Youth-Led Community-Based Citizen Science Projects in the Gulf Region

Description: U.S. Gulf Coast communities face a convergence of environmental concerns with distinct social, cultural, economic, political, and regulatory factors that create complex situations that many of these communities find themselves challenged to address. For this reason, the Gulf region is both a fitting and important place to foster youth to become civic-minded, scientifically literate members of society engaged in building more resilient communities. This project aims to build the capacity of Gulf region youth to address environmental issues affecting their communities by engaging them in hands-on science learning and practice relevant to their lived experience. The project will pilot a community citizen science learning model that positions young people as knowledge producers rather than knowledge consumers. With teacher support, students between 12 and 18 years old will lead research projects on local environmental topics that they have identified as important. Materials developed and refined through the pilot effort will be made available for use by other educators throughout the region.

Funding Cycle: Capacity Building 2
Funding Organization: National Academies of Science, Engineering, Medicine: Gulf Research Program

Gulf Coast Educator's Workshop Summer 2019

Student-Led Inquiry Project Tracker

Creating a Box Plot to Identify Potential Outliers Using CODAP

Student-Led Community Science Curriculum Data Collection Resources

What Factors Influence Our Environmental Problem? (Lesson Plan)

How do communities respond to environmental problems? (Lesson Plan)

Workshop III: How Have Other Communities Tackled This Problem?

Workshop IV: What do we know, and what do we want to learn?

Workshop VI: How can an environmental study effect change?

Workshop VII: How will we study our environmental problem?

Workshop VIII: What will we do to conduct our study?

Workshop V: How Do We Study an Environmental Issue?