“Reinvigorating the Conservation Workforce in the 21st Century through Educational Leadership”
The Paul F-Brandwein Institute and the Foundation for Our Future have joined forces to develop a national dialog focused the development of strategies to reinvigorate the Conservation Science workforce over the next decade.
Forty years ago Paul F-Brandwein and his colleagues played a key role in defining and shaping conservation education in the United States through the Pinchot Institute for Conservation Studies Conferences of 1965 and 1966. These conferences brought together a community of leading thinkers and practitioners of conservation education. The participants defined their goals in terms of assuring a citizenry that understood and supported the value of scientific and rational planning for the efficient use of natural resources. These conferences had a long-lasting influence on many of their participants who, in turn, exerted great influence on the various informal and formal conservation education communities of which they were members. The conference participants went forward with this challenge from Brandwein: “We must develop new structures, new strategies, new techniques of teaching. We must test and revise until we have developed a culture which recognizes man's interdependence with his environment and all of life, and his responsibility for maintaining that environment in a condition fit for life and fit for living.”
We find ourselves, some 40 years later, watching significant numbers of those who were, directly or indirectly, influenced by these conferences retire from the conservation science fields. The Renewable Natural Resources Foundation, at its 2003 annual conference observed that:
“Government agencies, particularly those charged with managing and protecting the nation's natural resources, are facing a crisis. Their employee base is changing as more employees become eligible to retire resulting in lost institutional memory and difficulties in maintaining core competencies. Agency leadership and science capacity will be most affected. Over one-half of the Senior Executive Service (SES) members at the Department of the Interior (DOI), USDA Forest Service, and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will retire by 2007. Key functions within the agencies also will be adversely impacted. Within the same period, DOI will lose 61% of its program managers, the Forest Service will lose 81% of its entomologists and 49% of its foresters, and EPA will lose 45% of its toxicologists and around 30% of its environmental specialists.”
The greatest needs are projected to be for positions in Botany, Conservation Biology, Fisheries Biology, Forestry, Soils Science, Soil and Water Conservation and Wildlife Biology.
While the crisis in government's ability to accomplish its goals in resource conservation and protection looms, declining enrollment in natural resources higher education programs across the nation since the mid-nineties have raised concerns about the future viability of natural resources and conservation education. Data collected by Terry Sharik and Kathy Earley in 2003 indicate that total enrollment in conservation science programs at universities nationwide have declined by approximately 33% since 1995. Student interest in natural resources professions appears to be decreasing.“”
Increasing the numbers and diversity of students who choose to pursue conservation and natural resource professions is one need. Equally important is the need to look anew at the knowledge and skill these future leaders have to acquire to be successful. The evolving role of government, rapid changes in technological fields and societal changes require a wider range of skill than in the past. These changes are ongoing and will also require lifelong learning strategies for conservation scientists to keep abreast of them and remain effective. Skills that are needed include context competencies like: communication skills, critical thinking, teamwork, conflict resolution capabilities, interpersonal skills, project management and planning skills, and synthesis skills to deal with societal changes. Content competency skills needed include: complexity modeling, pattern analysis, and understanding of GIS. These skills are becoming increasingly critical as the trend in science continues toward interdisciplinary teamwork and addressing issues from a complex systems management perspective.
How do we reinvigorate the flow of people into the conservation profession with the skills and capacity to address conservation issues that are increasingly complex and that require the ability to understand their ramifications from local, regional and global perspectives? The nation's teachers and their educational institutions are on the ground floor of the effort and have a key role to play in inspiring and preparing young adults for careers in conservation and environmental science fields. The Paul F-Brandwein Institute Trustees and Fellows and the Foundation for Our Future believe there is a need to rekindle the strategic convening power of the 1965 and 1966 conservation education conferences to bring together education leaders old and new, to look carefully and creatively at our current situation and how to address our challenges in conservation education.
The Brandwein Institute, the Foundation for Our Future and their partners propose a Conservation Learning Summit in 2005 and a series of supporting projects to focus the national leadership of the conservation education community--past, current and future, and other key stakeholders, on reversing the human resource and intellectual capital drain in the conservation and wildlife management sciences. The Summit and supporting events will lead to an agenda for action and commitments from key stakeholders to implement that agenda.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
1. The Summit
The major goal of the Conservation Learning Summit and related events is the creation of a multi-stakeholder agenda for action to reinvigorate the teaching and learning of conservation and to increase the numbers of well-prepared young people pursuing careers in conservation and environmental sciences.
Conference objectives include:
• Establish new partnership alignments that create a broad and deep national understanding of the impending gap in the conservation science workforce.
• Identify new program initiatives that will encourage and support a sustained national focus on developing the next generation of the conservation and environmental science workforce.
• Bring about consensus about what specific knowledge and skills are needed for conservation and environmental science in the 21st century.
• Develop innovative approaches for aligning the ongoing learning needs of the conservation and environmental science workforce with educational service providers, both formal and informal.
The Summit will bring together 80 leaders from government, industry, non-governmental organizations, academia, philanthropy and education for three days at the National Conservation Training Center, managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. The participants will be provided with a pre-conference preparation kit including the conservation white papers (described below). The Summit will be facilitated by a team of highly skilled professionals, well known for their ability to leverage the time and intellectual resources of the audience.
The Summit will be videotaped and documented for rapid dissemination of the insights, findings and recommendations to a broader audience and for use in the follow-up activities of this effort described further below.
2. Events and Activities: Supporting Actions and Activities for a Successful Effort
Preceding and following the Conservation Learning Summit, the program partners will undertake a series of actions, tied to objectives, to establish a foundation that will sustain the efforts to develop and implement a successful agenda for action over many years. The objectives for these efforts are as follows:
• Objective 1: Establish a creative and knowledgeable Advisory Council to guide this effort.
Activity: Identify and recruit a summit advisory council to develop the conference agenda, identify key participants, define the artifacts and their intended audiences, and provide institutional support. The Paul F-Brandwein Institute has already obtained commitments from officials representing numerous organizations at their top leadership levels. The members of the conference advisory committee have had extensive experience in bringing together diverse partners to create innovative and lasting impacts. The members of the conference advisory committee (see attached for list of names and titles) represent:
• Industry/Business
• National Park Service
• National Park Foundation
• National Science Teachers Association
• Journal of Science and Technology Education
• Jason Foundation for Education
• National Association of Conservation Districts
• Renewable Natural Resources Foundation
• McGraw-Hill Publishing Company
• World Conservation Union (IUCN)
• Florida Gulf Coast University
• Twin City Public Television
• Foundation For Our Future
• Florida A&M University
• Architectural Foundation of San Francisco
• Conservation Fund
• NatureServe
• Huxley College at Western Washington University
• National Council of Environmental Deans and Directors
• Environmental Protection Agency
• World Wildlife Fund
• The Foundation for Our Future
• US Department of Agriculture -CREES
• US Department of Agriculture - Forest Service
• US Department of Agriculture - NRCS
• US Fish and Wildlife Service
• Objective 2: Provide a sound intellectual basis for understanding the current crisis in the conservation and environmental science fields.
Activity: Prepare a series of white papers looking at conservation education leadership and vision in the United States past, present and future. The Advisory Council members will identify and contract with key writers and an editor to produce these papers. Topics that could be addressed include:
- Conservation education history in America
- Conservation literacy - past, present, future
- Conservation learning in the classroom
- Conservation learning and the media
- Conservation trends and learning needs for the next generation
- Bridging conservation learning and conservation ethics
- Conservation leadership in the 21st century
- Conservation politics - Where is the common ground?
• Objective 3: Develop a process for clearly documenting the insights and visionary strategies generated by project participants and obtaining feedback from a wider audience.
Activity: Hire a facilitator for the Summit and follow-up. Advisory Council members will create several information products and distribute them to key partners and institutions in the education and leadership arenas. Related tasks and timelines for this component include:
- Hire a video producer to make a video that tells the story of the new conservation vision and strategy for the future. The video will be distributed to the participants of the National Press Luncheon session and conference and to key people within their networks.
- Prepare a series of publications that articulates the vision, strategies and final recommendations of the project's activities and distribute them with the video. The final product may also be edited into a book that incorporates the needs assessment findings, the white papers and the conference proceedings.
- Incorporate the project video and publications into the Brandwein website and create a portal on the site for the participants in the process to communicate and share resources associated with the project's implementation phase.
• Objective 4: Engage a wider audience in the dialogue and implementation of the agenda for action
Activity: Host a luncheon at the National Press Club for institutional leaders, federal agency executives, K-12 science educators, academics, non-profits, corporations and philanthropic leaders to share the findings and recommendations of the Summit. We will conduct a short session with attendees to receive their input on what they believe are the key roles they can play to implement the agenda for action.
Activity: Select featured speakers for the annual Brandwein Lecture at the annual meeting of the National Science Teachers Association to highlight the issues and recommendations of the Summit from their perspective--and to raise further interest among attendees to engage in the agenda for action.
Concurrent with the Summit's follow-up activities, the project planners will develop funding proposals to support the implementation of the recommendations that have the highest potential for achieving the vision that is developed. Project partners will identify those actions and outcomes that will have the greatest impact for the least cost and develop a fund raising strategy to support their implementation.
3. AUDIENCE
The audiences to be served by this project include:
• Government conservation and environmental program managers
• Leaders of higher education institutions that focus on conservation science, with a special emphasis on minority institutions
• Leaders of conservation NGOs
• Media producers and distributors
• Leaders of national conservation and science education associations
• Leaders of foundations that have traditionally supported conservation and environmental science, and select foundations with the potential for funding conservation and environmental science in the coming decade.
• Leaders from high school guidance and professional conservation science recruiters
• Leaders of natural history and science museums, zoos, aquariums, botanical gardens, and nature centers.
• Science textbook publishers
• K-12 science teachers and professional development specialists
4. EVALUATION
Given the ambitious scope of this project, formative evaluation will be a key element to measure achievement of the goals and outcomes of the effort. A project rubric that will identify the key elements of success in terms of the innovation and accountability of what is produced. The key elements of the evaluation matrix include the following: (Adapted from James N. Levit, “Conservation Innovation in America: Past, Present, and Future”)
• novelty, to the degree that the innovation demonstrates a spark of creativity,
• significance, to the degree that it addresses an issue of stakeholder concern,
• effectiveness, to the degree that it delivers tangible, quantifiable results,
• transferability, to the degree that it can be replicated by other organizations,
• ability to endure, to the extent that the innovation has demonstrated, or shows strong promise of demonstrating, a lasting impact over the course of several generations.
These elements will serve as benchmarks to guide the development of recommendations and strategies by project participants. Two of the Advisory Council members experienced with evaluation have offered to provide guidance and time to develop the evaluation matrix and related instruments to assess the progress and impact of the effort.
Evaluators will develop a series of key questions to help inform the formative evaluation aspects of the project. These questions will become the basis for survey instruments that will be used throughout the project. Some examples of questions include:
• What helps participants gain the most from their involvement in the project activities? How? Why?
• Which activities are most helpful? How? Why?
• Which action strategies and resources are most helpful? How? Why?
• What types of communication within and among the project constituencies are most beneficial? What can be improved? How?
• What barriers are there to implementation? How can they be overcome?
• What barriers are there to sustained effects? How can they be overcome?
• Is there a critical amount of time/immersion required for successful involvement, implementation, and continuation?
• How can the project planners most efficiently use on-line data collection resources and help others to do so?
• How can the project planners provide information for continuous improvement and strengthening of the partnership?
List of Advisers (as of 1/05/05)
• Daniel M. Ashe, Assistant Director, US Fish and Wildlife Service
• Tracy L. Austin, Executive Director, Mitsubishi International Corporation Foundation
• Bill Boyer, USDA - NRCS
• Mary Brandwein, Chair, Brandwein Institute
• Ed Brannon, Director, Pinchot Institute, USDA Forest Service
• Jack Byrne, Vice President, Center for a Sustainable Future
• Megan Camp, Vice President, Shelburne Farms
• Cheryl Charles, Sr. Director Research and Communications, BITS
• Karen C. Cohen, Editor, Journal Science and Technology Education
• Marily DeWall, Director, Jason Foundation for Education
• Richard Dusterhaus, Director Government Relations and Founding Trustee National Association of Conservation Districts, National Renewable Resources Foundation
• Charlotte K. Frank, Vice President Research and Development, McGraw-Hill Publishing Company
• Eddie Gonzalez, National Park Foundation
• Wendy Goldstein, Director Education, World Conservation Union (IUCN)
• Bill Hammond, Professor, Florida Gulf Coast University
• Steve Hulbert, President, Hulbert Auto Park
• Richard C. Hudson, Director of Science Production, Senior Executive Producer, TPT National Productions, Twin City Public Television
• Denver James - USDA- Forest Service
• Gerrad Jolly - National Park Foundation
• Linda Greene - USDA - NRCS
• Maxine Levine - USDA - NRCS
• Barbara McDonald - USDA - Forest Service
• Ruth McWilliams - USDA-Forest Service
• Jack Padalino, President, Paul F-Brandwein Institute
• Larry Peterson, Professor, Florida A&M
• Nathaniel Reid, Former Assistant Director, Department of the Interior
• Bob Samples, Independent Scholar
• Alan Sandler, Executive Director, San Francisco Architectural Foundation
• Mark Schaefer, President, NatureServe
• Larry Selzer, President, Conservation Fund
• Bradley Smith, President, Council of Environmental Deans and Directors & Dean, Huxley College, Western Washington University
• Michael Soukup, Assistant Director, National Park Service
• Russell Train, Former Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency, & Past President and CEO of the World Wildlife Fund
• Julia Washburn, Vice President Programs, National Park Foundation
• Gerry Wheeler, Executive Director, National Science Teachers Association
• Keith A. Wheeler, President, Foundation for Our Future