Symposia & Panels >>

Featured Events >>

Conference Strands & Threads:

• Environmental Justice, Environmental Health, and Climate Change:  The EE Challenge of Our Lifetime

Environmental justice (EJ) movements began with vulnerable communities, particularly those of color, developing health problems due to pollution and environmental degradation.  Climate change is the latest and most troubling EJ issue as indigenous and marginalized populations globally pay heavy tolls (i.e. disease, famine, and loss of land, livelihood, and culture).   Join us to explore innovative EE approaches addressing the connections between EJ, health, and climate change!

• Conservation Education

Conservation Education is process of the connecting people to the land by providing them with the tools they need to take informed actions related to sustaining natural and cultural resources. Presentations for this strand will demonstrate the importance of developing the tools (skills, values, knowledge) needed to work towards the prevention and resolution of environmental issues at all levels.

• EE Best Practices/Advancing EE

Many organizations help build the infrastructure to support environmental literacy through high-leverage activities to build the capacity of environmental education. But in a world of finite resources, what are the best and most strategic approaches? These organizations are challenged with balancing efforts to sustain themselves (fundraising, board/staff development, membership development) while providing, promoting and advancing high quality EE programs. This strand is for those interested in taking a high-level look at some strategic approaches to advancing EE.

• Preschool/Early Childhood

Increasingly, our society is recognizing that the young child is well served by being outdoors, observing, exploring, and playing.  Cognitive, emotional, social, physical, and spiritual benefits are documented.  Additionally, environmental literacy and stewardship can be built by repeated experiences starting in early childhood.  This strand will explore current research, model programs, and new ideas for outdoor play spaces for young children. 

• Food, Agriculture and EE

Children and adults need awareness, knowledge, and skills about how food, agriculture, and environmental issues impact personal and environmental health. This strand will present programs and research on helping people to make connections—from our food production, processing, and transporting practices to our ecological footprint, and from our food choices to our health.

• Art, Culture, and Environmental Education

How the use and valuing of the arts and culture (encompassing areas of archaeology, architecture, the visual arts and music) by a citizenry can have a positive impact on teaching and learning about the environment; be used to solve environmental problems; help communities prosper from a more engaged and principled citizenry; and ultimately, enhance environmental quality.

• Energy Education

All aspects of energy, from its production to distribution to consumption to disposal, have a profound impact on the environment.   It is critical that citizens understand these impacts, as well as understanding methods to reduce those impacts.  Given the critical nature of climate change issues, energy efficiency and renewable energy should be a particular focus of the energy education strand. This strand seeks to explore innovative and effective methods for providing energy education to a variety of audiences.  Strand Targeted Audiences:  Educators teaching in both formal and non-formal settings.

• Religion, Spirituality & EE 

Faith, religion, and spirituality play pivotal roles in the formation of our society’s beliefs about and stewardship of the world around us. Innovative environmental education engages body, mind, and spirit to address complicated environmental issues.  This strand explores these ideas and the environmental education that integrates faith, religion, or spirituality.

_{Conference Threads:
PreK-12 Formal Education:  A session appropriate for classroom teachers and others who teach in formal educational settings.
Non-formal Education:   A session appropriate for those who teach in non-formal or informal settings.
Research/Evaluation:  A session includes a research/evaluation component.
Diversity:  A session appropriate for those interested in enhancing/promoting diversity in environmental education.
Special Needs Learners:  A session that includes a component for special needs learners, such as learning disabled learners, sight and/or hearing impaired learners, limited mobility learners, English Language Learners (ELL), etc.
Service Learning: Sessions appropriate for anybody interested in learning about the value of and procedures for carefully infusing service-learning pedagogy into EE programs and instruction (regardless of whether formal or nonformal).}