The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
has awarded the FAMU College of Agriculture and Food Sciences (CAFS) $72,724 to launch a Coastal Stewardship Program that will benefit teachers at the university’s K-12 school.
CAFS will use the two-year grant to train science teachers
at the FAMU Developmental Research School on hydrological and weather cycles. Kimberly
Davis, a FAMU environmental education associate, says the program will
emphasize the importance of natural resources.
“The purpose of the program is to raise the public’s
awareness and appreciation for the Gulf of Mexico and its resources,” said
Davis. “The information that the teachers learned can be passed on to their
students so they can understand the ecological and economic importance of the
Gulf and how they upstream activities have an impact downstream.”
NOAA is an agency that specializes in scientific and
environmental sustainability. The agency’s funding will help the hands-on program increase student understanding of the hydrological cycle through
various field trips, projects and lectures.
“FAMU faculty and USF Marine Lab faculty will collaborate on
developing marine environmental sampling protocols and teaching these protocols
to the teachers,” said Lorenzo. “FAMU faculty will work with the teachers
during the school year to assist them with implementing environmental sampling
activities in their classrooms. FSU COAPS will lend support to the project by
providing climate data for field studies to be conducted by both teacher and
student participants.”
The program falls under the colleges’ mission as a land
grant component of FAMU and will also follow the Global Learning and
Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) protocol in its effort to train
professional educators.