Capacity Building | eePRO @ NAAEE
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Capacity Building

Thu, 2016-10-13 10:39

I have been asked to comment about how higher ed can support state-wide capacity building conversations at the Capacity Building Workshop at the conference. The goal of the day long event is to "articulate key recommendations for increasing coordinated efforts to strengthen the quality and expand the delivery of EE…"

The capacity building summit has the explicit goal to inspire and enable participants to use the ideas collected from the state project, the affiliates and higher education so that they can embark on similar projects in their states.

If you have been involved in anyway with “capacity-building” in your state and/or have specific examples of how higher ed can breath into the process of "capacity building", I would be most grateful if you can share those ideas with me, so that I can represent higher education ideas at Tuesday’s event in Madison.

In reply to dshuman1@montreat.edu
Mon, 2016-10-17 09:36

As I mentioned in a recent phone call, there have been a number of supports for higher education from NAAEE that have increased capacity in Wisconsin.
Separate from these supports, Wisconsin had created the Teacher Educator Network for Environmental Education (TENFEE) and held annual meetings. However, we were able to get some boosts in involvement that, I think, came from a few pushes.

1) Accreditation - Going through the process, I feel better equipped to support colleagues to do the same. TENFEE has been working on setting a bar for including EE in teacher education programs and are using the NAAEE guidelines, along with our state standards for teacher education.
3) Higher education award - TENFEE has also worked on ways to recognize programs for their efforts. It's great that NAAEE now has such an award!
2) Guidelines grant - As a special interest group of the state affiliate, TENFEE was awarded a grant to host a guidelines training. This engaged faculty members in higher education to talk about how they include EE in their programs and what they could directly do to improve their efforts.
3) Conference presentations and scholarships - Because of the support for higher education, teacher educators from Wisconsin have attended the annual conferences. This leads to new relationships and changes in practice. I'm looking forward to the roundtable that some of us are presenting--we haven't presented together in the past and I'm meeting some colleagues from across the state for the first time through this effort!
4) eePRO - As this platform grows, I think it will become more and more helpful. I direct colleagues here to look for resources and post opportunities.

I'm looking forward to continued attention on higher education!

Take care,
Becca