This three-year project will provide an intensive five-week summer educational program in Marine Sciences for middle through high school science teachers involved in teacher training and workshops in their home states. The program is designed to provide teachers with a general knowledge of Marine Sciences, ideas for field and lab work that they can implement in their classrooms and teach others and, most importantly, a practical experience of working and living at sea. The shore-based, three-week component will be held in Woods Hole and will consist of an intensive fifty hour course of lectures, labs, workshops, and field trips in Marine Sciences. This course will emphasize the basic concepts in physics, chemistry, geology, and biology that can be conveyed to students through studies of the ocean, and will be directed towards development of curricula to be implemented in the classrooms of these teachers. In addition, two short lecture series -- one entitled "The United States and the Sea" and the other on various topics in Nautical Science -- will be presented to enhance the subsequent experience that the teachers will have at sea. This final two weeks will then be spent on board a fully equipped oceanographic sailing research vessel where the practical hands-on experience of carrying out a research project and participating in the operation of one of the few remaining "tall ships" that practice marine research. This extraordinary experience will expand the participants scientific knowledge base, help them to understand current methodology of scientific research, and revitalize their teaching. The cost sharing will be sixteen percent of the NSF portion.
