HR: 0800h
AN: ED11B-1104    [Abstracts]
TI: Educational Outreach That Any Project Can Implement on a Limited Budget: Lessons From the KT
AU: * Mladenov, N
EM: mladenov@virginia.edu
AF: University of Virginia, 291 McCormick Road, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4123 United States
AB: When projects are faced with a limited budget, providing an educational component can be difficult and often overlooked. The Kalahari Transect (KT) project of 2005, a NASA-funded investigation of hydrologic and nutrient controls on savanna ecosystem productivity, operated under such constraints. Yet with the assistance of in-country contacts in Botswana and Zambia and with interest from US high school teachers, the KT project implemented several successful educational outreach activities. The broad scientific coverage of the wet season field campaign in southern Africa lent itself to a diversity of educational opportunities for students and teachers, including participation in soil and vegetation sampling, spectral measurements, and surveying. Post-campaign educational efforts took advantage of the field experience gained by University of Virginia graduate students and postdocs and allowed for the establishment of a 'Graduate Student Lecture Series' for area high school science classes. Here we present the successes and challenges of 1) preparing and funding US graduate students on international field campaigns, 2) integrating undergraduate students in the host country and in the USA, 3) collaborating with US high school teachers, and 4) planning future collaborations with Batswana and Zambian high school teachers.
DE: 0800 EDUCATION
DE: 0805 Elementary and secondary education
DE: 1090 Field relationships (3690, 8486)
DE: 1615 Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling (0412, 0414, 0793, 4805, 4912)
DE: 1813 Eco-hydrology
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005