OOS 3-8
The role of community college administrators in enhancing diversity of ecologists, environmental literacy, and conservation
The mission of community colleges is to provide access to higher education to the most diverse group of students, meet the workforce development needs and be the catalyst for problem-solving in their regions. As a result, they are poised to have environmental education programs that provide hands-on learning experiences focused on issues of local concern. The colleges’ necessary partnerships with local industry can result in internships with technological, quality control and public policy experiences that are encountered in environmental careers. Whether urban or rural, community colleges focus on environmental education that showcases applied research techniques, interdisciplinary connections and civic engagement. I will discuss how these administrators are currently engaging local policy makers, non-profit organizations, industry and K-12 schools to enhance ecoliteracy, conservation and the environmental workforce development in their regions.
Results/Conclusions
Community college administrators respond to their community environmental needs by: encouraging and supporting campus ecology and service learning, promoting sustainable agriculture or “green jobs” lecture series, engaging alumni in environmental fields to come and speak on campus, facilitating establishment and care of community- themed gardens, and encouraging the integration of industry-based technology in the interdisciplinary curriculum of environmental science programs. They also promote program articulation with four-year university environmental curricula which further increases the diversity of students in higher education, especially in environmental engineering and in curricula that integrates the social sciences in conservation. Their emphasis on teacher education promotes educational outreach to younger age levels, and increased connections to local sustainable food providers, farm-to-table initiatives, non-profit environmental education centers, generating case studies for use in classroom instruction, and civic engagement activities. The current emphasis on dual enrollment programs in which high school students take college courses for double credit also leads to many types of environmental education collaborations with local high schools, through environmental health, nutritional education and community conservation. Often the high schools are co-located on college grounds, allowing for joint efforts in recycling and energy conservation. Ultimately, the demand for community colleges to be the cultural hub and problem-solver for their service regions, allows their administrators much flexibility to obtain and deploy resources towards environmental projects. Ecologists need to take advantage of these ongoing community partnerships and develop these pathways of administrative support to increase the diversity of students engaged in ecological study, appreciation and promotion of ecological best practices.