wegman, 12601 Mulholland Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90210
TreePeople's Campus Forestry Program
TreePeople's Campus Forestry Program trains teachers to use a curriculum that turns a simple tree-planting project into a 3-month learning experience. The Schoolyard Explorers curriculum is a month-long unit plan consisting of five interconnected lessons that address academic content in math, science, language, and social studies. The Forestry Program's first objective is to help students and teachers work with the curriculum to gain awareness of environmental issues facing Los Angeles, such as air pollution, storm water runoff, water quality, energy consumption, and the role that trees play in the urban forest. The program's second objective is restoration of the urban forest itself. The grant allows TreePeople to work with teachers and students in 10 schools within the Los Angeles Unified School District. The end result is a student-designed recommendation for each school outlining the location and types of trees that should be planted.

Yolo Basin Foundation   $5,000
Cheryl Chipman, 45211 Chilles Road, P. O. Box 743, Davis, CA 95616
Discover the Flyway Educator's Workshop
The Yolo Basin Foundation, with support from the California Department of Fish and Game and the Yolo County Office of Education, utilizes four full-day workshops throughout the school year to train 80-100 school teachers and informal educators on techniques to maintain, preserve, and restore wetland ecosystems. The program introduces educators to the importance of wetlands and provides wetland-related activities, training, and staff support to encourage teachers to lead their students in outdoor learning experiences in the Yolo Wildlife Area. The "Wild About Wetlands" classroom kit is available for replication in localities with similar environmental characteristics.

Top of Page

2001 Grants

Adopt-A-Watershed   $100,000
Kim Stokely, P. O. Box 1850, Hayfork, CA 96041
Southeast Leadership Institute
Modeled after the National Leadership Institute held yearly in Oregon, the project expands the reach of the successful Adopt-A-Watershed program to underserved populations of environmental educators. Through intensive training sessions and professional development workshops, teachers and leaders in African-American, Hispanic, Native American, and low-income communities are being trained in working together to form new approaches and partnerships to resolve environmental, educational, and community issues. Under the three-year project, the participants receive extensive training, access to resources, and long-term support as they learn how to establish sustainable programs in their own communities. The participants, working together in teams of teachers, community coordinators, and representatives of institutions of higher education, are implementing a service-learning strategy that uses the local watershed as an integrating context for learning. The partner organizations also are integrating the program into elementary and secondary pre-service teacher preparation programs. Partners in the project include the Historically Black Colleges and Universities/Minority-Serving Institutions Consortium, Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE), River of Words (ROW), the Hamline University Center for Global Environmental Education, Community Matters, and the School Yard Habitats program of the National Wildlife Federation.

Arcata Elementary School   $4,823
David Labolle, 1125 16th Street, Suite 201, Arcata, CA 95519
Students and Communities: A Model for Monitoring Stream Health
The project expands and coordinates efforts to monitor an urban stream and fully integrate middle school students into this effort. In turn, stream monitoring becomes the focus of the students’ environmental and life science education program. Students measure, analyze, and evaluate the effects of land use, primarily timber harvesting and urban development, on the health of Beith Creek. The creek, which is adjacent to the property of the school, provides an excellent opportunity for students to study their local environment. The scientific data the students and members of local organizations provide to decision makers — the city of Arcata, the California Department of Fish and Game, and the California Department of Forestry and Fire — supports future management decisions and restoration activities in the watershed.

California Coastal Commission   $79,177
Christiane Parry, 45 Fremont Street, Suite 2000, San Francisco, CA 94105
Boating Clean and Green Campaign, Phase III
Under this project, the California Coastal Commission is implementing the third phase of the Boating Clean and Green Campaign, a statewide effort to increase awareness of environmentally sound boating practices that will help eliminate non-point source pollution associated with boating. The first and second phases of the project, funded in part by grants from EPA, were focused on developing the outreach campaign and distributing materials. Under the third phase, additional geographic areas are the target of “dockwalkers” – volunteers who “walk the docks” to talk with boaters and owners of marinas about the environmental and economic effects of pollution associated with boating, as well as applicable pollution prevention practices. The purpose of the effort is to teach the boaters how to control and prevent non-point source pollution of water and to distribute free boater kits and post signs at fuel docks. The campaign is intended to serve as a model for similar communities in the areas of the United States in which large boating populations are found. Key partners include representatives of the United States Coast Guard and the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary, University of California Sea Grant, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, the California Department of Boating and Waterways, the California Integrated Waste Management Board, the California Department of Fish and Game, the Office of Oil Spill Prevention and Response, the San Francisco Estuary Project, Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, Recreational Boaters of California, the Northern California Marine Association, the California Port Captains and Harbormasters Association, Save Our Shores, the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Project, and the National Clean Boating Campaign, as well as the waste management authorities of several cities and counties.

California Institute of Biodiversity   $5,000
Carol Baird, 47 Quail Court, #111, Walnut Creek, CA 94596
Cal Alive! Exploring Biodiversity: Teacher Professional Development
The professional development program consists of a two-day workshop for teachers in the Modesto City School District, and is based upon a series of CD-ROMs that features 53 types of habitat found in California. Developed with the advice of numerous teachers and scientists, the multimedia series covers major areas of natural science and focuses on evidence of the value of biological diversity and the effects of human intervention on the environment. Through the workshop, teachers expand their knowledge of the habitats of California and learn how to use the Cal Alive! teaching tool. Teachers then can incorporate the program and field activities into their curricula.

California Native Plant Society   $2,700
Mary Shaw, 25 Corte del Sol, Benicia, CA 94510
Wetlands Environmental Education Program at the Benicia State Recreation Area
This program offers a free, docent-led program at the Benicia State Recreation Area at Southhampton Marsh, a local wetlands in the town of Benicia. All students in grades 2 through 5 have the opportunity to learn how Native Americans use the wetlands and native plants and are introduced to wetland ecology. The program uses existing environmental education lessons and project-based learning materials that support the state’s curriculum standards.

California State University (CSU), Chico, Research Foundation   $5,000
Jennifer Rotnem, Kendall Hall, Room 114, Chico, CA 95929-0870
Streaminders Salmon and Steelhead, From Eggs to Fry in the Classroom
The project provides a countywide educational program for students in kindergarten through grade 12 that involves local public schools and CSU, Chico in supporting efforts to restore the native fishery. The program includes in-service training for 30 teachers and gives students the opportunity to raise salmon and steelhead fry in the classroom. Under the program, university students conduct field trips during which the younger students explore local creeks.

City of Santa Barbara   $25,000
Alison Jordan, P. O. Box 1990, Santa Barbara, CA 93102-1990
Green Gardener Certification Program
The goal of the Green Gardener Certification Program is to offer education, training, and certification of participating gardeners and landscape contractors to improve efficiency in the use of resources and reduce pollution at landscape sites and to promote the participants’ efforts to achieve those purposes. In addition, the program improves the health, appearance, and value of landscapes for customers and site managers, while providing economic incentives to participants in the program. The innovative certification program is a new educational tool local agencies can use in furthering their shared goals of efficient use of resources and reduction in levels of pollution at landscapes of the south coast of Santa Barbara County.

Community Environmental Council   $5,000
Cay Sanchez, 930 Miramonte Drive, Santa Barbara, CA 93109
Teacher Training Workshop Series
Through this program, two series of three-day workshops for teachers are conducted. The workshops focus on three subjects: 1) water quality, 2) gardens and composting, and 3) natural resources and waste reduction. The workshops train educators to use curricula that are appropriate to grade and subject. Curricula include the Project Clean Water Watershed Curriculum, Garden Detectives, and others provided by the Community Environmental Council’s Environmental Education Resource Library, such as Closing the Loop and A Child’s Place in the Environment. Hands-on activities are the focus of the curricula, which provide teachers practice in integrating lessons related to the three subjects into their classroom curricula.

Eureka City Schools   $2,250
Rita Omandini, 3200 Walford Avenue, Eureka, CA 95503
Kids & Native Plants - Winship Junior High School
The project brings a professional botanist and ecologist into science classrooms of Winship Junior High School. Students grow two plant species, the western azalea and the federally listed endangered western lily. In addition, students plant two- to three-year old western azaleas at azalea preserves in two state parks. The project increases students’ awareness and understanding of natural systems and the missions and management practices of the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. It also introduces students to the Endangered Species Act and management practices related to rare plant species.

Humboldt State University Foundation   $4,998
Dixie Johnson, P. O. Box 1185, Arcata, CA 95518-1185
Energy: The Power of Teaching
The program is designed to teach junior high and high school science teachers in Humboldt County about sources of energy and technologies that generate energy, with an emphasis on renewable energy. The program familiarizes teachers with currently available energy curricula and assists them in leading their students in thoughtful reasoning about issues related to energy. Teachers also learn about the generation of renewable energy and participate in a hands-on laboratory, working with solar electric circuits and hydrogen fuel cell systems. Solar panels and portable fuel cells are available on loan to teachers for use in their classrooms.

Monterey Bay Sanctuary Foundation   $18,981
Dennis Long, 299 Foam Street, Monterey, CA 93940
S.E.A. Lab Monterey Bay - Coastal and Ocean Science Education Camp
Under the program, S.E.A. Lab conducts camps for students ages 11 and 12, during which the students are provided an educational experience related to the unique habitats of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. Students stay in dormitories and are bused to various locations each day. The week’s schedule includes lessons on a variety of topics related to the local watersheds and rivers, coastal environments, and the deep sea. A collaborative approach between S.E.A. Lab staff and the Monterey Bay area’s many agencies and non-profit educational and research institutions that are related to the marine environment, contributes to the educational experience. Students broaden their understanding of issues related to coastal and marine environments and explore related careers, as well.

O'Neill Sea Odyssey   $4,800
Dan Haifley, 2222 East Cliff Drive, #6B, Santa Cruz, CA 95062
Marine Sanctuary Education
The program provides hands-on environmental education for 80 youth in Santa Cruz and Santa Clara counties. Students begin the program by participating in a community service project. Typical projects include beach cleanups, creek cleanups, stenciling of storm drains, restoration of native plants, monitoring of water quality, recycling, restoration of riparian habitats, and adoption of a watershed. The education coordinator and one instructor provided by O’Neill Sea Odyssey oversee the projects. After they have completed the community service project, the students participate in the core program, which includes instruction in navigation and mathematics, marine science, and marine ecology. Classroom and computer laboratory instruction are provided, and lessons related to the ocean are presented on a vessel.

San Jose State University Foundation   $20,670
Simona Bartl, P. O. Box 720130, San Jose, CA 95172-0130
Incorporation of Marine Ecosystem Research into Public Education
The project is a two-part program conducted in partnership with high school science teachers and their students. First, high school teachers attend a 30-hour summer workshop conducted by graduate students at Moss Landing Marine Laboratory (MLML) and Dr. Bartl. The teachers learn about background and preparatory materials, laboratory exercises, follow-up exercises, and evaluation procedures for each marine science topic. Additional time is provided for open discussion about how best to implement the program in their individual schools. MLML graduate students then visit the teachers’ classrooms, bringing materials and leading the laboratory activities. Mentoring of the high school students by the graduate students is a significant element of the program.

School Environmental Education Docents (SEED)   $5,000
Sheila Molyneux, P. O. Box 5704, Novato, CA 94948-5704
Environmental Education Docents Program
Under the program, an estimated 200 new teachers, docents, and pre-service teachers at Dominican University are recruited and trained. To expand the docent program to Spanish-speaking parents and volunteers, Spanish-language materials are developed. To support student projects, docents have access to free training, educational materials, technical support, classroom speakers, local field trips, and the resources of community organizations. All docents are trained to use the Project Learning Tree curriculum.

Tahoe-Baikal Institute   $4,910
Karen Smallwood, P. O. Box 13587, South Lake Tahoe, CA 96151-3587
Lake Tahoe as a Training Ground for Future Environmental Leaders
This 5-week project, which uses conditions at Lake Tahoe as a means of teaching environmental problem-solving, is one half of a 10-week environmental exchange that takes place in California and Siberia, Russia. As many as 20 university-level students, graduate-level students, and young professionals from the United States, Russia, and one or two other countries come together for the summer to practice environmental problem-solving, using lakes Tahoe and Baikal as training grounds. Educational content is delivered through role-playing, student presentations, hands-on field work, cultural activities, and field trips.

Think Earth Environmental Education Foundation   $5,000
Corrine Berenson, 4031 Conejo Mesa, Moorpark, CA 93021
Air Quality Teacher Training and Curriculum Distribution
The project educates youth in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) who are under the legal driving age about the social and environmental effects of traffic congestion and unhealthful air quality. In addition, students learn about transportation alternatives and emerging transportation technologies. Teachers of eighth-grade science programs in the district are trained in the use of the newly released Air Care curriculum. The training familiarizes teachers with the materials included in the curriculum and strengthens teaching skills through hands-on demonstrations.

Water Education Foundation   $5,000
Christine Schmidt, 717 K Street, Suite 317, Sacramento, CA 95814
Water Is Our Future
This program is based on the curriculum California Water Story, developed by the Water Education Foundation. The multi-media curriculum is consistent with the California State Frameworks for Science and History/Social Science and integrates water education into science, geography, history, mathematics, and art lessons. The program distributes the curriculum and provides numerous teacher workshops, with the objective of providing material and support to every elementary school in California.

West Contra Costa Integrated Waste Management Authority   $14,500
Keith McDade, One Alvarado Square, San Pablo, CA 94806
Environmental Resource Library and Workshop Series
During the project, the authority develops a resource library and prepares a series of workshops for teachers in West Contra Costa County. The materials in the library include curricula, books, videotapes, audiotapes, games, and kits related to environmental subjects that are available on loan to teachers in the county. Resource materials focus on the topics of waste reduction, reuse, recycling, conservation of natural resources, and management of household hazardous waste. Presenters representing local environmental organizations conduct workshops on their specific areas of expertise. Topics include management of solid waste, household hazardous waste, organic gardening, urban sprawl, wetlands conservation, and more.

Wilderness Youth Project   $5,000
Warren Brush, 1135 Eugenia Place, Carpinteria, CA 93013
Young Eagles Environmental Education Program
This project expands the wilderness life skills and environmental education program to teach underprivileged youth the science and art of tracking and the application of field data. The youth learn to use CyberTracker software, field computers, and global positioning system (GPS) equipment to gather ecological data in a wilderness setting, map and plot their observations, and query their results to study the health of their local bioregion. The youth reinforce their learning by completing a service project with Conception Coast Project, during which they gather field data for their watershed advocacy work.

Yolo Basin Foundation   $5,000
Marcia Howe, P. O. Box 943, Davis, CA 95617
Service Learning in the Pacific Flyway
The project facilitates restoration of habitats and increases public awareness of native fish, wildlife, and plants. Partners in the Service Learning in the Pacific Flyway project include the California Department of Fish and Game, the city of Davis, and the Yolo County Office of Education. The Yolo Basin Foundation is the primary provider of the interpretive and educational programs at the 3,700-acre wildlife area. Interns and service learning groups work with the foundation and its partners to achieve the objectives of the project. One of the tasks of the interns is to work with and coordinate individual service learning groups. Those groups carry out projects designed to enhance the educational value of the wildlife area and demonstration wetland to visiting students.

Top of Page

2000 Grants

Alameda County Office of Education   $11,033
Claire Schooley, 313 West Winton Avenue, Hayward, CA 94544-1198
Arroyo del Valle Environmental Education Center
The project provides for a consortium of the County Office of Education, East Bay Regional Parks, and the Taylor Foundation to develop and run a residential environmental education program for students in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. During the school year, students come to the center for a one- to five-day stay and participate actively in the following alternative systems: energy (wind and solar), food (organic gardening), water and landscaping (water sources and quality and irrigation), waste (passive wastewater treatment), buildings (straw bale, rammed earth, cob, and log). Traditional environmental programming is provided, as well. During the summer, the Taylor Foundation offers a similar program for terminally ill children and their families.

Castro Valley Unified School District   $14,548
Taylor Lyen, 4400 Alma Avenue, Castro Valley, CA 94546
Palomares Environmental Project-Based Learning
The project uses environmental education as a catalyst to engender student improvement in the basic core subjects at Palomares Elementary School. The project is supported by a partnership of Alameda County agencies, University of California Cooperative Extension, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The project has five components: environment-based teacher training (Adopt-a-Watershed curriculum), establishment of a living laboratory learning center, trail improvement, creek restoration, and development of a dissemination network.

Friends of the Urban Forest   $5,000
Milton Marks, Presidio of San Francisco, P. O. Box 29456, San Francisco, CA 94129-0456
Youth Tree Care Program
The youth program, supported by community partners, Arriba Juntos, Enterprise for High School Students, and San Francisco School to Career Partnership, addresses career development and environmental education for low-income teens aged 14 to 16 through a combination of classroom and field training. Participants gain job skills and become spokespersons for the environment in their communities. The 36 teen participants are learning specific skills in horticulture, program organization, and public presentation.

Land Partners Through Stewardship   $4,992
Craig Anderson, P. O. Box 4648, Santa Rosa, CA 95402
Summer Field Services for Sonoma County Educators
The project provides a summer workshop for 16 teachers and 6 volunteer docents. The workshop focuses on building skills in teaching basic principles in the effort to balance ecological needs in the face of rapid urban development. The program consists of six full-day field trips, covering three segments of two days each: wildlife habitats, watershed processes, and land use and stewardship. In each of the segments, the first day is devoted to building knowledge of principles that interplay with land use choices, while the second day focuses on developing teaching skills for the topic.

Regional Council of Rural Counties   $4,309
Stacey Minor, 1020 12th Street, Suite 300, Sacramento, CA 95814
A Stream and Water Quality Education Program for Lake County Teachers and Their Students
The project proposes to introduce 40 students and their teachers at Loconoma High School to water quality issues as they actively monitor the biological, chemical, and physical differences among various segments of St. Helena Creek, which passes through their community. Supported by a grass-roots community organization and the Land, Air, and Water Resources Club of the University of California at Davis, students, teachers, property owners, and community members are observing conditions and participating in the restoration of a segment of the creek.

San Francisco Unified School District   $149,202
Kenneth Gonzalez, Balboa High School, 1000 Cayuga Street, San Francisco, CA 94112
WALC Across the City
The Wilderness Arts and Literacy Collaboration (WALC) is a consortium of academic programs in the San Francisco Unified School District that incorporates environmental education as a tool to integrate science, English, social studies, art, and technology for diverse urban student populations. WALC is introducing disadvantaged inner-city students to nature and new environments and building upon those experiences to inspire students to examine environmental issues in their communities, to take action to address those issues, and to increase environmental awareness among their schools and communities. Goals for the upcoming school year include incorporating WALC into the master schedule at Balboa High School, continuing to conduct the program at Downtown High School, instituting an elective class at Galileo High School, and establishing a network of students and teachers in the three high schools to enhance collaboration on future projects. Students in the program are producing newsletters, participating in field and camping trips, developing an anthology of student writing, and participating in hands-on lessons, among other activities. Resources, curriculum and other contributions are provided to WALC by several partner organizations, including the Marin Headlands Institute, the Environmental Science Initiative of the San Francisco Education Fund, the National Park Service, and the San Francisco Department of Recreation and Parks. Students who represent socioeconomically and culturally diverse populations are the principal audience of the project.

Skills Center, Inc.   $5,000
Andrea Tolaio, 2685 Mattison Lane, Santa Cruz, CA 95062
Master Vermicomposter Training and Public Workshops
Under the project, 20 master vermicomposters are being trained to conduct workshops to educate Santa Cruz County residents in the use of vermicomposting at homes, schools, and work places to divert food waste from landfills. The master vermicomposters will conduct workshops at farmers' markets, the Skills Center Worm Farm, schools, garden clubs, and commercial plant nurseries. Existing vermicomposter curriculum will be utilized.

Top of Page

1999 Grants

Bay Area Action   $5,000
Diane Choplin, 715 Colorado Avenue, Suite 1, Palo Alto, CA 94303
YEA TEAM: Student-Directed Projects to Implement Recycling and Composting
The Youth Environmental Action (YEA) program unites Bay Area Action with the Ravenswood School District, the Stanford University Haas Center for Community Service, and Students for Environmental Education. The program, which involves 120 fifth- through eighth-grade students, six teachers, and a staff of interns, consists of five interactive classroom lessons that cover issues related to water, waste, energy, and the natural environment and the community. Over the course of the year, interns meet with each class twice a month to guide students in their research and experiential projects, help them articulate goals, and plan field trips. Guest speakers also take part in the classroom sessions. Student-directed projects include establishment of a school garden, initiation of a composting program, launching of a schoolwide recycling program, and similar activities.

California State University, Chico   $5,000
Paul Maslin, Kendall Hall, Room 114, Chico, CA 95929-0870
Streaminders: Salmon and Steelhead Eggs to Fry in the Classroom
This project expands the current program of raising salmon and steelhead eggs to releasable mature fish in elementary and secondary classroom aquariums. The project includes educating university students to act as mentors for the field study portions of the project. After receiving training in the various aspects of the program, university students and their professors lead the younger students on field trips to explore creeks. The trips include hands-on experience with riparian ecosystems, water quality testing, and discovery of creek biota.

City of Santa Cruz   $2,550
Christopher Berry, Water Department, 715 Graham Hill Road, Santa Cruz, CA 95060
Watershed Monitoring and Management and Drinking-Water Production Workshop
A joint effort of the Santa Cruz Water Department, San Lorenzo Valley High School, and the Coastal Watershed Council, this project establishes and conducts a watershed academy for 10 to 12 high school juniors and seniors and two teachers. The training is conducted by environmental professionals with the water department and includes interpretive lectures, water quality monitoring, dialogue, and role playing. Students learn about land use and management in the watershed, monitor supplies at the city's reservoir for turbidity and sedimentation, tour the water treatment plant, and role-play town meetings to establish the connection between policy-making and the health of both human populations and the ecosystem.

Community Environmental Council   $5,000
Cay Sanchez, 930 Miramonte Drive, Santa Barbara, CA 93109
Comprehensive School Recycling and Composting Pilot Project
The Community Environmental Council works in partnership with the Youth Gardening Coalition to introduce recycling and composting of lunch scraps at three local elementary schools. The project begins with school assemblies during which the students are introduced to the project. At each school involved in the pilot project, workshops are held for teachers to help them integrate environmental learning projects into the required curriculum. A Green Team composed of fifth and sixth graders implements the lunchtime composting project at each site.

Contra Costa County Health Services Department   $97,150
Mary Foran, 20 Allen Street, Martinez, CA 94553
Center for Health Environmental Education Program
The Contra Costa County Health Services Department has won national recognition for innovative programs that solicit the participation of residents in designing and implementing improvements in environmental health. In 1993, a major spill of a toxic substance occurred in the area. Recently, to support response to similar situations should they occur, the Center for Health in North Richmond was created. This project trains local environmental health educators to teach residents to develop and carry out neighborhood environmental action plans. Partner organizations include the West County Toxics Coalition, East Bay Regional Parks, the Bucket Brigade, and the city of Richmond. Interactive learning resources provided through a formal Environmental Resource Center teach residents to interpret and disseminate accurate environmental information, define community issues, select action strategies, and conduct neighborhood education projects. Having been trained, residents then train their neighbors, who train others in a continuing process of community enlightenment. The population to be served is predominantly members of minority groups who have moderate to low incomes.

Math/Science Nucleus   $15,500
Joyce Blueford, 4074 Eggers Drive, Fremont, CA 94536
Developing Environmental Benchmarks
This project establishes a partnership among Math/Science Nucleus, the city of Fremont, and the Fremont School District to implement a ninth-grade course of environmental education based on watershed management at Laguna Creek. Local scientists join with faculty of Irvington High School to develop a laboratory course for monitoring environmental parameters to test the health of creeks. The environmental benchmarks curriculum envisions a project grounded in science and service that encourages students to work together in teams to bring about positive environmental change in their community. At the conclusion of the project, a community conference is held to disseminate the students' findings.

People's Community Organization for Reform and Empowerment (CORE)   $5,000
Joe Natividad, 300 West Cesar Chavez, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Air Pollution and Prevention Project for Students and Residents in the Carson Area
This project establishes a partnership among the Community Organization for Reform and Empowerment (CORE), the Philippine Action Group for the Environment (PAGE), and the Environmental Club at Carson High School to implement an air pollution study in the Carson community. The partnership trains 30 students to use simple devices to collect air samples and to analyze the results of laboratory tests conducted on the samples. The project allows high school students to sample air pollutants, have the opportunity to develop an understanding of the effects of the chemicals identified on their health, and learn ways to reduce or prevent such pollution. Community forums and a meeting with the city council are held at the end of the project to discuss its findings.

Regents of the University of California   $113,493
Joyce Gustein, 410 Mrak Hall, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616
Return of the Salmon
This project addresses uses and diversions of creek water and the resulting ecological effects on the Putah Creek watershed. Middle school students participate in activities in school and on field trips that help them explore how salmon can be studied as an indicator of the ecological health of the creek. Teachers facilitate the students' entry into the watershed, first through in-school activities and later through field trips. Subsequently, the students will use a guidebook and a World Wide Web site developed through the project to pursue educational activities with their families. The project also provides teachers with in-service training and skills in Internet development. An advisory committee of university and regional specialists in science and education assists the project.

Resource Conservation District of Greater San Diego County   $18,410
Penny Dockry, 332 South Juniper Street, Suite 110, Escondido, CA 92025
A Garden in Every School Regional Support Center
The Resource Conservation District (RCD) of Greater San Diego has joined in partnership with the California Department of Education, the University of California Cooperative Extension Service, and Discovery School to establish a regional support center for educators of kindergarten through high school students who are interested in educational programs that draw on gardening. The center provides workshops and a resource library for teachers, newsletters, opportunities for networking, and a demonstration garden. The center also is developing a plan to sustain and expand outreach to a potential audience in 43 public school districts, private schools, and informal education programs.

Save San Francisco Bay Association   $5,000
Marcia Slackman, 1736 Franklin Street, Fourth Floor, Oakland, CA 94612
Watershed Education Teacher Training Program
Joining in partnership with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, the Save San Francisco Bay Association (SSFBA) offers training in watershed management to 200 teachers in the Bay Area. The training includes 10 workshops, held on the water and ranging in length from one day to two weeks. Teachers have the opportunity to take part in field trips to conduct water quality testing and mapping and to study the components and value of wetlands. A number of guest speakers introduce teachers to issues that affect the health of a watershed. They learn how to encourage their students to undertake service learning projects that enhance the students' understanding of and appreciation for a healthy bay.

Sequoia Foundation   $19,005
John S. Peterson, Ph.D., 2166 Avenida de la Playa, Suite D, La Jolla, CA 92037
New River Environmental Education Symposium
The Sequoia Foundation has entered into a partnership with the State of California Department of Health Services and the Imperial County Office of Education to offer a workshop on the use of an environmental curriculum that examines health issues that affect communities in the New River area. The workshop is offered to 75 to 100 teachers of high school science and social studies courses. The workshop provides teachers with relevant materials to use in teaching about the health risks associated with the New River, as well as contacts with national and regional resources related to environmental health education, including environmental justice, exposure and assessment of health risks, epidemiology, risk communication, and mitigation measures.

The Tides Center   $4,300
Leslie Crawford, P. O. Box 29907, San Francisco, CA 94129-0907
Environmental ACTION: Teacher Training Workshop
In partnership with the Oakland Unified School District, the Tides Center offers a training workshop for 20 teachers of 6th through 12th grades in the use of the curriculum, Environmental ACTION, which is designed to increase environmental awareness, critical-thinking skills, and scientific learning. The curriculum offers six modules on auditing consumption of resources: energy use, water conservation, waste reduction, chemicals, wise food choices, and habitat and biodiversity. In addition to the workshop, staff of the Tides Center provide follow-up support to teachers who use the curriculum to help ensure their success in teaching it.

Trinidad Rancheria   $3,790
Greg Nesty, P. O. Box 630, Trinidad, CA 95570
Environmental Education by Cascade Learning
Trinidad Rancheria, through a partnership with Humboldt State University, the Trinidad School District, and North Coast Children's Services, offers an environmental education program that uses cascade learning. Junior high school students are trained in environmental lessons related to their Native American culture. They in turn teach the lessons to younger elementary school children in a manner appropriate to the elementary level. The elementary school students then teach the lessons to children enrolled in the Arcata Head Start program.

WestEd   $20,996
Helen Kota, 730 Harrison Street, San Francisco, CA 94107
One-Week Summer Adopt-a-Watershed Institute
Scope, Sequence, and Coordination at California State University Sacramento have joined in partnership with the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment of the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA), the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the California Department of Education, and the University of California at Davis to create a one-week workshop on watershed issues for 30 high school science teachers. The workshop gives participants the opportunity to conduct a comprehensive investigation of scientific information, science policy, and issues related to risk and to carry out experiments related to degradation and contamination of a watershed. The program also offers a partnership fair to support sustained interaction with environmental professionals, as well as opportunities to develop service-learning projects with those professionals.

Yosemite National Institute   $5,000
Julia Chitwood, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, Building 1055, Sausalito, CA 94965
TEAM (Teen Environmental Action Mentorship)
This project provides a 10-day, residential field science training program for 22 high school students from low-income, culturally diverse communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. The training exposes TEAM (Teen Environmental Action Mentorship) members to ecological concepts that can be applied to urban ecosystems, provide communication and leadership skills to enable them to work with peers and younger students in environmental learning, and introduce them to potential environmental careers. During the school year, each TEAM member works in partnership with a school or organization to present classroom lessons on a regular schedule and to design stewardship projects.

Top of Page

<

1998 Grants

Adopt-A-Watershed   $40,831
Jesse Miller, 731 Market Street, Suite 600A, San Francisco, CA 94103
Leadership Institute
The National Resources Conservation Service works in partnership with Adopt-A-Watershed's Leadership Institute to implement pre-service teacher training, using an existing model. The partnership is pilot-testing a natural resource education course for education majors at two historically black land grant colleges. The partnership provides course material, trains professors, and pilot-tests one class of pre-service elementary and secondary education majors at each college, as part of their curricula. The Leadership Institute offers a forum for training professors under a train the trainers model that equips participants both to establish sustainable Adopt-A-Watershed programs in their own communities and to lead, train, and support other teachers in replicating the programs throughout the region.

African American Development Association   $10,250
Allen Edson, 1235 Peralta, Oakland, CA 94607
Environmental Education Network Collaborative
This project establishes a model environmental science corridor for urban youth from middle school through graduation from college or university. Through the linking of the faculties of a middle and a high school with that of a community college, a program of culturally relevant environmental projects enables students to follow a path leading to professional careers in the environmental field. A network of environmental professionals provides teacher training and follow-up classroom support. Using a nearby marsh and lake as outdoor classrooms, older students act as role models and instructors for younger students as they explore ecosystems and study issues related to environmental justice.

California State University, Chico   $5,000
Kristin Cooper-Carter, Kendall Hall, Room 114, California State University, Chico, CA 95929-0870
Streaminder Salmon and Steelhead from Eggs to Fry
This project offers an eight-hour workshop that links salmonid life cycles with stream ecology for 30 teachers of kindergarten through grade 12 to support restoration of native fisheries. Students of the teachers trained through the workshops have the opportunity to raise salmon and steelhead from eggs to a stage at which they can be released into local streams. In conjunction with that project, students visit nearby streams to study riparian ecosystems, test water quality, and conduct bioassessment. Using the data they collect, the students determine whether the habitat is sufficiently healthy to allow the release of the salmon and steelhead fry they have cared for.

Carquinez Regional Environmental Education Center   $4,860
David J. Hicks, P. O. Box 65, Crockett, CA 94525
Training High-Risk Youth in Habitat Restoration
Under this project, 15 high school students and their science teachers develop the knowledge and skills they need to restore a portion of an historic riparian habitat. Each week for 32 weeks, an urban horticulturist and wildlife specialist guide students by small group instruction and field experiences through the cycle of habitat restoration: site preparation, propagation and reintroduction of native horticulture and wildlife, and monitoring of the vitality of the habitat. The project has built-in sustainability because students and teachers currently being trained become mentors for the next year's class.

Chaffey Joint Union High School District   $4,000
Robert Shaver, 211 West Fifth Street, Ontario, CA 91762
ED-SAC: Environmental Disturbance in San Antonio Creek
This project provides some 100 to 120 high school sophomores a way to measure scientifically the effects of human intrusion on comparative habitats, one close to and the other remote from population. Students visit both sites once a month to take samples of the water, collect and catalog the types of trash and debris found, and observe the condition of plants and wildlife. Using the data they collect, students can draw conclusions about the comparative health of the two habitats. They report their findings to the community through articles in the local newspaper and presentations to the school board and city council.

Fortuna High School   $4,495
Pam Halstead, Fortuna High School, 379 12th Street, Fortuna, CA 95540-0398
Fortuna Integrated Watershed Study
This project provides an integrated science curriculum at the ninth grade level that focuses on interdisciplinary study of conditions in local creeks. In partnership with the Fortuna Creeks Project, the Fortuna Parks and Recreation Department, and the AmeriCorps Watershed Stewards Project, the high school science department leads students in water quality monitoring, assessment of stream habitats, sampling of macroinvertebrate species, riparian restoration, and spawning survey activities. The incoming freshman class receives training in the use of scientific instruments in a real-world setting, interpretation of the data they collect, mentoring, and the development of networks through which they can share recommendations for stewardship of local natural resources with the community.

Green City Project   $5,000
Dana Lanza, P. O. Box 31251, San Francisco, CA 94131
Careers in Environmental Education
This project is a partnership effort of San Francisco Recycling, the California Coastal Commission, the California Native Plant Society, and the San Francisco Park and Recreation Department to train 20 high school students from inner-city neighborhoods to become docents to 20 elementary school classrooms in the city. The selected high school students choose from a field of three areas of study: waste management, conservation of habitat, or water issues. Students devote two hours per week for 12 weeks to preparatory sessions during which they not only master their subject, but also learn speaking skills and how to create presentation materials. During the spring semester, the high school students are matched with an elementary school teacher to work with the younger children to complete a hands-on community project in the docent's area of study.

Kern County Superintendent of Schools   $9,500
Shirley Oesch, 1300 17th Street - City Center, Bakersfield, CA 93301-4533
Kern River Connections
This project expands the number of schools participating the Adopt-a-Watershed curriculum from 7 to 20 schools and provides Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) training for 40 additional teachers. Project partners include the Kern River Water Agency; the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture; the California Department of Fish and Game; and the Kern River Preserve. Through application of the GLOBE protocols, students learn to make decisions and take actions to address and remediate environmental problems that the students identify through their investigations.

Lindsay Wildlife Museum   $5,000
Lisle Lee, 1931 First Avenue, Walnut Creek, CA 94596
Monitoring and Habitat Enhancement Program for At-Risk Youth
The museum staff, the city's parks and recreation department, and the faculty of Summit High School offer 20 at-risk students and their teachers opportunities to monitor and restore habitats along Gallindo Creek on the slopes of Mt. Diablo. Classroom and field exercises based on the Adopt-a-Watershed curriculum are conducted once a week during the school year. The project's main components include cleanup of the creek and the riparian zone and monitoring of water quality, enhancement of butterfly habitats, and establishment and maintenance of a database. In addition, students make presentations to the city council, the parks department, the youth council, and other interested organizations.

Oakland Recycling Association   $5,000
Susan A. Blueston, 635 - 13th Street, #210, Oakland, CA 94612-1220
Recycling Education and Resource Center
This project partially funds one intern to provide recycling outreach programs for 90 fourth through sixth grade classrooms in Alameda County, California. The program provides hands-on, interactive learning experiences about waste reduction and conservation of natural resources through classroom art projects that use materials recovered from the waste stream, field trips to the transfer station, establishment of a compost program, and targeting of a specific recyclable material for research on its origin and uses. The program demonstrates the usefulness of objects otherwise considered garbage and encourages students to think before purchasing items marketed in elaborate but nonrecyclable packaging.

Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy   $5,000
Wendy Millet, 904 Silver Spur Road, #274, Rolling Hills Estates, CA 90274
Habitat-Based Science Curriculum for Elementary Schools
This project provides a curriculum based on local habitats and training for 90 intermediate grade teachers in the Palos Verdes Peninsula School District. In preparing for the program, staff of the land conservancy select from among existing environmental education resources and adapt them to the natural open-space areas within walking distance of the teachers' schools. Naturalists train teachers and parent volunteers in grade- and site-specific plans for implementing the curriculum.

San Diego Natural History Museum   $17,714
Katherine Boskoff, 1788 El Prado, San Diego, CA 92101
Establishing a Regional Environmental Education Coordinator
This project matches a grant from the California State Department of Education to establish a full time coordinator to build capacity to deliver quality environmental education in the San Diego area, a large and diverse region that encompasses ocean, urban, rural, desert, and mountain habitats. The coordinator, housed in the San Diego Museum of Natural History, provides resources, promotes networking, and serves a clearing house for a potential audience of 20,000 teachers in 43 public school districts, private schools, and informal education programs.

San Diego State University   $5,000
Dr. Melody Hunt, 5250 Campanile Drive, San Diego, CA 92182-1931
Student and Teacher Training in Water Quality Monitoring
This project establishes partnerships among several departments of San Diego State University, the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve, the San Diego County Water Authority, and several middle and high schools in San Diego. University students serve as mentors and trainers for middle and high school students in creating a monitoring program to perform regular water quality testing in semiarid San Diego area and international watersheds. The accompanying curriculum covers water treatment, water reclamation, non-point-source runoff pollution, and watershed management. In addition, the San Diego County Water Authority offers training to more than 300 teachers in the use of water monitoring kits to implement the program.

San Francisco Conservation Corps   $5,000
McCrae Parker, 1050 South Van Ness Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94110
McLaren Park Youth in Action Project
This project joins the San Francisco Conservation Corps with the city's parks and recreation department to support restoration of native plants in a square-mile park in the southeast portion of the city. Through the corps' McLaren Park Youth in Action program, 50 older teens are trained to teach units on native plant ecology and restoration techniques. The older youth then work with 100 middle school students to develop the knowledge and skills they need to become stewards of the park, conducting service projects focused on removing nonnative and restoring native plant species.

San Joaquin Office of Education   $5,000
Judi Wilson, P. O. Box 213030, Stockton, CA 95213
Project FEED (Families Exploring Environmental Dilemmas
This project, which involves 30 elementary schools in San Joaquin County, provides a family-oriented event that offers hands-on activities designed to increase awareness of health threats caused by pollution of our natural resources and by improper practices in the management of solid and hazardous waste. A manual based on the successful practices presented in the California Department of Health Services' No Waste Anthology and the Alameda Office of Education's Toxics: Taking Charge prepares parents and staff at each school to stage the event. Follow- up training for parents and staff covers the materials and logistics needed to stage a successful event, tips for attracting families to the event, and troubleshooting problem areas. A mentor from the science, health, or environmental fields assists each school by making a presentation on the goals of Project FEED, answering questions, and interacting with families as they prepare for and participate in the event.

Santa Monica Baykeeper   $10,000
Captain Terry Tamminen, P. O. Box 10096, Marina del Rey, CA 90295
Beachkeepers
This project establishes a partnership of the Regional Water Quality Control Board, the California Marine Institute, the Harbor Safety Committee, and the Wilmington Homeowners Association to train residents in monitoring and documenting storm drain pollution of coastal habitats in their neighborhoods along 60 miles of the coast of Santa Monica Bay. High school students and members of homeowners associations receive training in monitoring techniques. The project conducts monthly meetings in various neighborhoods, during which reports on earlier monitoring efforts are presented and plans made to determine what further action is needed.

Solana Vista School, Solana Beach School District   $5,000
Ellie Topolovac, 309 North Rios Avenue, Solana Beach, CA 92075
Composting Solana Vista
The project provides two workshops for teachers at Solana Vista Elementary School and one for parents on the need for and techniques of composting. The sessions are taught by a master gardener from the University of California Extension Service. At school, the lessons prepare the 16 faculty members to involve students in performing the tasks necessary to conduct a composting program, including the composting of school lunch leftovers. The parents' workshop, offered in both English and Spanish, trains parents to undertake home composting and gardening projects.

The Tides Center   $3,017
Leslie Crawford, P. O. Box 29907, San Francisco, CA 94129-0907
Environmental ACTION: Teacher Training Workshop
This project offers 20 secondary school teachers in the Tanque Verde Unified School District of Tucson, Arizona training in how to integrate environmental education into their daily classroom offerings. Environmental Action, a six-part module for grades 6 through 12, has proven effective in the development of environmental awareness, critical thinking skills, and scientific learning. Under this project, support for classroom implementation includes identification of partner organizations and agencies that provide speakers who have expertise in specific environmental topics to introduce subject matter to students.

The Tides Center   $3,017
Leslie Crawford, P. O. Box 29907, San Francisco, CA 94129-0907
Environmental Action Teacher Training Workshop
E2: Environment and Education, a nonprofit educational activity of the Tides Center, trains secondary school teachers from the Ossining, New York Union Free School District to integrate environmental education into an existing curriculum and develop their ability to explore environmental issues in the classroom. The workshop focuses on Environmental ACTION, a six-module program that includes study of energy conservation, water conservation, and biodiversity. The program educates teachers; students; and, through home activities, parents about environmental threats to health. The program helps students use the school as a laboratory to build their understanding of the relationship between global environmental issues and their lives and neighborhoods. (Project in Ossining, NY)

Ukiah Unified School District   $5,000
Jennifer Harris, 925 North State Street, Ukiah, CA 95842
Redwood Valley Outdoor Education Project
This project provides partial funding for an AmeriCorps volunteer to act as the environmental coordinator for the Redwood Valley outdoor education site, a 45-acre plot of undeveloped land made up of flat and steeply sloping terrain along the Russian River. In dedicating the land for educational purposes, the school district established the goal of providing experiences for students, teachers, parents, and the community that would focus on all aspects of nature, wildlife, and protection of ecosystems and habitats. The coordinator's responsibilities include maintaining the site, scheduling classes for field trips, assisting teachers in leading field trips, and managing research projects. Regular testing of water, air, and soil provides data that help increase awareness of the threats posed to human health by environmental pollution. A portion of the funds is used to offset the cost of transportation for students in schools beyond walking distance from the site.

Yolo Basin Foundation   $3,834
Robin Kulakow, P. O. Box 943, Davis, CA 95617
Discover the Flyway
In partnership with Central Valley Habitat Joint Venture, the California Department of Fish and Game, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, this project presents day-long workshops for middle school teachers to encourage field study in the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area, a 3,700-acre tract in the heart of the Pacific Flyway. Each workshop provides participants with wetlands education materials they can use before and after a field trip to the wildlife area. One goal of the project is to instill in students who visit the wildlife area a long-term interest in wetlands issues.

Top of Page

1997 Grants

City of Arcata   $4,850
Juli Neander, 736 F Street, Arcata, CA 95521
Arcata Marsh Interpretative Center Educational Exhibit
This project provides an interpretive exhibit that demonstrates the unique features of the community's integrated wetland and wastewater treatment facility for an estimated 10,000 annual visitors. The educational exhibits highlight the biological and technical aspects of the use of constructed wetlands to treat wastewater and provide wildlife habitat. As an example of appropriate technologies for the reuse of wastewater and restoration of wetlands, the interpretive center and adjacent wildlife sanctuary attract large numbers of visitors, ranging from school children to public officials and consulting engineers. Using the interpretive displays, Friends of Arcata Marsh conduct educational tours of the facilities that focus on the water cycle, human use of water resources, the use of restored wetlands for wastewater treatment, and wildlife habitats.

East Bay Asian Youth Center   $5,000
Rasjidah Franklin, 2065 Kittredge Street, Suite M, Berkeley, CA 94704
Training Teachers and Teens in Environmental Education
This project provides training through a two-day workshop for 10 high school students and 24 teachers from three elementary schools. The training equips participants to implement compost projects at school sites. Joint workshops for the teachers and students employ inquiry models to teach waste reduction, pollution prevention, and health in the context of urban organic gardening. After training, the high school students serve as mentors to elementary school students to guide the younger students in understanding the relationships among waste, pollution, and nutrition issues. The University of California Cooperative Extension Service in Alameda County and the Alameda County Waste Management Authority collaborate with the East Bay Asian Youth Center in the sustainable urban agriculture project.

Friends of Oakland Parks and Recreation/Brookdale Discovery Center   $5,000
Richard Bolecek, 1520 Lakeside Drive, Oakland, CA 94612
Courtland Creek: An Urban Creek Community Learning Project
The Courtland Creek project provides training for three high school students in the Courtland Creek neighborhood to become training assistants working with adult consultants to increase awareness of the importance of a healthy creek habitat among their peers, their families, and other members of the community. The project focuses on educating teachers, students, parents, community leaders, and the public about the threats that pollution poses to human health. Through hands-on community workshops, participants keep toxic substances out of the creek, restore native plants to the area, and reintroduce native amphibians if water quality proves satisfactory for the survival of those species. Key partners in the project include the Environmental Sciences Academy of the Oakland Unified School District, the California Academy of Sciences, and the Urban Creek Council.

George Washington Elementary School/Burbank Unified School District   $5,000
Richard Moskun, 2322 N. Lincoln Street, Burbank, CA 91504
Habitat Environmental Learning Project
The Habitat Environmental Learning Project (HELP) is developing an environmental science native plant garden on the campus of George Washington Elementary School. Under the HELP project, 90 students in third to fifth grade at Washington and two adjacent schools participate in three-week sessions, working in groups of 15, to learn to identify native plants, cultivate conditions that enhance their growth, compare native ecosystems in the environmental science garden with those in the surrounding neighborhood, and maintain journals to record their activities in support of the project. Information about the progress of the project is disseminated through newsletters distributed to parents, through the local media, and on the school's World Wide Web page. Partners in the project include the Burbank Education Foundation, the City of Burbank Parks and Recreation, and the Burbank Rotary Club and its service unit, Interact, for high school students.

Inyo County Office of Education   $5,000
Lo Lyness, 135 South Jackson Street, Independence, CA 93526
Eastern Sierra Institute for Secondary Students
This project provides 60 to 80 high school students a five-day residential program in the study of issues related to water use. The participants are recruited from Inyo, Mono, and Los Angeles counties. Students become involved in an intensive effort to assess vegetative health, soil conditions, air and water quality, and the water and power infrastructures. They shadow and interact with resource managers and scientists as they practice using on-site investigative tools and laboratories. Partners in the project include the Los Angeles Unified School District; the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Department of the Interior; the Inyo County Water Department; the California Department of Fish and Game; and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

Los Angeles Educational Partnership   $18,870
Patricia Dung, 315 West 9th Street, Suite 1110, Los Angeles, CA 90015
Environmental Issues: Chaparral, Wetlands, Coastal Sage, Sand Dunes, and Oak Woodlands
The Environmental Issues project conducts training for 120 teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District to help them foster awareness among their inner-city students of the interrelationships and interdependency of the ecosystems that surround the city. The project is creating World Wide Web pages that highlight local fragile ecosystems, including chaparral, wetland, coastal sage, sand dune, and oak woodland habitats. Using the Internet to acquaint students with environmental issues that affect those local habitats, the project provides students with current resources and leads them in investigations, virtual field trips, and environmental action projects. Students are enabled to make decisions to act responsibly and to take action in the community to improve the environment for all living things. Partners in the project include the University of California Los Angeles Science Project and the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Monterey Regional Waste Management District   $5,000
Heidi Feldman, P. O. Box 6, Marina, CA 93933
"Small Planet School Education Program: Educational Materials, Teacher Workshops, and Demonstration Area
This project implements a comprehensive program of outreach to the schools to prompt students to become active participants in waste reduction. Teachers in five school districts enjoy opportunities to obtain training in the relationship between the generation and disposal of waste and the environment and human health. The project also is developing materials for classroom use that encourage students to design and manage recycling programs at their schools. Students have the opportunity to visit a waste management facility to learn first-hand how waste is handled at such facilities. Partners in the project include the Monterey County Office of Education, the Watershed Institute of California State University Monterey Bay, and the Monterey City Disposal Service.

Oakland Arts Magnet/Far West School   $10,000
Susan Quinlan, 5623 Broadway Terrace, Oakland, CA 94618
Integrated Recycling and Yard Waste
This composting project is a model meant to guide the Oakland Unified School District's efforts to establish a school-based recycling program for its 120 schools. The project, which is implementing an integrated recycling and yard waste composting project as a model for the school district, is an important aspect of educational reform. Under the leadership of a recycling coordinator, teams of students undergo extensive training to equip them to educate other students, faculty, and staff about the concepts and practice of recycling and composting. The organizational structure of the project focuses on becoming self-sustaining and achieving the goal that 90 percent of all recyclable materials are diverted from the waste stream. Partners in the project include the Oakland Museum, the East Bay Community Foundation, the Alameda County Waste Management Authority, and the City of Oakland.

Pacific Oaks College   $5,000
Jan Brown, 5 Westmoreland Place, Pasadena, CA 91105
Environmental Education Training for Teachers and Young Students
This training partnership project provides six hours of environmental education staff development for 75 teachers of pre-school children. During the project's NaturKind workshops, the teachers learn to use simple activities based on habitats of land snails and earthworms to introduce three- to five-year-old children to ways to explore the world around them. Follow-up support is available to workshop participants by telephone and through on-line computer consultation. Pacific Oaks College collaborates with the Roger Tory Peterson Institute to conduct the NaturKind workshops for Head Start centers, subsidized children's centers, and state pre-school programs.

Resource Conservation District of Greater San Diego County   $4,570
Penny Dockry, 332 South Juniper Street, Suite 110, Escondido, CA 92025
Learning About the Watersheds Through Classroom Presentations
This project expands the Water Awareness: Keeping San Diego Bay Clean program to serve an additional 1,513 sixth-grade students in areas outside the Port District's sphere of influence, but in the overall watershed area. The ongoing program for schools in the Port District focuses on non-point-source pollution from trash, petroleum products, fertilizers, pesticides, and animal waste. Through classroom presentations that are a model of the watershed, students and teachers learn about watershed health by applying problem-solving and decision-making skills to develop an understanding of the causes of non-point-source pollution in the San Diego Bay watershed and of preventive measures that can control such pollution. Partners in the project include the San Diego County Office of Education, the Otay Water District, and the San Diego Unified Port District.

San Francisco Recycling Center   $5,000
Natasha Stillman, 1145 Market Street, Suite 401, San Francisco, CA 94103
Recycle Challenge 2000
Recycle Challenge 2000 is a science-based comprehensive project designed to use service learning to broaden participation in recycling programs at schools in San Francisco. The project promotes participation by training a corps of 20 middle and high school youth recruited from culturally diverse sections of the city. In their own and neighboring schools, the students conduct service learning activities that focus on waste management and recycling. Partners in the project include the San Francisco Unified School District, the San Francisco Volunteer Center, the service program Linking San Francisco, and the San Francisco Clean City Coalition.

Save San Francisco Bay Association   $5,000
Marcia Slackman, 1736 Franklin Street, 4th Floor, Oakland, CA 94612
Seafood Consumption Information Project
This project targets the subsistence fishing population in six Bay Area counties to acquaint them with contaminants in bay waters and with ways to minimize the threats to health that consumption of fish from contaminated waters can pose. The goal of the project is to reach 2,000 individuals, including the fishing population itself, community members and leaders, students at all grade levels, teachers, and health workers. To disseminate its message, the project uses presentations in classrooms, community meetings, health clinics, and libraries, as well as one-on-one outreach to the fishing population. Partners in the project include the Asian Pacific Environmental Network; Estuary Action Challenge, a project of the Earth Island Institute; the Oakland Chinese Community Council; and Impact Assessment, California Department of Health Services.

Shasta County Office of Education   $16,016
David Klasson, 1644 Magnolia Avenue, Redding, CA 96001
Environmental Science Leadership Development Workshops
This project provides five-day workshops for 100 teachers, classroom aides, community coordinators, and natural resource professionals. The two workshops, open to participants from counties in northern California, train participants to use environmental education curricula developed by the Adopt-a-Watershed Foundation, Project WILD, Project Learning Tree, and A Child's Place in the Environment, as well as the California State Environmental Education Guide. Key partners in the project include the Whiskeytown Environmental School; the Adopt-a-Watershed Foundation; the California Department of Education; the Society of American Foresters; Horsetown-Clear Creek Preserve; the California Department of Fish and Game; the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture; the U.S. Natural Resources Conservation Council; the Western Shasta Resource Conservation District; the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Department of the Interior; and the Shasta-Tehama Bioregional Council.

Water Education Foundation   $5,000
Judy Wheatley, 717 K Street, Suite 517, Sacramento, CA 95814
Water Conservation in Disadvantaged, Culturally Diverse Inner City Schools
This project provides training in water resources and conservation for 100 primary grade teachers in Sacramento, San Diego, and San Francisco school districts. The workshops focus on the use of educational software developed by the Water Education Foundation, in cooperation with the Bureau of Reclamation and Division of Water Conservation, for teaching students in kindergarten through third grade about water conservation and pollution prevention in urban areas.

Top of Page

1996 Grants

American Lung Association   $3,114
Jan H. Cortez, 2740 - 4th Avenue, San Diego, CA 92103
Kids for Clean Air - School Based Clean Air Education Program
This grant provides curriculum materials on air quality issues for up to 250 elementary school teachers in San Diego County. The curriculum kit contains a lesson plan incorporating the relationship between clean air and respiratory health. Students are encouraged to express their understanding of the concepts presented by submitting a drawing for a poster contest.

Capistrano Unified School District   $15,000
Kristen Nelson, 32972 Calle Perfecto, San Juan Capistrano, CA 92675
The Dana Hills Environmental Center and Nature Canyon
The Capistrano Unified School District is creating an environmental education center in a canyon on city grounds adjacent to Dana Hills High School. The completed educational center and trail system will offer local outdoor field trip study of plant and animal life for students throughout the school district and provide environmental career opportunities for high school students who manage the center and act as docents.

City of Oakland   $4,998
Karen Greenspan, 1333 Broadway, Suite 330, Oakland, CA 94612
Piralta Creek Community Education Project
This grant will support the implementation of a plan to reduce residential creek pollution to Peralta Creek by organizing a team of 15 high school youth to coordinate volunteer community workdays to clean up and revegetate a portion of the creek. The focus of the project is to teach residents that the health of the creek has a direct impact on the health of the watershed and ultimately on their community.

Community Environmental Council   $4,923
Cay Sanchez, 930 Miramonte Drive, Santa Barbara, CA 93109
Teacher Training Environmental Workshops in Closing the Loop
This grant allows the Community Environmental Council to conduct ten training workshops for teachers of kindergarten through twelfth grade in Santa Barbara County to implement the recycling curriculum, "Closing the Loop. The curriculum, available in English and Spanish and distributed free to each teacher who attends a workshop, promotes techniques and habits which lead to significant reductions from the waste stream.

Daedalus Alliance for Environmental Education   $5,000
Merle Okino O'Neill, 12702 Via Cortina, Suite 201B, Del Mar, CA 92014
Adopt-A-Watershed
Twenty teachers of kindergarten through 12th grade from Imperial Beach are being trained in an urban adaptation of the Adopt-A-Watershed curriculum. Using field inspection methods developed for city workers, the teachers visually inspect storm drains and monitor water quality at specified outlet points into the estuary and the bay. The data the teachers collect will be made available to students, other teachers, and community groups for long-range study and analysis.

Earth Island Institute   $5,000
Mandy Billinge, 300 Broadway, Suite 28, San Francisco, CA 94133-3312
Pollution Reduction and Safe Bay Food Consumption
An orientation workshop is being conducted for the faculty of Franklin Elementary School in Berkeley about the sources of pollution entering San Francisco Bay and the effect of these pollutants on the Bay estuary ecosystem and on human health. There will be a follow-up series of 10 three-hour workshops for four selected teachers and their classes. These sessions consist of hands-on investigative activities leading to projects to reduce pollution and to make informed choices about Bay food consumption.

Rising Sun Energy Center   $5,000
Michael Arenson, P.O Box 2874, Santa Cruz, CA 95062
Solar Energy Teacher Training
This grant supports a one-day workshop for 12 fourth through sixth grade teachers in Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties in renewable energy curriculum. Project personnel provide continuing support by presenting a demonstration lesson in each teacher's classroom and continuing to work with teachers to produce three additional lessons on renewable energy during the school year.

San Francisco Bay Wildlife Society   $3,000
Amy Hutzel, P. O. Box 524, Newark, CA 94560
San Francisco Bay Models to be Used with Field Trip Orientation Workshops
The San Francisco Bay Wildlife Society's project adds two models of the southern portion of San Francisco Bay to the exhibits at the Visitor's Center in Fremont and the Environmental Education Center in Alviso. The models, depicting open sections of the bay, and upland, salt marsh, salt pond, and slough habitats, are used for orientation and interpretation for teachers and parents in preparation for class field trips to the Wildlife Refuge facilities.

San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners   $35,515
Mohammed Nuru, 2088 Oakdale Ave., San Francisco, CA 94124
Lead Empowerment Action Demonstration
The San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners (SLUG) project empowers San Francisco residents from low income and ethnically diverse communities to take action to reduce adult and children's exposure to lead in the soil. The Lead Empowerment Action Demonstration is accomplishing this goal using intensive one-day workshops that provide 500 families with immediate, tangible knowledge about the hazards of lead in the soil. The demonstration also teaches them how to limit their exposure to lead through landscaping and hardscaping strategies. SLUG is constructing a demonstration bed of barrier plants and hardscapes useful for preventing human access to lead-contaminated soil and offers free soil tests and landscape consultations to workshop attendees. The target audience for this project is low income, ethnically-diverse neighborhoods and communities.

San Francisco Unified School District   $15,000
Carmelo Sgarlato, 2550 - 25th Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94116
The Environmental Leadership Initiative
Training is being provided for 16 high school teachers in an inquiry-based science curriculum, called "Issues, Evidence, and You," developed by the University of California Lawrence Hall of Science. Working in teams of two, the teachers will introduce a common ninth grade science program based on local environmental issues at their eight schools.

Santa Monica Malibu School District   $5,000
Pixie Beery, Will Rogers Elementary School, 2401 - 14th Street, Santa Monica, CA 90405
Project Plants: A Community Outreach to Encourage Environmentally Friendly Gardening
The Santa Monica Malibu School District is bringing together members of the Native Plant Society, Coalition for Clean Air, and the City of Santa Monica with the fourth grade classes at Will Rogers Elementary School, an inner city school with a predominantly minority enrollment. The project educates the community through a brochure written and distributed by students that encourages residents to use plants compatible with the environment and by installing a demonstration garden on campus that exhibits the plants.

Save the Whales   $5,000
Maris Sidenstecker, P. O. Box 2397, Venice, CA 90291
Whales on Wheels (AWOW): A Hands-on Educational Program Offered in Spanish
For this project, classroom presentations will take place targeting the Spanish bilingual program in Los Angeles schools to encourage students to take a participatory role in protecting oceans. The project emphasizes pollution reduction actions students can take to protect human and marine health.

Student Conservation Association   $5,000
Brenda Cercone, 655 - 13th Street, Suite 304, Oakland, CA 94612
Bay Area Conservation Career Development Program: College Participants Educate Younger Peers
This grant supports a project to provide training for college mentors to lead 28 students, selected from six Oakland high schools, through a series of overnight outdoor education sessions at three Bay Area sites. The students will analyze geology, vegetation, ocean, and estuary habitats at Marin Headlands, Point Reyes Seashore, and Golden Gate Wildlife Refuge in the context of how they relate to the students' home communities.

Top of Page

1995 Grants

Apple Valley Unified School District   $2,150
Paul Swick, 21351 Yucca Loma Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307
Yucca Loma School Solid Waste Reduction Project
This project will involve the entire student body of Yucca Loma School with sorting, measuring or weighing, and recording solid waste produced in the school's classrooms, office, and cafeteria. Students will experiment with composting techniques and worm bins to seek efficient solutions for reducing quantities of waste requiring disposal. They will produce a documentary video of their efforts to provide a model for other schools to replicate.

Citizens for a Better Environment   $22,800
Michelle Sypert, 605 West Olympic Blvd., Suite 850, Los Angeles, CA 90015
Southeast Los Angeles Lead Poisoning Environmental Education Project
This project will alert parents in southeast Los Angeles to the hazard of lead poisoning by conducting four bilingual community workshops for as many as 800 attendees and by distributing 5,000 educational flyers in door-to-door visitations. Follow-up interviews will be conducted with as many as 200 parents who respond and are interested in seeking testing and treatment, if necessary, for their children.

Conservation Science Institute   $5,000
Thomas A. Okey, 1826 Nason Street, Alameda, CA 94501
Habitat Restoration at a Closed Military Base: A Case Study of Coast Live Oak Restoration at Alameda Naval Air Station
This project will initiate steps to restore a natural habitat at the Alameda Naval Air Station through the propagation and nurturing of oak seedlings by middle school students for subsequent transplanting on the closed military installation. A classroom unit on the area's natural history will be followed by a field-oriented experimental science project on germination and growth of Coast Live Oaks.

Friends of Cabrillo Marine Aquarium   $4,600
Bill Brush, 3720 Stephen White Drive, San Pedro, CA 90731-7012
Hands on Marine Environments: Educator Workshops
This project will offer four workshops on marine environment issues for 20 teachers at each session. Workshop activities and follow-up consultations with aquarium staff will permit the 80 trained teachers to encourage their students to use problem-solving and decision-making techniques as they relate to water pollution, endangered species, recycling, and habitat preservation.

Friends of the San Francisco Estuary   $5,000
Ron Sokolov, P. O. Box 791, Oakland, CA 94612
Water Quality Monitoring and Education Program
This project will encourage school-based or community-based water quality monitoring and education programs in the Corte Madera Creek watershed in Marin County. A two-day educators' workshop for teachers and Boy and Girl Scout leaders will teach techniques which will allow the attendees to recruit, train, and supervise volunteers for the creek monitoring project.

Greater Long Beach Girl Scout Council   $4,950
Betty Irving, 4040 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach, CA 90808
Project Water: Hands-On Introduction to Surface and Groundwater Problems in Southern California Communities for Young Children
This project will introduce 150 girls in grades 3 to 6 and their scout leaders to environmental issues relating to surface water and groundwater management. Led by members of the Association of Women Geoscientists and using a Girl Scout campground in the San Jacinto Mountains as their outdoor classroom, this project will allow the young people and their leaders to explore activities with soil and groundwater and to experience erosion problems firsthand to learn their causes, effects, and remediations.

Long Beach Unified School District   $4,928
Christopher J. Steinhauser, 701 Locust Avenue, Long Beach, CA 90813
Project Future!
This project will train a staff member of Signal Hill Elementary School in three local environmental concerns of high priority to the community. The teacher will then train the rest of the staff and will provide leadership for school activities related to the following identified themes: nonpoint source pollution, composting, and petroleum refinery emissions.

Mattole Unified School District   $5,000
Pamela Sturgeon, P. O. Box 211, Petrolia, CA 95558
Partnership for Implementing Adopt-A-Watershed Curriculum
This project will generate a partnership among the school district, the Bureau of Land Management, and a community advisory council to implement the Adopt-a-Watershed curriculum in the kindergarten through 12th grade. Training provided to the community's teachers, land owners, and other residents will allow them to define local needs and desirable outcomes, to identify ecologically responsible actions, and to support projects that sustain the environment.

Rural Community Assistance Corporation   $33,750
Elizabeth Ytell, 2125 19th Street, Suite 203, Sacramento, CA 95818
Closing the Loop
The purpose of this project is to conduct teacher training workshops on waste management to assist the State of California in reaching its waste management and waste prevention goals. "Closing the Loop" will focus on disseminating and demonstrating the use of an existing waste management curriculum approved and adopted by the State of California. The target audience will be kindergarten through 12th grade educators in low-income, rural areas and in school districts that serve American Indians and other racial minorities. The project will include a needs assessment to tailor workshops to these communities, and follow-up technical assistance to assist educators in incorporating the environmental curriculum into their existing lesson plans. The project will reach 350 teachers with 10 workshops throughout California.

Sacramento Zoological Society   $2,480
Kimberly Parker, 3930 West Land Park Drive, Sacramento, CA 95822
Teacher Training Environmental Workshops
This project will provide orientation to environmental education curriculum materials developed by the California Department of Education and practical ways to apply them. Presenting two cycles of teacher workshops, three in the fall of 1995 and three in the spring of 1996, the society will offer attendees problem solving and investigative approaches to learning with exciting games and activities. Additional presentations will be made at regional elementary and secondary science teacher conferences.

San Francisco Bay Wildlife Society   $5,000
Amy Hutzel, P. O. Box 524, Newark, CA 94560
Trekking the Refuge: A Field Trip Program for Educators and Parents
This project will establish a field trip program at the Wildlife Refuge for educator's, students, and parents to teach about wetlands, endangered species, migratory birds, and what the public can do to preserve these resources. The program anticipates serving 50 educators, 300 parents, and 1,500 students annually.

The Bayview Opera House, Inc.   $25,000
Rochelle Frazier, P. O. Box 24086, San Francisco, CA 94124-0086
Bayview Opera House Environmental Education Project
This project will employ the creative vehicle of visual arts to educate at-risk students in three Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood elementary schools about environmental issues. Artists from the Bayview Opera House will join with the faculty from the three schools in a planning workshop to determine the project's curriculum and the role that each party will perform. Over a six-month period, artists from Bayview Opera House will present weekly lessons cooperatively with classroom staff to provide students with a basic knowledge of environmental issues while enabling them to express their ideas and concerns through their artwork.

The Oakland Museum of California Foundation   $13,436
Sandy Bredt, 1000 Oak Street, Oakland, CA 94607
Global Warming: An Interactive Exhibition and Environmental Education Program
This project will present an interactive exhibit on global warming, accompanied by a four-month long series of educational programs for students, teachers, and adults in the nine Bay Area counties. The program will include student workshops, teacher seminars, preparation of curriculum materials, and public presentations.

The Regents of the University of California (Santa Cruz)   $5,000
Gary Griggs, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064
Windows to Discovery
This project will strengthen marine science education programs in local schools of the tri-county Monterey Bay area through teacher training, supporting curricular material, and school site follow-up visits. The activities of the project are geared to stimulate student interest in marine science and conservation of the environment.

Tides Foundation Community Focus   $5,000
Malka Koppell, 170 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133
Air Quality Education and Organization Project for Middle School Students
The participants in this project will assemble a team of students and parents in a San Diego middle school to study air quality issues and suggest solutions for their area. The team will design and implement a trip reduction plan for their school community.

Tuolumne County Superintendent of Schools Office   $14,600
Celeste Boyd, 175 South Fairview Lane, Sonora, CA 95370
Teaching About Forests
The outcome of this project will be a week-long educators' workshop on forest health and management for 50 kindergarten through 12th grade teachers from counties near the mountains (Tuolumne, Calaveras, Amador) and the San Joaquin Valley urban communities of Stockton, Lodi, and Modesto. Topics to be covered include plant and tree identification, forest practices and harvesting, wildlife diversity, soils and geology, development of recreational opportunities, and pollution prevention strategies.

Yosemite Community College District   $5,000
Bennett Tom, P. O. Box 4065, Modesto, CA 95352
Using Retired Scientists to Help Implement a Child's Place in the Environment
The purpose of this project is to match up retired scientists with 25 rural elementary school teachers. Following training in the California Department of Education environmental curriculum, A Child's Place in the Environment, the scientists and their partner teachers will implement the curriculum in schools in San Joaquin, Tuolumne, and Calaveras Counties.

Top of Page

1994 Grants

Armory Center for the Arts   $5,000
David Spiro, 145 N. Raymond Ave., Pasadena, CA 91103
Interactive Science Education
This project brings together teaching staff from the arts and sciences to promote interactive science education through observation, experimentation, data gathering, classification, and problem solving.

Atascadero Unified School District   $3,842
Gene Elsdon, 5601 West Mall, Atascadero, CA 93422
Creek School
Using Atascadero Creek and the Salinas River as environmental education laboratories, high school students will join with faculty to present "Creek School" workshops to elementary students and teachers.

Calaveras Unified School District   $5,000
Betty White, P. O. Box 788, San Andreas, CA 95249
Environmental Education for Kindergarten and Elementary School
This project presents an interdisciplinary, thematic, environmental education program to students in kindergarten through 6th grade with the goal of encouraging environmental literacy, which should lead to more environmentally-responsible lifestyles.

Daedalus Education Foundation   $4,840
Merle O'Neil, 12702 Via Cortina #201B, Del Mar, CA 92014
Environmental Education Teacher Training Institute
The "Environmental Education Teacher Training Institute" project provides for training of 120 teachers in Tijuana, Mexico. The content of the training will focus on the environmental issues linked to water, health, solid waste, land and resource management, and human interaction with the surrounding environment.

Desert Tortoise Preserve Committee   $4,850
Jun Lee, 255 S. Grand Ave. #2203, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Environmental Education
A one-day conference, called "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Environmental Education," will bring together high school teachers with representatives of government agencies and private conservation organizations. The task of the workshop participants is to develop a sample teaching plan which employs endangered species themes for an interdisciplinary curriculum for four pilot high schools.

Friends of the San Francisco Estuary   $5,000
Marcia Brockbank, P. O. Box 2050, Oakland, CA 94604-2050
Cleaning Estuary Habitats
This project will target two inner city classes and their teachers for a ten-week project. As part of these activities, the students, working with local resource agents, will clean up and enhance estuary habitats near their schools.

Konocti Unified School District   $5,000
Olga Clymire, P. O. Box 6630, Clearlake, CA 95422
A Child's Place in the Environment
The "A Child's Place in the Environment" project includes demonstrations on how an environmental education program can be organized through integration of the traditional elementary school subjects. The program will be offered in teacher workshops in four geographical regions of California. Teachers will participate in hands-on activities and develop a plan to assist their students to select and implement environment-enhancing projects.

Napa Valley Unified School District   $5,000
Dr. Barbara Pahre, 2425 Jefferson Street, Napa, CA 94558
The New 3 R's: Reduce, Re-use, Recycle
Through "The New 3 R's: Reduce, Re-use, Recycle" project, pollution prevention becomes an issue that students can effect on a daily basis through their hands-on involvement in gardening and composting, which are components of this waste reduction curriculum.

Outward Bound Adventure, Inc.   $4,948
Helen Mary Williams, P. O. Box 202, Pasadena, CA 91102
Curriculum for Water and Conservation
Grant funds will be used to prepare a curriculum focusing on water and conservation concepts which will provide for six 1-day field trips for 24 middle school students to sites that are linked to the delivery and use of water to the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Selected students (12 from Markham Jr. High in Watts and 12 from Washington Middle School in Pasadena) also will prepare for a seven-day High Sierra environmental study trip that will be funded from other sources. Through this project, students will have the opportunity to trace a drop of melted snow from the mountains to their own neighborhood.

Regents of the University of California   $108,000
Neil Maxwell, Lawrence Hall of Science, Regents of the University of California, Sponsored Projects Office, Sproul Hall, Room 336, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720
Environmental Education School Action Projects
The "Environmental Education School Action Projects" will develop a model school action and public education program in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area. It will provide teachers, students, and community volunteers with an opportunity to work together to develop projects designed to solve local environmental problems. The project will include an environmental education teacher institute for primary and secondary school teachers and community volunteers and will draw hands-on curricula from existing programs that teach responsible decision making and action.

Rising Sun Energy Center   $5,000
Michael Arenson, P. O. Box 2874, Santa Cruz, CA 95063
Solar Energy Education
For the "Solar Energy Education" project, student interns from the Department of Environmental Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, will be trained in solar energy and conservation to develop lessons and activities that are compatible with Santa Cruz school district's science education goals. The interns will make in-class presentations at four public elementary schools.

Sacramento Science Center   $5,000
Patricia McVicar, 3615 Auburn Blvd., Sacramento, CA 95821
Workshops on Water Resources
This grant funds three workshops for separate groups of 20 elementary school teachers which will emphasize the stewardship of water resources. Each participant will create an educational kit for subsequent use in their classrooms.

San Bernardino County   $5,000
Phyllis Hebbard, 385 N. Arrowhead Ave., San Bernardino, CA 92415-0160
Video on Hazardous Household Products
For this project, the San Bernardino Health Services Department will offer a video and lecture presentation to public and private schools in the county to increase awareness of hazardous household products, less toxic alternative products, the dangers of improper hazardous waste disposal, and the location of hazardous waste collection centers.

San Francisco Bay Delta Aquatic Habitat Institute   $11,259
Kathryn Kramer, 1301 S. 46th St. #180, Richmond, CA 94804
Kids in Creeks: A Creek Exploration and Restoration Program
The "Kids in Creeks: A Creek Exploration and Restoration Program" will provide educators in Contra Costa County with two and a half days of training in creek ecology, access to a lending library, and support for conducting community-based action projects with their classes.

San Joaquin Office of Education   $5,000
Judi Wilson, P. O. Box 213030, Stockton, CA 95213-9030
Kids Make a Difference: Environmental Projects for Elementary Students
For the "Kids Make a Difference: Environmental Projects for Elementary Students" project, 50 teachers will be trained to use projects related to an environmental issue that children at differing developmental levels can share perspectives and work together to arrive at a common solution to the problem.

San Lorenzo Valley Unified School District   $4,998
Jane Orbuch, 6134 Highway 9, Felton, CA 95018
Monitoring the San Lorenzo River
The San Lorenzo River and its watershed provide the unifying theme for this project, which will involve students in kindergarten through 12th grade in hands-on monitoring, measuring, and classifying water quality, riparian vegetation and wildlife, status of aquatic organisms, sedimentation and erosion, and human uses and impacts.

Southern Sonoma County Resource Conservation District   $14,438
Sheila Adams, 1301 Redwood Way Suite 170, Petaluma, CA 94954
Adopt-a-Watershed Curriculum
The "Adopt-a-Watershed Curriculum" project will provide in-service training for participating teachers in Sonoma Valley and Petaluma schools. This training will assist teachers in providing their students with increased environmental sensitivity through outdoor field observation and experimentation.

Tree People   $10,000
Diane Hunt, 12601 Mulholland Dr., Beverly Hills, CA 90201
The Magical City Forest
"The Magical City Forest" project involves three teacher workshops for 150 teachers of kindergarten through 6th grade which will emphasize hands-on training in the curriculum. The curriculum will link information about the cycles of the earth, air, trees, wildlife, fresh water, and oceans with children's everyday lives in Los Angeles. To give students a sense of where they fit in the ecosystem, the curriculum addresses the realities of urban living.

Top of Page

1993 Grants

American River Land Trust   $4,631
Debra Jensen, 8913 Highway 49, P. O. Box 562, Coloma, CA 95613
Habitat Restoration and Field Studies Partners
The "Habitat Restoration and Field Studies Partners" project involves youth service groups and students in kindergarten through 12th grade in El Dorado County in habitat restoration by providing hands-on training in field methods. Students will be introduced to important ongoing field projects by agency and organizational professionals from the U.S. Departments of the Interior and Agriculture (Forest Service), U.S. Geological Survey, and the California Department of Parks and Recreation.

City of San Buenaventura   $5,000
Johnji Stone, P. O. Box 99, Ventura, CA 93002
Habitat Conservation Education Programs for Middle Schools
"Habitat Conservation Education Programs for Middle Schools" introduces an interactive interpretive habitat awareness curriculum to 792 7th and 8th grade students and their 24 teachers. In a mock trial role-playing activity, students will stand accused as suspects in the murder of a coastal sage plant and must defend their actions in the community. During the classroom presentation, students will visit a series of stations and develop their defense from response cards. The activity concludes with a summary of basic community dynamics and the need for species diversity and habitat conservation.

Golden Gate National Park Association   $5,000
Louise C. Burnham, Building 201, Fort Mason, San Francisco, CA 94123
Environmental Education Program at Crissey Field, Grades 6-8
The "Environmental Education Program at Crissey Field, Grades 6-8" sets up an outdoor conservation and marine science program by National Park staff at Crissey Field in the Presidio for students in 6th through 8th grade from nine schools with ethnically diverse populations in San Francisco and Oakland. Teacher workshops will precede and follow the student field trips where lessons specifically geared to grade level curriculum will enable students to study the ecology of the area in a site-specific way.

Humboldt County Office of Education   $4,950
Garry Eagles, 901 Myrtle Avenue, Eureka, CA 95501
School Waste Reduction Task Force
The "School Waste Reduction Task Force" project establishes a county-wide task force of administrators, maintenance personnel, parents, students, and teachers. Not only will the task force encourage waste reduction at each site by providing useful information to implement day-to-day activities in the school and the classroom, but it will also establish a vehicle of communication both on-site and among participating schools regarding other environmental issues.

Humboldt State University Foundation, Center for Indian Community Development   $137,110
James A. Hamby, Student & Business Services Bldg., Room 295, Arcata, CA 95521
Environmental Protection and Land Development in Native American Communities
The "Environmental Protection and Land Development in Native American Communities" program will ensure the environmental and cultural integrity of Native American lands by preparing tribal communities to make informed decisions about land development. They will use toxic waste disposal as a thematic focus for land development issues. The project will expand upon existing environmental education programs and materials such as Project WILD, Project Learning Tree, and NatureScope and will reach out to regional and international Native American communities in the United States and the Canadian Pacific Northwest.

Kern County Water Agency   $5,000
Jim Beck, 3200 Rio Mirada Drive, P. O. Box 58, Bakersfield, CA 93302-0058
Water Education Spanish Program
The "Water Education Spanish Program" translates a workbook on water conservation into Spanish for distribution to English a second language and bilingual teachers of grades 4 through 6 in Kern County. Through the use of the workbook, students will perform experiments that present water conservation principles as a vital element in daily activities.

Los Angeles Educational Partnership   $25,000
Patricia C. Dung, 315 W. Ninth Street, Suite 1110, Los Angeles, CA 90015
Los Angeles River Ecosystem: Past, Present, and Future
The "Los Angeles River Ecosystem: Past, Present, and Future" project connects a team of 60 teachers from 30 schools in the vicinity of the Los Angeles River with university and industry scientists. The teachers will participate in workshops and field study presentations focusing on land and water use, human impact on the ecosystems, water quality, and pollution. Following the workshops, students will conduct a field experiment on water quality, soil analysis, wildlife, and engage in discussions on environmental issues with university and industry scientists and with students from other participating schools through a telecommunications network.

Petrolia School, Inc.   $5,000
Seth Zuckerman, P. O. Box 197, Petrolia, CA 95558
Integrated, Interdisciplinary Environmental Curriculum for High Schools
This grant funds the "Integrated, Interdisciplinary Environmental Curriculum for High Schools" project which offers a curriculum linking science and social studies with an emphasis on environmental issues both local and global. Restoration of salmon runs, reforestation and erosion control projects, and controversies over logging in ancient forests will serve as the context for teaching basic skills. The curriculum will be designed and tested during the year's instruction, and then refined, publicized, and made available to other educators.

Sacramento Zoological Society   $5,000
Kimberly Parker, Development Director, 3930 West Land Park Drive, Sacramento, CA 95822
Project Edzoocation
"Project Edzoocation" forms a partnership with the California State University, Sacramento, to offer four teacher workshops consisting of practical and technical assistance in using the zoo more effectively as a resource for environmental education. The workshops will incorporate ideas and activities for teachers to take back to their classrooms and enhance daily lesson plans.

San Francisco Bay-Delta Aquatic Habitat Institute   $4,820
Kathryn Kramer, Building 1801, 301 South 46th Street, Richmond, CA 94804
Exploring the Estuary
The "Exploring the Estuary" project supplies 25 junior and senior high school teachers and their classes with a computer software display of the San Francisco Bay and Delta and the Gulf of the Farallones, accompanying resource guide and materials packet. The institute will also hold a training workshop to assist teachers in the use of the program.

University of California, Berkeley   $3,184
Neil Maxwell, Sponsored Projects Office, 336 Sproul Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720
Environmental Education Across the Curriculum
The "Environmental Education Across the Curriculum" project is a four session seminar for teams of high school teachers from four schools in Contra Costa County. Seminar leaders and representatives from business, industry, and the community will demonstrate how teachers can identify and assess ecological conditions at a particular school site. They then will develop remediation plans and identify tools and activities that students can engage in to understand the problem and to propose and implement a solution.

University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Boalt Hall)   $5,000
Neil Maxwell, Joseph L. Sax, Sponsored Projects Office, 336 Sproul Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720
Bay Area Environmental Law Clinic
This grant establishes the Bay Area Environmental Law Clinic, which will provide law school students with opportunities to design and practice field work techniques in the emerging field of environmental law. The clinic will offer students supervised practical professional work experience on environmental problems that affect traditionally under represented groups in the community.

Yucca Loma School, Apple Valley Unified School District   $4,880
Paul Swick, 21351 Yucca Loma Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307
Yucca Loma School Environmental Education Project
The "Yucca Loma School Environmental Education Project" sets up an outdoor biological and earth science center equipped with a seismograph, weather station, and greenhouse. Through the use of the outdoor study area, staff development, and accompanying curricular materials, teachers will be equipped to provide hands-on activities for elementary students to develop critical thinking skills as they conduct investigations and solve problems.

Top of Page

1992 Grants

Evans Community Adult School   $5,000
Los Angeles, CA 90012
The Earth, Our Shared Cultural Heritage
This grant funds a teachers' workshop, entitled "The Earth, Our Shared Cultural Heritage," which will provide training for English-as-a-second-language instructors. The curriculum will focus on two areas: the study of environment from prehistory to the present and the study of biogeography to enable students to see beyond their neighborhoods to an expanded view of natural communities.

Live Oak School District   $5,000
Santa Cruz, CA 95062
Classroom Rainforest Project
This project is a classroom rainforest project which uses the tropical rainforest as a theme to explore the interaction of humans with their environment. Students will construct a three-dimensional tropical rainforest in the classroom and will create and monitor rainforest terrariums which simulate tropical ecosystems.

Marin County Office of Waste Management   $5,000
San Rafael, CA 94913
Composting Program
This school composting program is designed to develop an education program on yard- and worm-composting for selected elementary and middle schools in Marin County. The program includes development of curriculum on composting, training of educators, classroom demonstrations, purchase of compost systems, and design of a marketing program.

Mount Diablo Unified School District   $4,690
Concord, CA 94519
Sampling the San Francisco Bay/Delta
This project will allow fifth grade science teachers to gather data and analyze samples collected from the San Francisco Bay/Delta using the latest scientific method and equipment.

Napa Valley Unified School District   $16,835
Napa, CA 94558
Millions of Trees
The project "Millions of Trees" is designed to promote student, faculty, and community proactive environmental involvement. Students will raise conifers to be sold as living Christmas trees and a variety of native plants to reforest local areas. The students also will read significant non-fiction and fiction material related to the project; run scientific experiments on tree growth, and participate in other activities.

National Audubon Society   $25,000
Tiburon, CA 94920
Adopt a Threatened Plant or Animal
This project will encourage students to "adopt" a local threatened plant or animal and develop a plan to help their "adoptee" survive. Participating schools will create a report of their activities and submit it in a statewide contest.

Pacific Primary School   $5,000
San Francisco, CA 94117
Water is Life
"Water is Life" is a project that includes the development of kindergarten curriculum that will create an awareness of the environment among pre-school children. The curriculum will focus on the issue of water, including its vital uses, its importance as a natural resource, and the critical need for water conservation.

San Diego State University Foundation   $4,999
San Diego, CA 92182
Radiation and the Human Environment
The "Radiation and the Human Environment" project is a curriculum for public health officials and students. A graduate-level course will be developed to familiarize the students with principles and issues related to exposure of the public to various sources of radiation.

San Francisco Conservation Corps   $4,531
San Francisco, CA 94110
Corps to College Environmental Education
The Corps to College Environmental Education project is a proposed curriculum based on the principle of interdependence among culture, community, and ecology. The curriculum will be taught to 18 to 25 young people for four hours a week for one semester. Corps members will learn about how those people in their ethnic history related to the environment, and how the communities in which they live are influenced by the environment.

San Mateo-Foster City School District   $4,850
San Mateo, CA 94403
Training in Chemical Education
This project includes teacher training in chemical education and is a collaborative effort between the school district and the Chemical Education for Public Understanding (CEPUP) at the Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley. Teachers from the district's middle schools will be trained in using CEPUP materials to develop a curriculum which will be used by 7th and 8th grade students to improve their understanding of chemical concepts and processes related to current environmental health risks.

Shasta Natural Science Association   $4,950
Redding, CA 96001
Carter House Museum
Those working on the Carter House Museum project will design, demonstrate, and disseminate a wetlands curriculum and hold in-service training for educators in the region.

Ventura County Solid Waste Management Department   $4,979
Ventura, CA 93009
Backyard Composting Demonstration Garden
The Backyard Composting Demonstration Garden project is a partnership between the Cities of Ojai and Ventura County to motivate residents to adopt habits that benefit the environment while helping to meet California's waste-reduction goal. A demonstration garden will be used as an educational tool to teach citizens to compost.

Top of Page

Contact Us to ask a question, provide feedback, or report a problem.