This award provides funding to The New England Aquarium (NEAq), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and the University of Massachusetts (UMass) for development of a New England Regional Center for Ocean Science Education Excellence (NER-COSEE). This center will focus on capacity building in the New England region by: 1) providing educators (teachers and other formal and informal educators) with multiple tools to create programs and curricula that convey knowledge of the oceans, and 2) providing research scientists and scholars the means and training to be more effectively involved in K-12 education and undergraduate formal and informal education. All three partners are highly visible centers of public education, outreach and ocean science research and work with a wide network of educators from public, private and informal education centers. In addition, U.Mass has an extensive track record in educating under-served students and has a strong teacher-training program. Activities will include working with informal educators throughout the region via workshops and by providing a pool of resources for prototyping and evaluation; working with researchers to help them learn to communicate effectively with teachers, informal educators, students, and journalists, and providing them with a network by which they may collaborate with educators and the media; working with K-12 educators to develop innovative curriculum modules that teach national and state science standards using ocean science, and to assist in the development of networks and programs that recruit and train more qualified K-12 science teachers. The NER-COSEE will initially work with the Global Learning Center School/New Bedford Public School and Harbor School in Boston to pilot test and evaluate programs. They will also create a Resource Center, housed in the NEAq's Education Center that will make resources available for broad distribution.
