ee360 Community Fellows

Amaris Alanis Ribeiro is the Center Director of the North Park Village Nature Center in the Chicago Park District. The North Park Village Nature Center, a public facility with 46 acres of nature preserve, is open 7 days a week and provides year-round programs that serve more than 50,000 yearly visitors. Amaris has over fifteen years of experience in environmental science education, coordinating community engagement strategies, and developing STEM-equity programs at museums, botanic gardens, and nonprofits. Amaris is interested in asset-based approaches in centering communities in environmental education. Amaris currently serves on the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) Informal Science Education Committee and the Advisory Board for Environmentalists of Color. Amaris has a BS in Ecology, Ethology, and Evolution from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Master’s degree in Science Education from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Amaris is also a past recipient of the Chicago Wilderness Force of Nature Award and under her leadership garnered the UL Innovative Education Award. Amaris considers herself a city girl who always had a passion for nature, in both Chicago and Michoacán, her parents’ hometown in Mexico.

About Amaris’ ee360 Community Action Project

The goal of Amaris’ ee360 Fellowship project is to support reciprocal environmental education (EE), community engagement through timebanking. Amaris’ Timebanking Ecosystem project brings together environmental organizations and community based organizations to support asset-based exchanges. Through this project, exchanges are posted on an online platform via requests and offers in which hours are earned. Offering up space at North Park Village Nature Center to groups not already engaged in EE is a catalyst to broadening who we define as environmentalists and what EE is. Often, environmental organizations frame community engagement efforts that are one-way and designed from a deficit standpoint. This is problematic because it can further widen the equity gap rather than improve it. However, communities have existing EE social capital (e.g. plant knowledge, woodworking skills, land knowledge etc.) that can be illuminated by leveraging the technology we have today through timebanking. Through training and monthly conversations, participants are exposed to the value of timebanking and believe in the possibility of it as a way to equitably engage with communities in EE. Participants exchange offers and requests, community members' needs are met, and organizations and communities shift from dominant cultural norms to resilient and inclusive ecosystem hubs; ultimately changing who and how we solve environmental problems.

Ellen is an environmental educator and community organizer collaborating with a wide range of institutions to increase equitable access to environmental education, outdoor opportunities, and a healthy environment.

How are you using education to build more sustainable and equitable communities?

In my current work, I am the Education Director and Park Ranger at the City of Prescott’s Community Nature Center. Through an intergovernmental agreement that I revived between our local public school district and Recreation Services Department, and through hours of fundraising, planning, outdoor classroom and trail building, curriculum writing, and more, we are now providing free outdoor and environmental education to thousands of public school students. Through our department’s collaborations with our Health Department, Cooperative Extension, and other non-profits, we have identified families’ barriers…

Quilen Blackwell is the president and founder of the Chicago Eco House, whose mission is to train inner-city youth in sustainable social enterprises to alleviate poverty. The Chicago Eco House’s two signature programs are a flower farm and 3D printing youth social enterprises. The Eco House has won several awards for its work including the UL Innovation Education Award, Delta Institute BOOST Award, and the Keep Chicago Beautiful Community Vision Award. Quilen is interested in advancing youth entrepreneurship in the environmental education field. He believes that this approach can help to expand the EE audience to underrepresented communities while also using EE to solve real-world problems that youth from poor families face every day.

Quilen holds a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master’s degree in environmental policy and sustainability from the University of Denver. He worked in the biodiesel industry as a procurer of feedstock and is a returned Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand prior to starting the Chicago Eco House. Quilen is a married father of twins and resides on the south side of Chicago. 

About Quilen‘s ee360 Community Action Project

Quilen’s ee360 project focuses on expanding the Chicago EcoHouse flower farm social enterprise outside of the three farms that they currently operate from. The goal is to expand to additional neighborhoods within Chicago and to other places outside of Chicago, such as Detroit. This project meets the needs of the community because the inner cities of urban hubs like Chicago and Detroit have thousands of vacant lots and suffer from high unemployment and poverty rates. The flower farm social enterprise repurposes these vacant spaces into productive urban agricultural spaces that provide hands-on environmental education for youth while also spurring economic development. The potential impact is that this project will inspire a new generation of EE leaders from communities that generally have not been included in the field while also creating real jobs that benefit their families and neighbors.

Quilen also worked with Anita Singh to build a Detroit EcoHouse site in partnership with Get Down Farms and Keep Growing Detroit. This entailed converting vacant land into an off grid flower farm and having youth from Detroit visit the EcoHouse in Chicago. Quilen and Anita also partnered with Abby Randall at EcoRise to start a beekeeping project on their flower farms in Chicago. 

The Chicago Eco House has collaborated with several companies and organizations on this project including UL, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, the University of Chicago, Engineers Without Borders, Springboard Foundation, Groupon, and many more. Furthermore, the work of the Chicago Eco House has received coverage in the local press for the unique and dynamic way it is solving local problems. 

Trevor Claiborn is a 4-H Extension Assistant at Kentucky State University in Frankfort, KY. Trevor, through his character and program “Farmer Brown Tha MC,” has directly engaged more than 10,000 students and parents through in-class presentations, community events, summer programs, church camps, conferences, tours, afterschool programs, and urban gardening workshops. Trevor has led community garden initiatives for 8+ years in Lexington's West End and Northside communities as well as presentations around the country. In Trevor’s free time, he enjoys hiking, creating music, reading, and most importantly, spending time with his family.

About Trevor‘s ee360 Community Action Project

For his ee360 Community Action Project, Trevor seeks to enhance his knowledge of environmental science, and build strong national and international networks to collaborate and create progressive, effective, and inclusive programs in Kentucky and beyond. Because of a lack of representation, historic negative connotations, lack of diversity in decision-making positions, discriminatory practices, and disconnection from green spaces, African Americans, who once made up 15% of farmers in the 1920’s now make up less than 2% of primary farm operators. This group makes up only 4% of degree holders in agriculture as of 2016.

“Hood 2 Farm” addresses this dynamic through partnerships with fellows, community members, and stakeholders, developing culturally conscious audio and video productions and intentional marketing materials to be distributed in target communities, online, and in the classroom. Hood 2 Farm will also offer presentations, community-based workshops, and tours, to encourage black youth to pursue academic and career paths in agriculture and environmental sciences and shrink the academic and economic disparities within agriculture in Kentucky, and eventually nationally. 

Emily Cobar is the Community Program Manager at Los Angeles Audubon Society, a nonprofit organization that focuses on wildlife conservation through research, education, recreation, and habitat restoration. Emily leads many environmental education programs for varying audiences from inner-city elementary school students to high school students to community college students. She enjoys teaching about the natural history of Los Angeles, including topics such as water conservation, plant communities, urban wildlife, geology, and more. She also conducts bird monitoring and restores habitat in LA's urban parks. Emily gained interest in an EE career after participating in a yearlong conservation research internship and her first backpacking trip to Yosemite National Park in the eleventh grade. She was intrigued not only by the views and the experience, but by the backpacking leaders whose job it was to take inner-city teens with no backcountry experience into the wilderness, teaching them ecology, survival techniques, and leadership skills. She was inspired to become an environmental educator in Los Angeles to show the community that no matter how urbanized the city is, nature is ubiquitous. Emily received her BA in Environmental Studies from UC-Santa Cruz. In her free time, she likes indoor and outdoor activities including playing board games and exploring new nature spots in LA.

About Emily‘s ee360 Community Action Project

Emily's ee360 Community Action Project encourages intergenerational networking and learning with college students, public school teachers, and elementary school students. In Emily’s project, college students, who are alumni from either Los Angeles Audubon Society’s high school or college programs, are trained in a workshop series that includes an introduction to environmental education, a review in Next Generation Science Standards, and reading through lessons in the Project Learning Tree book to get ideas to develop and/or adapt to the curriculum. Then, they engage with the students in hands-on learning at two elementary schools that are in highly urbanized areas. The goal of this project is for the college students or recent college graduates to build on their resumes, build their network as young professionals, and teach others about solving local environmental issues. Emily hopes the students will use the Schoolyard Habitat as an outdoor space either during or after school with Esperanza Elementary School’s Eco-club. As the college students gain first-hand experience in environmental education, they will then have the opportunity to teach students at a new school that has not previously worked with Los Angeles Audubon. The organization recently received a grant to establish a another Schoolyard Habitat at the new school Dayton Heights Elementary. The college students will eventually use the habitat as as a teaching tool focusing on the before and after establishing a native plant habitat. They will cover topics about wildlife presence, native plant adaptations, and watershed. The impact of the project is that it will continue to develop young environmental advocates in the city of Los Angeles and create a network where members of the community may share resources with one another.

Sandra was born and raised in the Bay Area and is a first-generation Guatemalan American. Her parents immigrated to the United States after the devastating Guatemalan earthquake of 1976. Having found a welcoming community of friends and family in the Bay, her family settled in to establish a home in San Mateo. Early adventures in life cemented her love for exploration; from local neighborhood parks and school field trips to visits to her home country and its rich beauty. Sandra currently works as a Park Ranger for the City of San Mateo and as the South Bay Program Coordinator for Latino Outdoors. Through her daily interactions with the public, she aims to communicate the importance of being empowered by taking responsibility for our choices and how we interact with the world. She loves exploring her home with its beautiful beach trails in Pacifica to dense redwood forests in the East Bay and beyond. Sandra hopes to share her love for nature with her growing family and create new exciting memories exploring what the Bay Area and the world have to offer!

Jim Embry considers himself Stardust congealed in human form that represents billions of years of Earth’s evolution. As an evolutionary being, his purpose is to contribute to a paradigm shift towards Sacred Earth consciousness and refers to himself as a Sacred Earth Activist. As an activist, Jim has participated in most of the major social justice movements of his era and now believes that the sustainability movement encompasses all the other movements. As the founder and director of Sustainable Communities Network, Jim seeks to contribute to the theory and practice of sustainable living. As a scuba diver and photographer, Jim has traveled widely to capture the beauty of the land and oceans. He has exhibited his photos in local hospitals, galleries, and local magazines. Working now on two books, Jim has contributed articles and photographs to the Sustainable World Sourcebook, Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky, Kentucky African American Encyclopedia, Latino Studies, Biodynamics Journal, African American Heritage Guide, and other publications. Jim believes that we need some big ideas that connect humans in a sacred relationship with the Earth, which will require us to think not just “out of the box” but “out-of-the-barn”.

About Jim‘s ee360 Community Action Project

Jim will use his ee360 Community Action Project to magnify the work of the Madison County Pollinator Habitat Working Group, which he organized in 2017. This Working Group will conduct extensive community education about pollinators with the goal of increasing the number and acreage of pollinator habitats throughout the county. With the support of NAAEE and ee360, Jim will offer this community effort as a model for other counties in Kentucky. His work also includes creating a 10-acre pollinator habitat and environmental education center on the family farm where he resides. 

Parker Gassett is a graduate student of ecology and marine policy at the University of Maine in Orono. His research and practice focus on partnership development for coastal environmental governance. With this interdisciplinary lens, he combines a foundation of ecological sciences with principles of community leadership and societal decision-making processes in his work. In the Northeast, demographic transitions and climate changes are leading to emergent challenges and opportunities for coastal sustainability. By contextualizing adaptation within social and economic transitions, Parker’s work uses cross-disciplinary and team science pedagogies to improve environmental management at a municipal and state scale. Currently, Parker co-leads efforts supported by NOAA and EPA to link citizen science water-monitoring organizations with ocean and coastal acidification research and management.

About Parker‘s ee360 Community Action Project

Nearshore environments and the communities that rely on them are uniquely vulnerable to ocean and coastal acidification, yet we lack comprehensive monitoring at spatial and temporal scales in order to provide actionable information. While there are a small number of existing long-term, decadal and climate-scale coastal acidification monitoring sites, including National Estuarine Research Reserves, crowdsourced monitoring in collaboration with water quality stakeholders offers an opportunity to vastly expand monitoring of nearshore acidification. Many existing citizen science water-quality monitors in the Northeast United States already measure carbonate chemistry and are well positioned to investigate coastal acidification processes alongside traditional priorities for marine habitat protection, nutrient pollution, and watershed management. Based on a recent EPA publication (“Guidelines for Measuring Changes in Seawater pH and Associated Carbonate Chemistry in Coastal Environments of the Eastern United States”), Parker helped conduct a series of online and hands-on stakeholder training workshops in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Maine, with more than 40 community water-monitoring programs. The workshops focused on approaches for calibrating pH measurements and expanding the sampling of total alkalinity and dissolved inorganic carbon.

Parker’s ee360 Community Action Project will develop a method for acidification “blitz sampling events”. This novel approach would provide a big-picture view of vulnerability to acidification across the Northeast and could offer coastal decision makers with actionable information to implement tailored adaptation and mitigation strategies at a local scale.

Aurelio Giannitti is the Education Director of the Ward Museum at Salisbury University in Salisbury, Maryland. The Ward Museum's education department provides preK-12 environmental education for thousands of local public, private, and homeschool students on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Aurelio places particular emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches, integrating environmental science, and STEM with the fine arts, social sciences, and language arts – through multi-subject field trip lessons to a student art show with an annual environmental theme. Through hands-on action projects and his mentorship of applicants to the MAEOE (Maryland Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education) Green School's program, Aurelio is invested in empowering students to make appreciable impacts for the benefit of their environment – natural and cultural. Aurelio holds a bachelor's degree from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts with an interdisciplinary concentration in history, anthropology, and social theory. When he isn’t working, he loves reading (thick novels, dry history books, and popular science mostly), watching classic foreign films, playing board games, and enjoying the company of his Bouvier des Flandres puppy, Oxford.

About Aurelio‘s ee360 Community Action Project

Aurelio plans to use his ee360 Fellowship to bring together students, teachers, and community leaders to address community and environmental resilience issues on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Aurelio is collaborating with Elise Trelegan, another ee360 Fellow, for a multi-part project, the overall goals of which are to increase student involvement in the community, advance environmental literacy, foster empowerment, and nurture civic and environmental stewardship. The first component will be a training for teachers, nonformal educators, and community leaders to provide them with the skills to supervise and encourage student-designed and -directed action projects. Following this initial training, participants will work with groups of local youth to develop action projects addressing issues of community and environmental resilience on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. With proposals ready to go, youth and their project mentors will then gather for a Youth Environmental Summit, where they will learn about and from other successful youth-led projects and one another, alongside presentations by, and networking opportunities with, a host of community organizations, conservation nonprofits, and faith-based groups. Finally, students will present their project proposals to a panel of judges, with top projects receiving funding for full implementation. The funded, completed youth projects would not only go some way to directly engaging in community and environmental resilience issues but would also empower young citizens to create the necessary social structures to face the challenges of the future.

James Gibson is Chief Executive of the BLAKE, an organization that delivers environmental education and leadership development opportunities for young New Zealanders, primarily using experiential learning techniques. Prior to joining BLAKE, James was General Manager, Partnerships & Communication at Sport NZ, responsible for managing Sport NZ’s relationship with the sports sector, as well as their brand, communications, and partner capability work. He also led the development of their women in sport strategy. James has also held senior roles at Air New Zealand, including Head of Sustainability, where he led development and implementation of the airline's award-winning sustainability strategy, and Head of Sponsorship & Community, through which he developed successful partnerships with the Department of Conservation and Antarctica NZ. James’ passion for environmental leadership, especially the need for future generations to take up the challenge to improve our environmental performance, motivated him to take up the role at the BLAKE. He loves spending time in the outdoors, especially tramping (hiking) and open water swimming, and enjoys a social game of golf or cricket. He is married with two young daughters.

About James’ ee360 Community Action Project

James is using virtual reality as an environmental education tool for his ee360 Community Action project. BLAKE has collaborated with NZ Geographic to create a series of underwater 360-degree videos that showcase the best (and some of the worst) of New Zealand’s marine environment. The underwater ocean environment is invisible to most people and suffers as a result, and the aim of the project is to allow thousands of people to enjoy an immersive underwater experience, without facing the barriers that exist to actually getting out on the water. These videos are used as an educational tool within schools in two ways. The first is through traveling educators who visit schools with a class set of virtual reality (VR) headsets and deliver an inspiration-based session on New Zealand’s marine environment, including what people can do to take care of it. The second is through distributing the video content, with supporting curriculum-based teaching material, via an established digital platform so that teachers can use the resource to deliver lessons in science and social studies. James’ project was fully subscribed for the entire school year within three weeks of registration opening and will deliver the lesson to 20,000 students this year alone. The ambition of the project is to inspire and educate young New Zealanders about the value of the marine environment and what they can do to ensure its long-term health. To view a trailer of the VR footage, go to https://blakenz.org/nz-vr.

Bijoy Goswami has been a sustainable development professional for the last 13 years, with special emphasis on capacity building, coordinating and building relationships with various stakeholders, linking to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), water and sanitation, biodiversity conservation, and livelihood promotion. As an ee360 Fellow, he conceptualizes and designs capacity-building programs for a number of stakeholders in these areas. At his current organization, Bijoy coordinates a portfolio of activities with approximately 30 partners, including NGO’s and academic institutions across India. He is part of many diverse ESD projects, evaluation & technical reports, and develops training modules at the state and national level. He has been playing a significant role in building numerous partnerships with funding agencies, including corporate, academic, and nonprofit organizations across the globe. Bijoy enjoys storytelling and using communication to foster learning and share his sense of humor. His favorite pastime is cooking, particularly making mouthwatering Indian cuisine.  

About Bijoy‘s ee360 Community Action Project

India makes up 17% of the world’s population, yet half of its rural population defecates in the open due to lack of proper WASH infrastructure. Schools in India are the most organized sector to intervene when it comes to communicating a message for development. Bijoy’s ee360 Community Action project, School WASH Card, engages rural Indian schoolchildren, along with their teachers, parents, and community stakeholders in improving water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH or Watsan) conditions. The project involves a component of Behavior Change Communication towards Water Sanitation and Hygiene for better scholastic outcomes. Through rigorous training and monitoring, the project enables multi-stakeholder participation in its implementation. Poor WASH conditions are a cause of environmental degradation and negatively impacted health and social issues in India. While many programs have addressed WASH, a number of cultural systems hinder its development. Recognizing the great impact that young people can have on this cause and because adult behaviors develop in adolescence, the project aims to engage some of India’s approximately 206 million elementary school-age children. Bijoy's project engages students at 30 elementary schools in Rajasthan, India. 

Tracy Hart is a Wildlife Ecologist who facilitates community involvement in science and conservation, including the Annual Maine Loon Count, the Forestry for Maine Birds Song Meter Project, and the Fish Lead Free Initiative. Tracy is passionate about promoting nature literacy, community science, and conservation. Early in her career, she coordinated place-based environmental education programs that empowered schools in the mid-Atlantic region to protect local aquatic resources. Building on early experiences, she has worked with a variety of organizations to promote environmental problem-solving and experiential learning opportunities in the U.S. and abroad. Tracy holds an M.S. in Conservation Biology & Sustainable Development from the University of Maryland and a B.A. in Biology from Brown University. Tracy is thankful for the support she has received through scholarships and awards that has made her career and adventures possible. She is also eternally grateful for her childhood on the coast of Maine and Nova Scotia. Tracy loves adventuring with her family, traveling, paddling, hiking, gardening, and writing.

About Tracy‘s ee360 Community Action Project

Tracy was thrilled to join the ee360 Fellowship to help her re-enter the environmental education realm after more than a decade working in applied conservation and natural resource protection. She began the Fellowship as an independent consultant and an affiliate of the MERITO Foundation, a nonprofit based in Ventura, California dedicated to protecting the ocean by facilitating education, conservation, and scientific research opportunities for multicultural youth and their communities. Tracy assisted the MERITO Foundation in a variety of capacities including grant writing, student field programs, and graphic design. Since moving to Maine in early 2019 and beginning work at Maine Audubon, the focus of Tracy’s project has shifted to transitioning over a thousand community science volunteers involved in the Maine Loon Project to the use of an online data portal. 

Rabin Kadariya has been a Conservation Officer in the National Trust for Nature Conservation, Nepal since 2009. He has led population monitoring of endangered wildlife; human-wildlife conflict assessment; anti-poaching and anti-gun campaigns; conservation awareness; youth mobilization; and human-wildlife conflict minimization programs in Bardia National Park and surrounding areas. He has successfully executed almost 25 conservation projects for tiger, elephant, and rhino conservation in collaboration with government authorities, local communities, and international conservation partners. His team also devised community-based programs in the buffer zone to reduce human-wildlife conflict, especially in remote areas where financial resources are low and human pressures high. Rabin earned an MSc in Watershed Management in 2007 from Institute of Forestry, Nepal and recently completed Ph.D. in Wildlife Biology from Hokkaido University, Japan.

About Rabin‘s ee360 Community Action Project

For Rabin’s ee360 Community Action Project, he plans to establish an international network for conservation education and enhance his leadership skills in wildlife conservation. He is hopeful that he can utilize his experience from the ee360 fellowship and Ph.D. program to train local youth to organize a massive behavior change and conservation campaign to help the survival of the Himalayan black bear population. Himalayan black bears are widespread in the mountain landscape of Nepal, but it is not a conservation priority species. Habitat degradation and poaching were major threats to bear survival before the 1970s, whereas human-bear conflict, especially, crop raiding and retaliatory killing have become major threats in recent years. The aim of Rabin’s project is to involve local communities and school students in the conservation of Himalayan black bears by minimizing human-bear conflict and raising awareness of bear behavior. The crop damage is leading to conservation threats for bears, so a Community-Based Crop Damage Compensation Scheme (CBCDCS) will be developed with the active involvement of 150 farmers in Kunjo village of Mustang district with the active support of the Conservation Area Management Committee (CAMC), Annapurna Conservation Area Project (ACAP), and farmer groups. Ultimately, Rabin hopes these efforts will lead to a community-based bear conservation plan that benefits the livelihoods of ethnic communities and conservation of bears.

Stacey Moore is an Education Technician with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) at the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center in Wyoming. She has been able to establish a strong community outreach in central Wyoming through her History and Outdoor Clubs. Her goal is to create opportunities for children to connect to the outdoors, to nature, to history, and to our public lands. Moore wishes to utilize the ee360 fellowship to increase families’ awareness of playing and learning in the outdoors during the winter months when many wish to hibernate indoors. Stacey holds a Master’s degree in International Studies from the University of Wyoming and has served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Benin, West Africa. She spends winter free time skiing, and summer free time in her garden.

About Stacey‘s ee360 Community Action Project

The BLM manages multi-use actions for current and future generations on over 245 million acres of public land: land where American children should be visible and connected. Despite the public ownership of these lands, children, even in rural communities, are spending fewer and fewer hours on their holdings. Moore’s project works to increase visitation to public lands during the seasons when many parents wish to stay indoors. Winter Adventure Day strives to connect children and families to their public lands during inclement times of year. Her outreach project connects local recreation, environmental educators, and federal employees to local families in the community to synthesize a fun day in the snow. Parents can recreate with their children in an environment where local experts can guide safety protocols, introduce environmental ethics, and promote outdoor activity. Families participated in snow science, animal adaptations lessons, cross-country skiing, snow-shoeing, shooting, and many other events.

Dr. Jennifer Page is the Director of Education for the Hurricane Island Center for Science and Leadership in mid-coastal Maine. In her current role, she helps to design and deliver innovative science education programs that involve students in community-focused, applied research, and other projects deeply rooted in a sense of place. For half of the year, Jenn facilitates this work on Hurricane Island itself: a 125-acre, off-the-grid island where students are immersed in the natural world. The rest of the year she is based in Rockland, Maine and focuses on growing school partnerships and working with other nonprofits to support educators in their own classrooms. Before joining Hurricane Island, Jenn taught for two years in the School of Marine Sciences at the University of Maine as a post-doc, followed by 5 years as a science instructor at Bangor High School. While at Bangor High, Jenn was an enthusiastic Speech & Debate coach, helped develop the school’s rigorous STEM Academy, and spent several summers at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory with Bangor students as a Visiting Researcher. Regardless of the setting or stage of her career, Jenn has been most passionate about mentoring students and supporting them to realize their ambitions. Her project for the ee360 Fellowship helps her exponentially grow this work by starting a fellowship program for teachers that equips them to facilitate student-designed, place-based projects with a focus on environmental impacts. Jenn holds a BS in Marine Science from the University of Maine and a Ph.D. in Biology from the Georgia Institute of Technology. In addition to her work with Hurricane, she currently serves as secretary of the Board of the Maine Environmental Education Association and is a member of the University of Maine Honors College Board of Advocates . When she is relaxing, Jenn spends as much quiet time at home as possible with her husband and their cat and enjoys Bullet Journaling and knitting.

About Jennifer‘s ee360 Community Action Project

As part of Jenn and her team’s efforts to increase teacher capacity for place-based learning, they convened a cohort of teacher leaders in the summer of 2019 to form our first class of place-based Teacher Fellows. The kickoff to their Fellowship program was a week-long retreat on Hurricane Island that brought together educators from all grade levels and all backgrounds to receive support in developing and implementing interdisciplinary, place-based learning in their classrooms and communities with a focus on environmental sustainability. The Hurricane Island Teacher Fellowship program is comprehensively helping to address barriers to place-based learning across the entire landscape of education and empowering educators and students to become environmental change makers and leaders. The Teacher Fellows are made up of pairs or small cohorts of educators from local school districts who received professional development to help them involve their students in environmentally-focused, standards-based projects embedded in their community. Teachers attended a summer fellows academy and are receiving additional professional development tailored to their stage of project implementation through in-person and online training throughout the school year. Teachers are also receiving financial assistance and classroom support from Hurricane educators and scientists to help implement the projects that their students design. The program will culminate with an end-of-year symposium to allow students from all the schools to present their projects to each other and the broader community, providing an authentic audience for their work. This comprehensive support system for the Teacher Fellows allow them to focus on delivering high-quality educational experiences to their students rather than piecing together all the components themselves. The nature of the projects being designed will influence the quality of environmental education in our schools and connect students to their communities in meaningful and tangible ways. Teacher Fellows and student representatives are able to apply for financial support to attend regional and national conferences to present their work, helping to increase the impact of the projects, and spread the model to other communities.  

Leslie Parra is off on her new adventure as outreach program manager for Save the Redwoods League. She is excited to help connect diverse populations to redwood and sequoia forests. Leslie has garnered significant recognition for her outstanding leadership in environmental education, STEM education, diversity, equity, and inclusion work over the past 12 years.  In 2012, Leslie created Nature Connection, a science (conservation) enrichment program supporting a diverse group of students with multicultural and international perspectives in the San Francisco-Bay Area. Leslie lives in the Mission neighborhood of San Francisco and hopes her participation in the ee360 Fellowship will help her engage the community to take civic action for a healthier atmosphere. During her free time, she loves to go hiking with her dog Mishqui (which means “sweet” in Quechua, the native language of Ecuador – a place she also calls home).

About Leslie‘s ee360 Community Action Project

Leslie Parra’s ee360 Community Action Project, All Hands District 10, is a Bayview Hunters Point community network project in San Francisco, California. Leslie’s vision was to create network leadership with CBOs, businesses, government agencies, school and community members united in one goal: to provide a meaningful and equitable pathway to environmental education engagement for all District 10 children and youth. Ultimately, increasing the quality of life, health and wellbeing of the community. She has coordinated with neighborhood stakeholders (after-school centers, neighborhood groups, supervisor’s office, Recology – SF’s waste management, and SF’s water and public works representatives). Ultimately, the goal is to create engaging and learning opportunities for all Bayview Hunters Point children/youth to foster a healthy life.

Ryan Pemberton is a Science Education Specialist with the Asombro Institute for Science Education in Las Cruces, NM. Since moving to New Mexico and working for the Asombro Institute, he has been an integral part of developing several K-12 programs that focus on connecting what students learn in the classroom to the Chihuahua Desert that surrounds them and spreading the message of environmental education to students all over southern New Mexico. Asombro’s engaging place-based education programs annually serve over 22,000 students. Ryan hopes that participating in the ee360 Fellowship will give him the tools to be a more effective educator and leader in his community. This fellowship is a great opportunity to lend credibility to his voice at the local and regional education table while learning and developing with people who have similar ambitions. He decided to pursue a career in EE after spending a summer teaching kids about trees as a camp counselor for a nature center. Ryan has a Bachelor’s degree in Forestry and Wildlife Biology and a Master’s degree in Natural Resources from the University of Georgia. In his spare time, he likes to play Pokémon Go with friends, read, or spend time outdoors hiking or camping with his friends and dog.

About Ryan‘s ee360 Community Action Project

For this project, Ryan and the Asombro Institute are teaming up with LandPKS developers. LandPKS has designed a mobile app and training to help remote farmers and ranchers make sustainable land management decisions. Through the training LandPKS has done, they discovered a need for basic topography and soil science education at the K-12 level. Ryan will be working closely with them to design an education module that will teach basic soil science in conjunction with the mobile app and allow students to collect and use their own soil data and compare it to soils around the globe. After completion of pilot testing and implementation with several Las Cruces, New Mexico schools, the education module will live on the Asombro Institute and LandPKS websites available to educators all over the world for free download. For New Mexico students, it means more in-depth science lessons in a region where science has been heavily de-emphasized in favor of math and literacy; it will expose students to potential careers, and make them more knowledgeable on the issues surrounding land management and soil conservation. For LandPKS, this will broaden the scope of their reach by giving them more data to support informed decision-making and help train the future farmers, ranchers, and land managers of the world. 

A former secondary science teacher and the 2015 EcoRise Teacher of the Year, Abby Randall is committed to inspiring teachers to ignite passion in a new generation of green leaders. Abby was born in London, England, raised in Hingham, Massachusetts, and spent the last decade in Austin, Texas, teaching and designing curricula for a wide variety of K–12 science courses and alternative education programs. Abby holds a B.A. in Anthropology from Trinity College and an M.S. in Agriculture, Food, and Environment from Tufts University's Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy.

In her current position as Deputy Director, Abby oversees the implementation of a wide variety of leading-edge educational resources, including sustainability and design curricula, a workforce development program focused on green building education, teacher professional development,and a K–12 grant program that brings students' green innovations to life. Abby also leads EcoRise's Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion initiatives and is responsible for leveraging and streamlinig technology to efficiently scale EcoRise's innovative programs to thousands of educators across the globe. In her free time, Abby enjoys tending her vegetable garden and backyard chickens, swimming in Barton Springs, hiking, camping, and traveling the world to visit friends and family.

About Abby‘s ee360 Community Action Project

Abby’s Community Action Project is a national Ambassador Program that aims to develop, empower, and recognize K–12 educators as leaders, changemakers, and champions of environmental literacy in their own communities. Abby’s partner organization, EcoRise, is a social enterprise based in Austin, Texas that began 11 years ago, serving one high school in East Austin. In the last decade, EcoRise has grown to support over 3,250 teachers across the country, with standards-aligned sustainability, design, and green building curriculum; professional development and support; and micro-grants for green student projects like this: https://youtu.be/JixDi-UH4FM. EcoRise plans to expand its reach to serve 4,000 educators in 10 high-impact hubs across the United States by 2020. As such, the goal of the Ambassador Program is to increase organizational capacity and grow the sustainability education movement using a community-based approach. You can learn more about the 2019-20 Ambassador Program and 2nd Annual Summer Institute and about EcoRise's Sustainable Intelligence Program at https://ecorise.org/si-program/.

Carol Raymond is the Volunteer Manager for Squam Lakes Natural Science Center in Holderness, New Hampshire. Although Holderness and its surrounding towns and city have a population of under 40,000 people, it receives strong support through its volunteer corps. In 2017, 344 volunteers donated 8,900 hours of service. In 2009, Carol introduced a new junior docent program for teen volunteers called First Guides, which trains them to be an educational presence on a native wildlife exhibit trail. In 2018, Carol added a new element to the First Guides program by inviting teens to participate in local environmental community action projects. The goals of the program are to expand the teens’ outreach and visibility in the community, to increase their skills and impact, and to offer experiential opportunities in environmental education. Staff and Fellows in the ee360 program have given tremendous support and provided an educational vehicle to start and move the Community Action Project forward. Carol has a Bachelor’s degree from Norwich University and is a mother of two and grandmother of two. She enjoys learning about local flora and fauna, gardening, and sharing the outdoors with family and friends.

About Carol‘s ee360 Community Action Project

The Squam Lakes Natural Science Center’s Community Action Project is designed specifically for teen junior docent volunteers called "First Guides", focused on community environmental concerns. Teen volunteer First Guides are encouraged to include a Community Action project during the summer months as part of their volunteer junior docent service. First Guides are between the ages of 14 and 17 years old and may be local residents or summer residents from out of state, with an average of 15 teens annually, participating. The project may be one offered through local environmental nonprofit organizations, or an opportunity at the Science Center. After participating in a project, First Guides educationally share their story and the outcomes of the project with the public through written, visual, and/or oral means virtually and in person. The goal is to increase their awareness of local environmental issues, initiate participation in a project connected to an issue and communicate through expressive means about the issues.

Corina (Cori) E. Rendón attended undergraduate and graduate programs at the State University of New York: Environmental Science and Forestry and Teton Science Schools, respectively, where she studied environmental education and place-based educaton. Cori pursued this career after growing up volunteering at a local environmental science center in her hometown on the Tex-Mex border. When she's not exploring the wonders of the Pacific Northwest you can find Cori trying out a new recipe in her kitchen.

About Cori's ee360 Community Action Project

Together with community organizations, the Siuslaw National Forest is building a community engagement program that aims to provide historically underserved communities access and information to/about public lands. Cori, the Public Affairs Specialist for the Forest, works with long-standing, local, community partners to provide free transportation to public lands with culturally relevant education and gear for participants to facilitate positive, safe experiences on public lands. Cori hopes her participation in the ee360 Fellowship will give her tools to incorporate community perspective into programming and deepen her work in community engagement. 

Carmen M. Reyes-Colón is part of the Biology Department faculty and is the Environmental Sciences Program Coordinator at the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico, Ponce Campus (PCUPR). Carmen previously worked as an environmental consultant and for the last 17 years has taught college-level courses. Carmen has a genuine commitment to environmental education with not only her students but also her local community in the southern region of Puerto Rico. She created the Environmental Sciences Conference Series at PCUPR. With these biyearly conferences, Carmen has been able to invite environmental specialists to lecture and share their research projects with the faculty, students, and community. Carmen also acts as a mentor to the Environmental Science Student Society (SECA) at PCUPR, a student association that serves as a liaison for environmental education among students, scientists, and the community. Carmen’s mentorship made it possible for SECA to receive the 2015 EPA Environmental Champion Award for Environmental Education. In 2016, Carmen was honored with the EPA Environmental Champion Award for her contributions to environmental education in her community. Carmen holds a Master’s degree in Science from the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez Campus. As a result of the NAAEE scholarship and her participation in different workshops and webinars, she enrolled in an online course on the Sustainable Development Goals offered by the Argentine Senate. During the summer of 2019, Carmen was certified as a Sustainable Development Goals Promoter. In her free time, Carmen bakes desserts and enjoys the beach with family and friends. 

About Carmen‘s ee360 Community Action Project

Carmen's ee360 Community Action Project consists of the creation of an urban garden at a public school in the municipality of Ponce. The creation of this project will allow residents of the community to have access to fresh food during the year but more importantly during a natural disaster. The project's main goal is to elevate the importance that urban gardens represent in their daily lives and in times of emergencies, especially due to the dependence that Puerto Ricans have on imported food. Carmen has helped build community resilience by having local residents produce their own fresh food, available during emergencies such as hurricanes. The project has included a series of workshops, selection, and preparation for the area, seed selection and planting, and eventual harvest of the crops. The purpose of this project is to create awareness of the importance of emergency preparedness for the school communities within Ponce and southern Puerto Rico. Carmen has collaborated with multiple organizations like USDA Farm Service Agency, the Department of Agriculture of Puerto Rico, Sierra Club Student Coalition (Puerto Rico Chapter), and local farmers.  

Tracey Ritchie is the Director of Education for Earth Day Network, a global environmental nonprofit organization working to expand climate and environmental literacy worldwide. Tracey’s biggest priority is developing plans to mobilize students from around the world to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in 2020. Prior to joining the Earth Day Network team in January 2018, she was adjunct faculty at the University of Florida and has held positions from Florida to North Carolina, managing and facilitating environmental education programs ranging from sea turtle walks to birding adventures, and local green book clubs to statewide water education programs. Tracey completed her Ph.D. at the University of Florida in 2017. Her research focused on developing systems-thinking skills in students and teachers to more effectively communicate about complex environmental issues such as climate change. Tracey has an extensive background in program development and evaluation, facilitating professional development for educators, social science research methodologies, and Environmental Education best practices. She also holds a Master’s degree in Environmental Education from Florida Atlantic University and a Bachelor’s degree from UF in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation. Tracey has been active in the field of Environmental Education for over 12 years and has been an active member of the Florida, North Carolina, and DC affiliates of the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE). Tracey is looking forward to learning from this accomplished group of environmental educators on how to develop resources, curricula, and messaging that is appropriate and appealing to a global audience.

About Tracey‘s ee360 Community Action Project

Tracey’s ee360 Community Action Project focuses on developing environmental literacy and civic engagement skills in students of her new community in Washington, DC as well as across the globe. In her role as Director of Education for Earth Day Network, she strives to achieve the mission to diversify, educate, and activate the environmental movement worldwide. Her project will provide her the opportunity to not only reinvigorate a long-standing EDN program but also connect with her new local surroundings and community members. Tracey’s goal of high-quality environmental education combined with civic education will ultimately take the form of Global Teach-Ins for Earth Day 2020. The project now includes a pilot train the trainer program with a group of international youth who attended the Earth Echo International Youth Leadership Council summit hosted in Washington, DC in August 2019. This training will be adapted for a wider audience and can be implemented by schools, faith institutions, or community groups around the world for Earth Day 2020. 

The very first Earth Day in 1970 was designed as an Environmental Teach-In and we are looking to revitalize this community-based discussion tool for the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day in 2020. With new resources focusing on topics such as local impacts of climate change, threats to biodiversity, plastic pollution, and much more, communities will be able to gather to discuss how their environment and local ecosystems are changing, and what they can do together to take action to protect their health, safety, and natural resources. The new teach-in resources will be translated into multiple languages and be adaptable to different community settings. There will also be opportunities for teach-ins to occur in virtual spaces. The teach-ins will take place all across 2020, though many will happen on and around Earth Day in April. Tracey is looking to track impacts of teach-ins through local policy implementation and through participation in the Earth Challenge 2020, citizen science platform. 

Erin Saunders is the Education Programs Director at Thorne Nature Experience. Erin leads community environmental education programming with a staff of 14 in Boulder County that serves more than 12,000 youth each year. Thorne believes that ALL children should have the opportunity to connect to nature and has been the backbone organization in a collective impact project reaching an additional 10,000 participants each year and providing more than $400,000 in scholarships annually to low-income families. Thorne’s programs build empathy and an emotional connection to nature through joyful, hands-on, place-based environmental education experiences. Erin hopes that her participation in the ee360 Fellowship will help her design a nature preschool program, based on best practices, and allow young learners to develop a lifelong connection to nature through frequent experiences playing in nature. Erin pursued a career in EE because of her own love of nature since childhood and a belief that having the opportunity to spend time in nature with a mentor will result in adult stewardship. Erin holds a BSc in Zoology and Botany from the University of Washington and the University of Melbourne in Australia. Erin enjoys live music and dancing at Red Rocks, traveling, hiking, and spends most of her free time exploring and playing with her two young boys in nature.

About Erin's ee360 Community Action Project

Erin's Community Action Project was to build the first childcare licensed nature preschool in Boulder, Colorado. Thorne Nature Preschool is built on the simple belief that kids grow better in nature. The Preschool offers a unique early childhood education experience for young children to learn, grow, and reach their full potential, through daily immersion in nature with caring, attentive mentors. With dual goals of fostering the development of the whole-child and nature connection, Thorne Nature Preschool prepares young children to succeed in school and in life. Thorne’s youngest participants will develop an array of life skills including academic preparedness, empathy for themselves and others, a sense of place, and a love of learning (to name a few) that they can take with them for the rest of their lives.

Anita Singh is a program manager and youth educator with Keep Growing Detroit (KGD), a garden resources organization supporting 1500 gardens across Detroit. Anita builds and manages KGD’s Youth Leadership Program and Summer Youth Apprentice Program, and develops the capacity of gardens and youth-serving organizations working in the food system. She also works to build the capacity of young people to affect change in the food system. Anita mentors and develops a staff of 6 youth and young adult leaders and collaborates with 30 community organizations to reach more than 1,000 young people per year. She hopes that her participation in the ee360 Fellowship will help her build a sustaining alumni engagement program for her graduated youth leaders and participants. Anita pursued a career in farm-based education and leadership after witnessing the powerful growth and transformation of her HS science students on an Outward Bound trip. She is an educator and farm owner with eleven years of teaching, mentorship, and curriculum development experience. She holds a Master’s Degree in Secondary Science Education and uses farming as a medium to connect food to justice and leadership. In her free time, Anita is interested in reclaiming the relationship that folks of color have with the outdoors.

About Anita‘s ee360 Community Action Project

Anita has partnered with Quilden Blackwell to develop an educational, off grid sustainable flower farm as a part of her community action project. The farm is a collaboration between, Get Down Farm and EcoHouse on Eastside of Detroit. We built from the ground up transforming a vacant lot into a sustainable production flower farm while providing education to the communiy and opportunity for future youth employment. The project will further build the capacity of Chicago EcoHouse to impact the local community in Detroit and we plan to continue our partnership as we grow the capacity of Detroit EcoHouse.

Elizabeth brings 20 years of professional experience in and outside the classroom to the 2018 ee360 Fellowship cohort. She started her career in Wildlife Biology working on the Spotted Owl Demographic Study and Sensitive Endemic Plant Species Project in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. She taught Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Science in various schools both public and private, urban and suburban. She is an avid volunteer for various community organizations, including serving as the Chair of the Houston Regional Group of the Sierra Club and being an active member of the Houston Climate Movement, Zero Waste Houston, and the Coalition for Environment, Equity, and Resilience. Elizabeth has launched campaigns and projects and collaborated in different ways to educate the public and advocate for the natural environment, such as the Single Use Plastic Rating Tool, Young Adult Sustainability, Rapid Response, Post Harvey recovery, 5th Ward Beautification, and the Spotlight on Sierrans series. Elizabeth has strong interests in air quality, climate change, plastic pollution, women’s issues, youth engagement, and environmental ethics and justice.

About Elizabeth‘s ee360 Community Action Project

Elizabeth is very excited to be an ee360 Fellow. She seeks to assist Breathe DC as it expands its Community Health program to include air quality education to high schools in metropolitan DC. Together, with technical assistance from the Baltimore-Washington Chapter of the Air and Waste Management Association, they will create clean air advocates. They will establish and support a network of students from area high schools to monitor air quality and share geographic and seasonal ozone and particulate data. High schoolers will ultimately convene at a student-led conference to ask community leaders, from the government, business, and nonprofits, for mitigation strategies for local ozone and particulate pollution. The project essentially bridges environmental education to advocacy, inspiring young people to engage in civic life.

Alexandra ‘Ali’ Stefancich is a Community Education Specialist at the University of California’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resource’s Sierra Foothill Research and Extension Center (SFREC). Ali has been at SFREC for over three years and in that time has developed all-new youth science-education programs that now serve over 1,500 local students a year. Run with the help of a team of dedicated volunteers, these programs give students a chance to get out in the field and do hands-on science. Ali loves being involved in environmental education because she loves young people and nature and hopes that her programs will help connect students to their local ecosystems and increase their understanding and enjoyment of science. She is excited to be a part of the ee360 Fellowship for the opportunity to learn from so many innovators in the field and to apply that increased expertise towards building youth fire-science education programming at her site. Ali has always loved spending time outside, playing with plants and animals, which lead her to pursue a degree in Ecology at The Evergreen State College. Since graduating, Ali has worked at a variety of nonprofits doing restoration, environmental monitoring, and, of course teaching young people about nature. In her free time, Ali enjoys going on outdoor adventures, spending time with loved ones, making silly crafts, and hanging out with her awesome cat, Libby.

About Ali‘s ee360 Community Action Project

Catastrophic wildfires have become an ever-increasing problem in California due to decades of fire suppression and changes in climate. In an effort to address this problem, Ali has adopted a wildfire science and preparedness education program. This multifaceted program includes the adaptation of the FireWorks Curriculum to local Northern California Oak Woodlands including developing and integrating Native Californian's traditional use of fire as a land management tool and cultural significance. The Fireworks Curriculum is being used for teacher training, classroom visits, and field days. Additionally, Ali and her team are developing an Advanced California Naturalist training focusing on understanding wildfire and prescribed fire; and fostering the support of local Fire Safe Council's outreach effort toward building communities resilience to wildfire risks. The aim of this project is to foster wise land management decision making among our local communities to create resilience to caastrophic wildfire and to help shift thinking around the importance of fire in the local ecosystems. 

Katherine Straus is the Public Education and Outreach Coordinator for the City of Federal Way’s Surface Water Management Division. She works with community groups, residents, businesses, students, and a regional network of stormwater educators to address polluted stormwater runoff through education, community involvement, and targeted behavior change. In her career as an environmental educator, Katherine has always sought to help people view the places they live through a new lens; to help them discover that “nature” doesn’t just exist in some faraway place, but is something that starts at our own backdoors. Katherine is thrilled to be an ee360 Fellow and to have the opportunity to expand and improve upon a successful salmon education program by making it more relevant to high school students. Katherine holds a BA in Environmental Studies from Vassar College and an MA in Education from the University of Washington. In her free time, Katherine helps lead Seattle Zero Waste, a volunteer-run community of people trying to live with less waste. She also loves getting outside, whatever the season, and taking advantage of all of the outdoor opportunities that Seattle has to offer.

About Katherine‘s ee360 Community Action Project

Storm drains are a critical, yet often overlooked piece of city infrastructure. Many residents are not aware of the important role that storm drains play in flood prevention, and do not realize that stormwater flows untreated, directly into local lakes and streams, and eventually into Puget Sound. Stormwater is the number one source of pollution entering Puget Sound today. The City of Federal Way Storm Drain ArtWalk Project seeks to use art to engage residents in conversations about stormwater in a fun, creative, and visual way. The Storm Drain ArtWalk Project will communicate the values of our City and remind residents that our neighborhoods are directly connected to our streams and Puget Sound. The project will help the City meet state mandated education and outreach requirements in an innovative way, while also supporting local artists, adding value to the City’s public spaces, and reaching a wider audience with stormwater education messages. 

Katherine’s Community Action project, “Storming the Sound with Salmon” (SSS) is a partnership between the City of Federal Way and Federal Way Public Schools that uses salmon as the lens through which students learn about stormwater pollution. Federal Way borders Puget Sound, where stormwater runoff is the single largest threat to water quality. The program is designed to teach students about their local watersheds and empower them to take everyday actions that prevent stormwater pollution, while also helping teachers meet the Next Generation Science Standards. Every school in the district participates in SSS by raising Coho salmon in their schools over the course of the school year. In May, primary schools participate in the “Release Event”, where students release their fry into a local creek and learn from local organizations about different water-related topics. Unfortunately, high school students in the district do not currently participate in a similar culminating event. This project seeks to make SSS more relevant to high school students in the district by incorporating a project-based learning component into the program. Students will conduct water quality monitoring at a local site within their school’s watershed, identify a problem based on the data they collect and conduct research to propose a practical solution. The goal of the project is to inspire students to become engaged stewards of their own communities and ultimately, to improve water quality in Federal Way and the Puget Sound region.

Nina Suzuki is the Waterway Steward at the University of California Davis (UC Davis) Arboretum and Public Garden. She is responsible for the maintenance and enhancement of the Arboretum Waterway, which is currently undergoing a major transformation. Nina has more than 13 years of experience in outdoor environmental education, with students in high school through college, as well as local community members. She has focused especially on youth development, cultural relevance, inclusion, and building community with private and public entities. The ee360 Fellowship is broadening Nina’s network of environmental educators and community leaders, which will support Nina and her team of students as they transform the UC Davis Arboretum Waterway from a stormwater channel to an ecologically vibrant public space for community-engaged learning and scholarship. Nina holds a B.S. in Landscape Architecture from UC Davis, with a minor in Landscape Restoration.

Nina is creating a community and citizen science program at the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden to monitor water and habitat quality in the Arboretum Waterway while developing community members and students as experts on their local urban watershed. The goals are to improve water quality, reduce pollution, increase student and visitor engagement and environmental literacy, and create a system of data collection that will inform future land and water management. The program will involve collecting regular water samples and lab processing; taking water quality readings in the field; asking visitors to record observations; and creating interactive stations that actively improve or monitor water quality, provide information about the waterway and/or ask visitors to make scientific observations.

The UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden spans the campus’s 5300-plus acres and includes the historic Arboretum—a 100-plus acre campus and regional amenity comprised of demonstration gardens and scientific collections, as well as the Putah Creek Riparian Reserve—a rare stream and grassland ecosystem managed for teaching, research, wildlife, and habitat protection.

The Arboretum’s purpose is to inspire human potential to help people and environments thrive. To that end, the campus grounds are stewarded as a resource for engaging and inspiring students to become environmental leaders, for the public to learn about climate change and the importance of regionally appropriate gardening practices, for visitors to explore the academic richness of UC Davis informally, and so much more!

By utilizing unique skills that combine sustainable horticulture knowledge with over 80 years of public engagement experience, the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden team is transforming its campus grounds into an outdoor museum and living laboratory in support of the university’s wide-ranging academic expertise.

About Nina‘s ee360 Community Action Project

Nina’s Community Action Project is to develop a community and citizen science water quality-monitoring program for the Arboretum Waterway. 

UC Davis is renovating this central piece of stormwater infrastructure to improve ecosystem function and water quality in the Arboretum Waterway, and downstream in Putah Creek, which flows into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and eventually to the Pacific Ocean. 

This water quality-monitoring program will engage the community in learning about stormwater, treated recycled wastewater, and riparian habitat; collecting and sharing data that will inform future management and design; and improving the health of the waterway. 
There could be multiple tiers of involvement: interactive museum exhibits for any visitor to record and share observations, as well as trained community volunteers and UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden Learning by Leading™ undergraduate students using water quality monitoring and habitat assessment protocols and developing their own research questions. 

The UC Davis Center for Community and Citizen Science is helping to catalyze partnerships on and off campus that support this work and Nina is currently exploring additional partner opportunities. Through this project, Nina hopes to invite the whole community to participate in making critical observations, collecting data, and increasing green infrastructure and water quality improvements that benefit the Putah Creek Watershed.

2021 EE 30 Under 30 Changemaker Grant Project
Building Leadership Capacity in YEAS Student Ambassadors

The Youth Environmental Action Summit (YEAS) is a community-based program that brings together 150 students each year in a forum to make positive environmental change in their communities. Since its inception, students have been involved in all aspects of the program including planning and design to ensure that it truly supports their interests. This Changemaker Grant will enable YEAS to build new capacities in Ambassadors by more thoroughly incorporating leadership development through a series of professional development opportunities and a student leadership retreat. Additionally, YEAS will put into practice a long-standing interest in compensating students for their meaningful work through stipends.

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2019 #WhereAreTheyNow Update

Through the ee360 Fellowship, Elise has…

Stephanie Ung is a U.S. American woman with Cambodian, Filipinx, and Chinese heritage. She was born and raised in the sunny suburbs of southern California (Chumash territory) and currently resides in Coast Salish land (Suquamish and Duwamish territories) that is known to many settlers today as Seattle, Washington. Stephanie most recently served as a Naturalist for Seattle Parks and Recreation, focused on community-based environmental education in the southeast region of Seattle. She currently serves as a Program Manager for the University of Washington GEAR UP Achievers, a college access program focused on students of color, low-income students, and/or first-generation college students. As an environmental educator, she knows that education is an important ingredient in the recipe for change on a local and global level. Stephanie serves on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee for the YMCA Earth Service Corps' Advisory Board and is an active member of the Environmental Professionals of Color-Seattle. Stephanie enrolled in the inaugural cohort of IslandWood and Antioch University-Seattle's Urban Environmental Education Graduate Program, in which she achieved a Master's degree in Urban Environmental Education (M.A.Ed). Stephanie finds solace in catching up with her family, making and eating delicious food with friends, and attending community events to stay engaged and connected. 

About Stephanie‘s ee360 Community Action Project

Sadhu for Green is an initiative created and led by Fellow Stephanie Ung and a Khmer community leader and former Buddhist monk, Prenz Sa-Ngoun. It is rooted in environmental education created for and led by members of the Khmer community, to bridge generations of the Khmer diaspora through education and connections to the environment we live in. Stephanie and her team facilitate workshops and coordinate environmental learning experiences to raise awareness of environmental systems impacting the Khmer community. Stephanie has worked closely with Prenz and other community leaders to host workshops at a local Khmer Buddhist temple called Wat Khemarak Pothiram, and have attracted a wide range of participants by combining workshop topics with meditation sessions and Dhamma talks. The Khmer community celebrated Sadhu for Green by focusing on environmental health at the 2nd Annual Khmer Community Potluck. Stephanie has invested ee360 mini-grant funds in community leaders who are enthusiastically carrying Sadhu for Green’s work forward with her support. Sadhu for Green will continue to grow and morph as more community leaders emerge and take the project in new directions.

Madison ‘Madi’ Vorva currently leads community engagement at the University of Michigan’s Michigan Sustainability Cases initiative. She is also the Roots & Shoots Committee Chair on the Board of Directors of the Jane Goodall Institute. Passionate about the power of media for education, Madi previously co-hosted a national STEM television show on FOX affiliate stations. Notable shoots included the White House Science Fair, UN Paris Climate Negotiations, and the Women’s March Los Angeles. In high school, Madi ran a successful campaign for deforestation-free palm oil in Girl Scout cookies. As an ee360 Fellow, she is using community mapping to facilitate intergenerational exchange between Rotary clubs and youth on sustainable development solutions. This fall, Madi will pursue her MPhil in Environmental Policy at the University of Cambridge through the support of a Rotary International Global Scholarship. She loves to dance, hike…

Xin Yu aka "Fish" is Youth Engagement Director of The Nature Conservancy, China, responsible for strategic development and implementation of environmental education in China by collaborating with EE experts, education entrepreneurs, schoolmasters, educators, and officials, etc. He and his team are currently adapting TNC’s E-STEM course for adoption and application with Chinese context and aiming to reach one million students. Fish expects that the ee360 Fellowship will help the TNC program provide broader insights and a more practical understanding of environmental education in China. Fish believes that education is the key to delivering sustainability for humanity. Prior to joining the Conservancy, he was Head of Programs for Amway Charity Foundation in China- And previously, he used to work as Public Engagement Compaigner for Greenpeace East Asia. Fish holds an MSc in Environment and Sustainable Development from University College London. He enjoys photography, music, acting, swimming, and hiking with friends in his free time.

About Fish‘s ee360 Community Action Project

Environment-themed STEM education has a unique advantage to work with the formal education sector and to play an important role in making environmental education a natural part of China’s traditional education system. Fish’s ee360 Community Action project aims to reach one million students by adopting TNC’s Nature Works Everywhere, E-STEM curriculum of virtual field trips and Project-Based-Learning courses with localized contents according to the Chinese context. Young students from grades 3-12 are given the opportunity to learn about real-world environmental challenges by practicing green infrastructure construction and practicing citizen science around biodiversity, and more with their hands and minds. Teachers are being connected and trained to become more capable of teaching interactively as mentors. Students in cities and rural areas will learn to analyze complicated issues, work together to create practical solutions, establish awareness of environmental challenges, and grow their confidence in solving those problems with a concern for humanity. The project is building partnerships between and among governments, schools, other educational institutions, as well as individual educators to be able to provide alternatives to orthodox teaching and make education more sustainable in China.