Strategic Planning, Evaluation and Current Issues in LTER Education

 

Sonia Ortega

 

 

Education representatives from 23 LTER sites met to discuss issues of common interests.

Sonia Ortega, Education Director from the LTER Network Office welcomed attendants and served as facilitator during the meeting.

 

Jim Gosz, Chair of LTER Coordination Committee presented an overview of the LTER Network future plans. This included the development of a planning grant for submission to the National Science Foundation. He described how the Network is working towards the creation of a broad comprehensive plan that addresses the major challenges in environmental sciences. He urged education representatives to get directly involved in the ongoing discussion groups.  After his presentation, people volunteered to link with the 7 ongoing groups as follows:

 

  1. Charlene Saltz – Water issues
  2. John O’Keefe – Biodiversity
  3. Stephanie Bestelmeyer – Climate Change
  4. Ali Whitmer – Human/Ecosystem coupling
  5. Susan Steiner – Extinctions
  6. Alan Berkowitz/ Tim Parshall – Engineering Ecosystems
  7. Steve Mc Gee – Landscape

 

Ali Whitmer and John Moore volunteered to attend the upcoming planning grant meeting. Subsequently, the LTER Executive Committee selected Ali Whitmer.

 

Valerie Wright presented a summary of a Workshop that took place at the Konza Prairie in the spring. One of the products of this workshop is the development of an LTER Education Handbook.

 

David Kirshtel, evaluation expert from the U. of Washington explored possible ways to assess education programs at LTER. He described 1) the importance of using multiple kinds of data to assess programs and, 2) how often research data are used to make instructional decisions. He worked with workshop attendants in the development of program goals to align with data.

 

The rest of the workshop was devoted to discuss specific topics by working groups:

 

  1. Education Strategic Plan – It was revised and several suggestions were made to include in the next version.
  2. Instructional Materials – The development of biomes and a proposal for NSF were discussed.
  3. Education Handbook – Progress was made, timeline for completion was established.

 

LTER representatives decided to keep the same members for the Education Executive Committee for another year.