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Western U.P. Center for Science, Mathematics, and Environmental Education Receives 2005 Youth Award from Lake Superior Binational Forum

The Western U.P. Center for Science, Mathematics and Environmental Education has received the 2005 Youth Award from the Lake Superior Binational Forum for outstanding contributions to protecting and restoring Lake Superior basin natural resources.

The award recognizes the center's K-12 educational outreach programs for students, teachers and communities. The center is a partnership of Michigan Tech and the Copper Country and Gogebic-Ontonagon Intermediate School Districts.

Joan Chadde and Anne Collins with 2005 Youth Award from the Lake Superior Binational Forum	After-School Science Program where classes are conducted by MTU students

The award honors outstanding efforts to protect and restore the natural environment of the Lake Superior basin. The Western U.P. Center's programs serve students and teachers in 20 school districts and communities in the western U.P. and throughout the upper Great Lakes basin, providing the most expansive and diverse K-12 environmental education programming in the Lake Superior watershed.

Center activities include the following:

In addition, the center is writing three middle school environmental education curriculum units on ecosystems and biodiversity, water quality and energy resources that will disseminated statewide beginning in 2006.

"We are very honored to receive this special award. We appreciate being recognized for our efforts to engage youth in developing a greater understanding and sense of stewardship towards Lake Superior and its watershed," said Joan Schumaker-Chadde, education program coordinator for the Western U.P. Center. "I would like to thank all of the K-12 teachers and students, Michigan Tech faculty, many government agencies, foundations and community organizations who have helped us to carry out all of these programs, as well as helping with funding, especially the Wege Foundation, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the U.S. EPA. I hope all of these people will share in the satisfaction of receiving this special award."

The Lake Superior Binational Forum, headquartered at the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute in Ashland, Wis., is a citizen stakeholder group of Americans and Canadians working to ensure the protection of the Lake Superior basin and educate basin residents.

For more information on the Lake Superior Binational Forum, visit http://www.superiorforum.info . For more on the Western U.P. Center for Science, Mathematics and Environmental Education, go to http://wupcenter.mtu.edu/

Inaugural Meeting
On 9/20/05, the Michigan Tech Center for Water and Society (MTCWS) held a meeting for participants and interested graduate students. The purpose of the meeting was to describe the administrative tasks that need to be accomplished in the near future and to debate what the nearterm focus of the CWS. Following is a compilation of the items discussed by the meeting participants:

1. New degree programs, minors, etc.
• Focus of CWS should be to develop cross-disciplinary Masters program first, not undergraduate, or PhD programs. The advantage of cross- disciplinary program is that it could connect across departments and schools.
• CWS participants should recognize that some degree programs, e.g. Civil Engineering, already emphasize water.
• Since Civil & Environmental MS program already considers water, a new program could lean away from engineering and towards natural and social sciences.

2. Seminars, workshops, conferences
• Since most faculty and graduate students already have at least one seminar series to attend, a new seminar series is not likely to be successful.
• The alternative is to coordinate seminars on water topics within existing departmental, school, or institute/center seminar series. CWS could recruit seminar speakers from within MTU CWS to speak in departmental, etc. seminars other then in their home department. CWS could co-sponsor seminar speakers from outside MTU with existing seminar series.
• CWS could sponsor symposia, e.g. spring poster session by students could serve educate Center members about research of other participants. May result in more joint research projects.
• Symposium, conferences or workshops on a focused water topic, i.e. Great Lakes diversions, including speakers from outside MTU could raise profile of center. Funding may be easily available to put these on.

3. Extension
• Extension could mean producing publicly-accessible media on water issues. Michigan Stream Management Guide is an example of how CWS could be involved in extension and publicize CWS.
• There are already efforts at MTU that emphasize outreach, e.g. Superior Science and Tech Alive, interactive web models for presenting research.

4. Geographical Focus
• Good idea to focus locally and choose a local area of interest for the center; for example, Lake Superior and the UP.

5. Funding Opportunities
• Strong point for Center is that we already have a working relationship between educators and researchers.

6. Website
• Add list of CWS participants to web site. Include profiles of participants, including research interests, etc.
• Make information about other water centers in Michigan, etc., accessible.

Meeting slide show

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