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Service learning has many documented benefits for students. The benefits to the communities are less clear. This study examines the unfolding of an environmental service-learning partnership from the perspective of one participating community liaison. We examine a new model of university-community engagement, where undergraduate students are paired with a local community to address environmental issues in courses that focus on adaptation and mitigation. We use actor-network theory (ANT) to explore the experiences of one community liaison, focusing specifically on factors that helped build and maintain the partnership and produced benefits for the community. Findings highlight the community liaison's agency in negotiating partnership goals and determining the definition and treatment of environmental concerns. We conclude by identifying the insights an ANT perspective holds for service-learning and community-engagement research and practice. Plain Language Summary: Service Learning as Community Partnership Service learning has many benefits to students, but the impact on the community is less clear. This study explores a university-community environmental service-learning partnership from the community's perspective. Undergraduates take courses in environmental issues and are paired with local communities to help address these issues. We focused on one partnership that produced benefits for the community and found that nonhuman entities helped this partnership develop. Additionally, agency and representation play an important role in how the community and environment are defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is crucial to support students in better understanding water and sustainability issues because water plays a vital role in maintaining global ecosystems, including human life. A wide range of curricular and instructional supports like those embodied in model-based learning (MBL) are necessary for teachers to engage students in the core epistemic commitments of the Next-Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The main purpose of this study is to inform theory about students' early attempts to engage in the complex kinds of sensemaking experiences inherent in the Framework for K-12 Science Education and the NGSS. Data for this study was collected from 74 10th grade students in a high school in the Northwest region of the New England state. An explanatory sequential mixed-method research design was used to examine students' learning outcomes, and to better understand these outcomes in connection to their experiences engaging in modeling in the MBL curriculum unit. The results indicated that students' model scores, the number of concepts in models, and the coherence and sophistication of models improved between their initial and final models. Additionally, the following patterns emerged related to ways in which students engaged in the practice of modeling: (1) students attempted to directly represent what they observed, (2) they struggled to pictorially express complex patterns or mechanisms, and (3) students experienced difficulties representing models from a diverse range of perspectives. The patterns identified across student models, as well as their reports of experiences related to the MBL unit implementation, provided insight into student experiences with models, while also providing meaningful implications for the refinement of the MBL curriculum unit investigated in this research specifically, while informing approaches MBL curricular units aimed at supporting NGSS implementation efforts more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Applied pedagogy, and specifically service learning, bridges the university educational experience with hands-on training. Such pedagogies in STEM are nuanced in unique ways in comparison to more classroom-based STEM learning and applied teaching outside of STEM contexts. As STEM service learning may be especially vulnerable during system shocks, we advance work on such pedagogy by investigating how a certain type of pedagogy, specifically caring pedagogy, may be particularly useful during social disruption (i.e., COVID-19) in applied STEM learning. The main purpose of this study is to examine how pandemic-related disruptions impacted teaching and learning in a service-learning STEM program known as the Environment Corps. We thematically analyzed longitudinal data from multiple rounds of interviews with seven instructors, one-time interviews with thirteen undergraduates, and eight instructor meetings occurring from late 2019 to early 2021. Similar to findings in related work, teaching and learning obstacles from the pandemic were personal, interpersonal, and logistical. After instructors realized they needed to implement changes, some obstacles were ameliorated through caring pedagogy practices outside of in-person interaction. Yet, even as disruptions lessened, students and faculty still experienced impacts from the pandemic. We offer insight into how applied STEM courses can be adjusted with an eye toward caring pedagogy-informed practices to minimize negative effects from system shocks. This contributes to the literature on disaster and COVID-19-related challenges, caring pedagogy in virtual spaces in teaching circumstances, and environmental education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Families create contexts for learning to enhance and support the interests of their children, while simultaneously teaching language, morals, and culture. This research examines intergenerational family teams engaged in a long-term conservation project in their community. Participants were interviewed during and after project completion with the central research purpose of exploring how the intersecting experiences of family members explain emerging family cultural learning pathways. Intergenerational family teams shared narratives which were then analyzed using the cultural learning pathways framework [Bell, P., Tzou, C., Bricker, L., & Baines, A. D. (2012). Learning in diversities of structures of social practice: Accounting for how, why and where people learn science. Human Development, 55(5-6), 269–284. doi:] that we subsequently used to create family cultural learning pathways for each participating family. Family interactions are powerful influences on the identity development of children, not only in their academic development, but also in their moral, ethical, and social development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High Leverage Practices (HLPs), as a core set of teaching practices, represent important instructional priorities and provide instructional guidance for students' engagement in practice-based instruction. The goals of this research were to 1) understand how an epistemic community (the people designing and leading courses and programs) viewed the HLP creation process, 2) understand the processes through which the epistemic community actually engaged in the refinement of the HLPS, and 3) identify and present the HLPs created. Data collected across the 2019-2020 academic year included interviews with seven instructors and seven students and four observations of the integration team meetings. First, thematic analysis revealed that the epistemic community members considered the process of creating and refining HLPs central to improving the quality of their instruction. Second, the processes through which the community engaged in HLP refinement included connecting experience and feedback with educational research, identifying the purpose of instructional strategies, sharing practices for instruction, and creating a model for course expansion. Third, the HLPs produced included: 1) eliciting students' initial ideas, 2) informing approaches to problems, and 3) developing informed solutions to address community environmental challenges. This work informs in the literature, especially in applied STEM education, about HLP creation in the context of an epistemic community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An extensive faculty partnership at the University of Connecticut (UConn) that reaches across college and departmental lines is engaged in a project that seeks to enhance, expand, institutionalize, and study a new model for community engagement. The model, called the Environment Corps (E-Corps), combines the familiar elements of classroom instruction, service-learning, and extension outreach to create a method of engagement that aims to benefit students, faculty, surrounding communities, and the university community itself. This article describes the structure and history of E-Corps; details the institutional setting, faculty partnerships, and pedagogical strategies involved; and discusses early evidence of impacts and future prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aimed to better understand the interaction between positioning and STEM identity authoring as intergenerational teams collaborated to complete community conservation projects, following a two-day conservation and geospatial technology workshop. Scientists and science educators supported these learners as they developed the focus, resources, timeline, and methods used to accomplish their negotiated pursuits at the two-day workshop and throughout their subsequent community project as a form of public engagement. To better understand the ways in which intergenerational teams located or positioned themselves and their partners, the ways in which teens and adults engaged in STEM identity authoring, and the interplay between positioning and STEM identity authoring a two-case study was completed. In this, field observations, interviews, and project artifacts were collected as the primary data sources. Findings emerging from the qualitative analysis of the data collected revealed how positioning and STEM identity authoring were found to be entangled and concurrently reinforcing even at the outset of the intergenerational teams' work. Additionally, positioning and STEM identity authoring in intergenerational teams were influenced by societal and cultural norms. These findings as well as recommendations emerging from the findings are further elaborated with the aim of supporting future intergenerational work of teens and adults in informal STEM learning contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The University of Connecticut's Climate Corps is an undergraduate program that focuses on climate change impacts and adaptation. Students take a class on climate change and then engage in independent study projects with community partners. Since its inception in 2017, 130 students have participated in the program, completing 38 projects with 28 community partners. The program not only provides assistance to towns in their adaptation efforts but also emphasizes workforce development, with 64% of responding students stating that their participation influenced their decision to work in environmental fields. The Climate Corps is now part of a larger program called the Environment Corps, which includes other initiatives such as the Stormwater Corps and the Brownfield Corps. Future plans include expanding into new areas such as GIS/Mapping Corps. [Extracted from the article]

An in-depth curricular unit exploring the effects of human land use on local water resources was created as part of a Teacher Professional Learning Program at the University of Connecticut's Natural Resources Conservation Academy. This unit was designed to connect high school students to water resources in their community, both in the field and through the use of interactive mapping technology. These methods engage students in science and technology using multiple disciplines and can help them better understand how their local water resource is affected by the surrounding landscape. In this unit, students explore the dynamics of local water resources and the anthropogenic issues that affect them through field and open-access online inquiry-based activities. The varied lessons within this unit were purposefully created to align with the Next Generation Science Standards and to fit within either an earth science or a biology course. They use existing online geospatial tools and can be tailored to any geographic area of interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2007, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection issued the first Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) in the country based not on a specific pollutant or pollutants, but on impervious cover (IC) (Arnold et al., 2010). The water body in question was Eagleville Brook, a small tributary of the Willimantic River in eastern Connecticut that drains a majority of the University of Connecticut campus. The university is in effect a small city within a largely rural area. Partly as a result of this, there has been a history of "town-gown" tension and controversy with regard to the university's impact on the water resources of the area. This tension reached a climax in September 2005, when a quarter-mile stretch of the Fenton River, which drains the part of campus not in the Eagleville watershed, ran dry (Merritt, 2005). Water quantity concerns were frequently joined by water quality concerns, with area residents complaining about the pollution of their drinking water (Morse, 2002). Although the Fenton incident precipitated increased efforts on the part of the university to conserve water, efforts to improve the way that campus addressed stormwater issues lagged behind until the advent of the impervious cover TMDL. In the intervening eight years since the issuance of the "IC-TMDL" - practically the wink of an eye in the deliberate world of land use decision making - the University of Connecticut campus has become a showcase for green stormwater infrastructure (GSI) practices, also known as low impact development (LID) practices. While the IC-TMDL served as the catalyst, an environmental regulation, no matter how innovative, cannot in itself produce such dramatic change. For this to occur a number of interconnected efforts have to come together, including leadership, research, monitoring, coordination, and education both within and without the university community. This paper is an attempt to capture these key elements, consider why they worked (or didn't), and provide a status report on green stormwater infrastructure on the University of Connecticut campus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Any strategy to protect coastal and marine resources needs to address the issue of polluted runoff, particularly urban runoff generated by development. Low impact development (LID) practices, also known as green infrastructure, have been shown to be very effective in mitigating the impacts associated with storm water runoff from development. On-the-ground examples of LID implementation, both good and bad, are needed to help local officials and others overcome the natural reticence to embrace new technologies or approaches and encourage or even require their use. The National LID Atlas is an interactive tool that provides these real local examples of LID implementation throughout the country on the Internet in an easy-touse Google MapsTM Mashup. The members of the National NEMO (Nonpoirit Source Education for Municipal Officials) Network and other outreach educators collaboratively built the Atlas and continue to add new projects to it. Local officials, developers, contractors, homeowners, and others can use the site to find examples of LID implementation in their state or region and resources for finding out more detailed information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is neither a single definition of nor a standardized process for performing landscape characterizations. For more than a decade, researchers at the University of Connecticut have used remote sensing technology to detect land-cover features and provide information to municipal land-use officials. Recent research has been directed at three dynamic elements of the landscape that are critically important to land use officials: impervious surfaces, forest fragmentation and urban growth. Techniques have been developed to extract impervious surface data directly from Landsat imagery to estimate non-point source pollution impacts on watersheds. A model has been created to quantify and describe forest fragmentation over various geographic areas and an urban growth model has been developed that quantifies and categorizes urban change. Both of these models use land-cover information as their source data. These tools and the derived information are important educational components of the University's recently created Center for Land use Education And Research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on land use research and outreach projects that utilize Web technology which played a primary role in implementing local public policy changes and land use regulations in Connecticut. The technologies which provided the research foundation of the Nonpoint Education for Municipal Officials are mentioned. Background on Connecticut's Changing Landscape project is provided.

Many small estuaries are influenced by flow restrictions resulting from transportation rights-of-way and other causes. The biogeochemicalfunctioning and history of such systems can be evaluated through study of their sediments. Ten long and six short cores were collected from the length of Jordan Cove, Connecticut, a Long Island Sound subestuary, and analyzed for stratigraphy, radionuclides (14C, 210Pb, 226Ra, 137Cs, and 60Co), and metals (Ag, Cd, Cu, Pb, Zn, Fe, and Al). For at least 3,800yr rising sea level has gradually inundated Jordan Cove, filling it with mud similar to that currently being deposited there. Long-term sediment accumulation in the cove averaged close to 0.1 cm yr over thelast three millennia. Recent sediment accumulation rates decrease inland from 0.84 cm yr-1 to 0.40 cm yr-1 and are slightly faster than relative sea-level rise at this site (0.3 cm yr-1). Similarity of depth distributions of trace metals was used to confirm relative sediment accumulation rates. 60Coand Ag are derived from sources outside the cove and its watershed, presumably the Millstone nuclear power plant and regional contaminated sediments, respectively. The combined data suggest that Long IslandSound is an important source of sediment to the cove; a minor part of total sediment is supplied from the local watershed. Trace metal levels are strongly correlated with Fe but not with either organic matter or Al. Sediment quality has declined in the cove over the past 60 yr, but only slightly. Cu, Pb, and Zn data correlate strongly with Febut not with either organic matter or aluminum. Ratios of Ag to Fe and to trace metals suggest that Ag in the cove is derived almost entirely from Long Island Sound. This result supports the notion that Fe-normalized Ag can serve as a better tracer of some kinds of contamination than more common and abundant metals, like Cu, Pb, and Zn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]