Melissa Strongman’s Presentation at the US Capitol for SENCER-ISE. for Lindsay Wildlife Experience. Here are the pictures from her time in Washington DC, followed by an explanation of what SENCER-ISE is and does.
SENCER-ISE places the work of the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement at the forefront of educational practice in that it supports and evaluates cross sector partnerships between higher education and informal science education institutions. This project is a partnership between St. Mary’s College and Lindsay Wildlife Experience.
SENCER-ISE’s goals are to create durable institutional partnerships between the sectors and to emphasize the importance of informal science educational institutions and activities as credible sources of high quality, lifelong learning on matters of science, public policy, personal well-being, and public welfare.
Funded by the National Science Foundation and the Noyce Foundation, SENCER-ISE
● supports ten Civic Engagement Partnerships,
● Encourages intra and inter partnership communication through in person and online meetings and through postings on the project website,
● Provides infrastructure support and consultation to the partnerships on evaluation practices and operational matters, and
● disseminates to the wider educational community the results of partnership activities and resource materials related to evaluation outcomes, best practices for sustaining partnerships, and more.
Overall, SENCER-ISE creates networks in which awardees can learn from each other, engage in common reflective activities, and create models of collaboration. Beneficiaries include higher education faculty, informal science education professionals, students, and the general public.
Melissa’s Projects are: Preserving Wildlife Habitats and Empowering Students: A Growing Partnership
Saint Mary’s College of California and Lindsay Wildlife Experience recently began a partnership on numerous educational endeavors. Using SENCER-ISE support, the two institutions are successfully completing projects and discovering new avenues of collaboration, which are explored in this presentation. These two SENCER-ISE projects are 1) the creation of an iPhone app launched in June of 2014 and 2) the mapping of McNabney Marsh, which will continue this Fall. The Lindsay Wildlife Experience app was designed to educate the public about how to interact with California’s wildlife. The students and faculty at Saint Mary’s College created an app that was both instructional for the students and could also be used by the public. A number of challenges were addressed, such as personnel changes and intellectual property rights. The mapping project was designed with two sampling years (2013 and 2015) to measure change on this marsh.
Student generated maps were recorded and improvements in this educational endeavor were incorporated for the October 2015 sampling. The two major challenges that have arisen are a delay in the construction of wider tidal access into the marsh, and the California drought. The new avenues of collaboration have grown from the interaction on the two defined projects and the two institutions have begun recognizing the benefit of their partnership.
About the Author: Ken Strongman (www.kpstrongman.com) has years of experience and a growing national reputation as a mediator and arbitrator. He has successfully resolved more than a thousand disputes in the fields of construction defects, real estate, intellectual property, and employment. He is also a Mediator and Arbitrator for FINRA.
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