Education and Outreach Colloquium, Anita Davis

Affiliation: SSAI
Event Date: Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Location: Bldg 33, Room H114
Time: 12:00 PM

National Parks and NASA: Building, Sustaining and Expanding an Effective Partnership
Yellowstone, Acadia, Mesa Verde, Gettysburg, Fort McHenry, Golden Gate, Grand Canyon…at over 390 National Park Service sites across America, our nation’s natural and cultural heritage is conserved and revealed to more than 280 million visitors every year. In such places people connect with compelling stories of survival, life, death, and change in both the natural and cultural histories of our shared landscapes. Memories born in these visits are deep seated, sometimes spawning the desire to pursue careers in science, education or technology. High above these treasured places, NASA’s myriad missions explore the entire Universe. You may question what these two seemingly disparate agencies have in common. Yet, a quick read of the agency mission statements and goals shows there is much room for rich and productive relationships.

The Earth to Sky NASA-NPS partnership officially began in 2004, with a NASA Explorer Institute grant award that provided professional development opportunities for rangers to learn about relevant NASA science and educational content that they could use in their work. In that first year, 50 rangers, representing nearly 50 parks attended two week-long workshops. Five years later the partnership that sprang from that effort continues to expand, to include more parks, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and informal educators (interpreters) from outside the federal workforce. We continue to hear from participants how these professional development experiences positively impact their work. In some cases rangers have taken entirely new directions and built extensive park programs centered on the contributions of NASA’s science. As a direct result of the Earth to Sky effort, millions of park visitors are exposed to NASA content and visuals every year.

This colloquium will describe the characteristics that have built this strong and expanding partnership between the NASA E/PO and science communities and Park Service interpreters. I’ll explore what this relationship can teach us about partnering in general, and provide information about how to become involved with Earth to Sky, or to work with parks in your own efforts.

About Our Speaker
Anita Davis
Science Systems and Applications, Inc.,
Education and Public Outreach Lead, NASA Landsat

Anita has over 18 years of experience as an education specialist, including 12 in Interpretation and Visitor Services for the National Park Service (NPS). She worked for several years at Grand Canyon, creating and producing interpretive programs and products, serving as liaison between the science and interpretive communities, and conducting interpretation training with special emphasis on science content. On a one-year detail as the NPS Liaison to NASA, she initiated and coordinated an Introduction to Remote Sensing pilot course for NPS and US Fish and Wildlife Service. On a one-year IPA as Informal Education Lead for NASA's Earth Science Enterprise (ESE), she managed informal education grants, co-wrote the draft ESE Education Strategy, and created guidelines and criteria for the ESE Informal Education Product Review. As Landsat Education and Outreach Lead, her responsibilities include active outreach with the NPS science and interpretation communities, including collaborating on a NASA New Investigator Program grant examining causes and consequences of landscape scale change in western National Parks. Anita works within several education networks, promoting use of Landsat and other NASA content. She is an active participant on Goddard’s E/PO informal education and science communication working groups.

Anita co-lead the 2004 and 2005 Earth to Sky NASA Explorer Institutes. She is PI for Earth to Sky 3: Interpreting Climate Change, and the recently awarded NASA ROSES grant, Building Climate Literacy for Informal Educators: Expanding the Earth to Sky Partnership. She is a life member of the National Association for Interpretation, and holds a BS in Wildlife Biology and MS in Biology.

Off Site Access
Both talks will be available remotely by Webcast at:
http://mediaman.gsfc.nasa.gov/asx/Public/Live/Building33Live.asx
NOTE: You will need to have Microsoft MediaPlayer installed to view this Webcast.

You may also listen in at 1-877-951-7741; passcode = 7873205

Posted or updated: Friday, May 1, 2009

Editor: Paul Przyborski

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