DEQ’s Office of Environmental Education supports outreach events, such as the one shown above where a DEQ biologist talks to community members about water quality.
Program of the Month:
Environmental Education
The Virginia Office of Environmental Education works to educate citizens and communities across the Commonwealth with a goal of providing the foundation for lifelong stewardship of the environment.
“Educating people about Virginia’s natural resources is the key to providing for our future,” said Ann Regn, director of the Virginia Office of Environmental Education at the Department of Environmental Quality.
As Virginia’s clearinghouse for environmental education and information, DEQ works with public and private organizations to deliver high-quality education programs that meet state academic standards and engage citizens in conservation activities. The education office performs numerous functions, including coordinating a statewide network, facilitating community involvement, awarding grants, and training classroom and community educators.
The group’s guiding philosophies stem from the business plan for environmental education developed by the Virginia Environmental Education Commission. The plan details goals and measurable objectives for kindergarten through twelfth grade schools, colleges and universities, and community-based programs. DEQ primarily supports the K-12 and community goals.
The office also provides staff support for the Virginia Resource-Use Education Council, whose members include representatives from state and federal education programs. The council is also the advisory board for Virginia Naturally and manages the program’s financial resources.
Virginia Naturally is a gateway to information about the environment via the web and includes more than 600 partners, including environmental groups, museums, educators and private organizations that form a network of resources.
“Partners are able to easily disseminate information to thousands of people each month,” Regn said, and the network continues to reach new milestones as it nears its fifth year in operation.
Since March 2005 more than 180 organizations have joined as new partners, and the Virginia Naturally website has received more than 50,000 “hits” or visits by Internet users during the last year.
Using education and public participation techniques, the education office also works to involve communities around Virginia in DEQ activities. The office promotes early and frequent engagement in DEQ’s regulatory and non-regulatory actions, and encourages citizens to participate effectively in environmental decisions that affect them and their communities. Some recent examples include a collaborative effort to address air quality issues along the Interstate 81 corridor, a focused seminar on waste and pre-treatment issues in the New River Valley, a community meeting with local officials and residents about landfill issues in Patrick County, and a stakeholders’ forum concerning water quality at Lake Anna.
Through partnerships with government agencies, businesses and environmental organizations, the office helps direct resources to build local programs. DEQ supports these programs by awarding grants to qualified teachers, school divisions and community groups.
Since 2002 the office has given $257,200 in more than 300 small grants to 83 of the 132 school divisions in the state. The grants range from $500 to $1,000 and are provided by private sponsors. Nearly a third of the grants support outdoor classrooms and every school that applies must have a community partner. Small grants are also awarded to community partners for meaningful watershed education and outdoor classrooms.
“A specific goal is to have an outdoor classroom for every school in the Commonwealth,” Regn said, and these grants support that effort.
Outdoor classrooms, or outdoor spaces set aside for science-based investigations, also help Virginia achieve its Chesapeake 2000 Agreement goal of providing every student with a meaningful outdoor educational experience.
The office is also heavily involved in professional development for educators. For the past three years, the office has offered the Sixth Grade Science Standards Institutes. During the courses, instructors from DEQ and other Virginia natural resource agencies train participants on new classroom and field techniques for teaching the Standards of Learning, with an emphasis on environmental management.
The education office, with support from the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, sponsors Project WET, a national training program on water issues. DEQ has nearly 25 volunteer instructors who help train nearly 1,000 community and classroom educators each year using Project WET’s curriculum guides.
These training efforts are “building capacity at the local level for communities to deliver quality environmental education and participate in stewardship and decision-making,” Regn said.
The education office will be combining its goals of training and networking this September at the 2006 Virginia Environmental Education Conference and second annual meeting for Virginia Naturally partners. The meeting will take place September 19 and 20 at Smith Mountain Lake in south central Virginia. Registration forms, available on the Virginia Naturally website, will be accepted until August 25, 2006.