Overview

At the dawn of an exciting new continental-scale approach to ecology, the Ecological Society of America (ESA) is working with key partners to  develop a coherent strategy that will introduce to the educational community, the opportunities and the data to be available from the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON).   This program has been made possible by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Projects

2012-2013

Two workshops led by ESA:

Scaling Up: Joint Workshops on Continental-scale Population and Community Ecology and Education

  • Future of Environmental Decisions College Student Workshop II (organized by ESA Education and Diversity Programs office)
  • Early Career Scientists Workshop (organized by ESA Science office)

Call for Applications:  Opportunity for Faculty from Minority-Serving Institutions to Join Macroscale Ecology Education Leadership Team. Deadline November 5, 2012.

Two workshops led by Science and Engineering Alliance

Developing Research and Teaching Capacity in the Ecological Sciences at Minority-Serving Institutions (MSIs)

These workshops are planned to take place at the 2013 ESA Annual Meeting. Stay tuned for more information.

  • Workshop #1: Involvement of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs andMinority-Serving Institutions (MSIs) in the Implementation of National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) Physical and Information Infrastructures and Protocols (organized by SEA)
  • Workshop #2: Engaging HBCUs and MSIs in Education Using Large Scale Datasets (organized by ESA)

2009-2011

NCEAS Distributed Seminar (derived from 2008 workshop and with a subset of previous participants)

Cultivating the Participation of Underrepresented Institutions and Students in NEON. Press Release: Ecological Society of America and partners receive $207K NSF grant

2008-2009

Faculty development workshops in Washington, DC and Albuquerque, NM.

Development of a Conceptual Framework for Continental-scale Ecology Education.

 

Program Goals

Through several related projects, ESA is gathering feedback from:

  1. faculty on educational needs, perceived obstacles, and recommendations on how to use continental-scale data in the classroom,
  2. minority-serving institutions and Historically Black Colleges and Universities on their capabilities in connection with NEON-enabled science and
  3. digitally sophisticated college students on innovative ways to represent and engage with NEON data.

Since education has been conceived as a primary benefit of the NEON infrastructure (NEON Integrated Science and Education Plan, 2006), these projects will help shape NEON’s cyberinfrastructure and educational programming to ensure that continental-scale science reaches the diverse faculty and students in the undergraduate community.

 

Partner organizations

Please see the Partners page.

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