NSF Awards NCSE $1.67 Million for Climate Change Education

September 9, 2009

The National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) has been awarded a three-year grant of $1,666,820 by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to create a nationwide cyber-enabled learning community for solutions to climate change, CAMEL (Climate, Adaptation, and Mitigation e-L earning). CAMEL will engage faculty and other experts in developing a virtual toolbox of curricular resources for teaching about causes, consequences, and especially solutions to climate change.

The project was developed by the Council of Environmental Deans and Directors (CEDD), which is managed by NCSE.  The lead investigators on the project are David Hassenzahl (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), Arnold Bloom (University of California, Davis), Barry Benedict (University of Texas at El Paso), CEDD President Stephanie Pfirman (Barnard College, Columbia University), Jean MacGregor (The Evergreen State College), Andy Jorgensen (University of Toledo) and CEDD Executive Secretary David E. Blockstein (NCSE). Dr. Jorgensen took the lead in preparing the proposal as a Senior Fellow with NCSE during a recently completed sabbatical.    

CAMEL will engage leaders in climate research and in curriculum and faculty development to integrate up-to-date content with state-of-the-art educational practice. The project focuses on creating content ranging from general education to upper-level courses for students in a variety of majors. The online learning community aims to encourage faculty to share knowledge and best practices on how to involve students in a range of learning activities, including research. A s expert contributors and the learning community develop content and curricular resources, they will be made freely available nationally and internationally for faculty and educators to adapt, use, and evaluate through NSCE's Encyclopedia of the Earth and Cyber-ShARE  hosted by the University of Texas at El Paso.

The NSF grant follows a smaller grant from NASA for the project, Creation and Dissemination of an Interdisciplinary Undergraduate General Education Course on Climate Change. Under this grant, faculty at more than 20 NCSE University Affiliate schools will (a) develop a virtual tool chest of curricular modules and resources on how to teach about climate change using the latest NASA Earth observation data, Earth system models, and visualization tools and (b) use them in introductory courses over the next two years.

The CAMEL project will commence in October. Presentations on CAMEL will take place during the upcoming meeting of the Association for Environmental Studies and Sciences (AESS) in Madison, WI from October 8-11, as well as at the meetings of CEDD in Washington, DC on January 23, 2010 and at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO from July 6-8, 2010.

More information on CAMEL, including a PowerPoint presentation by lead PI David Hassenzahl and a video thereof, can be found at the CEDD website.

If you are interested in contributing existing curricular resources, developing new resources, and incorporating them into teaching, please contact Heidi Fuchs at HFuchs@NCSEonline.org .

NSF grant no.: DUE-0950396