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What's New with EETAP?
EETAP is the EE and Training Partnership; the USEPA funded national EE consortium. EETAP’s purpose is to advance education and environmental literacy. EETAP’s core program areas are: 1) deliver EE training for education professionals; 2) increase access to quality EE resources and information; 3) develop the infrastructure to support quality EE and training. EETAP partners include: NAAEE, Council for EE; Project WILD, Project WET, Project Learning Tree, Ohio State University, Project del Rio, GREEN-EE Link, and NEEAP. To learn more about EETAP visit either the EETAP website at http://www.eetap.org or NEEAP’s website at http://neeap.uwsp.edu.
By Mike Kaspar, EE Training Coordinator, EETAP
The Environmental Education Advocate - Spring/Summer 1999
The following information is provided to you as a service of the National
Environmental Education Advancement Project (NEEAP). We encourage you to use it and
please credit the National Environmental Education
Advancement Project where appropriate.
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If the success of a project can be measured by the breadth of its accomplishments, EETAP can already be deemed a success. With four months still remaining in the fourth year, the project Partners have already made significant contributions.
A greater number of professionally trained teachers in EE is one of the major contributions of the project. Some teachers have not yet been exposed to EE, or may not have resources available to teach EE. Many of these teachers can be found in urban areas and multicultural communities. In Houston for example, through EETAP, Project Learning Tree has increased its reach by training bilingual educators (Spanish) as well as urban educators.
With a twist on this same theme, Project WILD has improved the field of EE by focusing on an environmental school to work program in Maryland. One of EETAP’s newest Partners, Project del Rio, has trained new audiences through a train-the-trainer model that helps teachers understand how data collection is tied to understanding community issues. EETAP has been a catalyst for Project WET. A greater number of educators in both formal and nonformal settings have been served by this project, and WET has been able to correlate its activities to state science standards in record time.
These projects are only a small sampling; EETAP’s accomplishments have contributed to the EE field in a way like no other. EETAP’s Partners have advanced the field by a concerted and focused attention on a set of core themes important to the field of education as a whole, including: linking EE to education reform, building state-level capacity, improving quality, and reaching diverse audiences.
While the US EPA Office of Environmental Education (OEE) has expressed a high degree of satisfaction with the project, it has decided to re-compete the program. According to the OEE, the rationale is based on the belief that the field of EE has evolved over the past five years and so too must this training project.
Kathleen MacKinnon, the US EPA EETAP Project Officer, reports that the new solicitation notice will emphasize EETAP’s core themes and that the new program will be expected to represent an evolution of EETAP and not the beginning of a completely new program. In addition, Ms. MacKinnon commented that she expected many of the current EETAP Partners to be involved in submitting proposals for the next phase of EETAP. She hopes that the US EPA will be able to release the new solicitation notice by the end of the summer 1999.
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