Page 28 - UD Research Magazine Vol5-No2

Making it clear
by Beth Miller
As educators know better than anyone, knowledge, insight and expertise can’t just
be downloaded into the human mind. They require time and trial, research and reflection, dialogue and discernment.
For the past three years, almost 90 educators from around Delaware and Maryland have been doing just that sort of thing with scientists and environmental experts from the University of Delaware and the University of Maryland. The goal is to develop a richer understanding of climate change and build effective activi- ties and instruction plans to help their students understand the data and find potential solutions, too.
Educators from Delaware and Maryland had a close encounter with UD’s wind turbine in Lewes during a daylong workshop of
the Climate Change Academy in July.
All have been part of the Climate Change Academy hosted by the two-state partnership known as MADE CLEAR (an acronym that stands for Maryland Delaware Climate Change Education, Assessment and Research). The work is supported by a five-year, $5.3 million grant from the National Science Foun- dation, which expects to come away
with models to help teachers around the nation integrate climate change studies into many areas of instruction—science, economics, health, geopolitics, engineer- ing, to name a few.
Robert Ferrell loves this kind of stuff. The UD graduate (Class of 1999) teaches eighth-grade science at the Appoquin- imink School District’s Louis L. Redding Middle School in Middletown and has been part of the Climate Change Academy all three years.
“It’s great to work with educators and all the experts,” he said. “It’s really nice to hear it from the people whose boots are on the ground—‘Here’s what we know. Here’s what we think. Here’s why it’s important....’ That expert testimony added so much depth.”
The subject of climate change injects controversy into many conversations, but it made global headlines again in the past year when leaders as diverse as Pope Francis (who has a background in chem- istry) and the Group of 7 (G7)—officials from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States—called for significant, con- certed action to address the challenges.
Delaware and Maryland are among more than a dozen states that have adopted the Next Generation Science Standards, an upgraded guide to what students in the United States should know and be able to do in science. The science of climate change is included in those standards and the Departments of Education for both states have partnered in the MADE CLEAR work.
“We need to help the next generation understand what’s going on on our planet Earth, what it means and what they can do about it,” said Don Boesch, professor of marine science and president of the University of Maryland’s Center for Envi- ronmental Science.
Boesch said the partnership was struck after he contacted Nancy Targett, who then was dean of UD’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment and now is UD’s
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BETH MILLER