The National Audubon
Society (NAS), in partnership with the National
Association for Retired and Senior Volunteer Program
(NARSVP) and Earth Force (environmental nonprofit
for youth in service learning), seeks a pathways
grant to explore how to motivate under-involved
audiences (seniors 60 + and youth in grades 9-12) to
become invested as full collaborators in citizen
science activities at Important Bird Areas (IBAs)
across the US. As summarized by a recent CAISE
Inquiry Group Report (Richard Bonney et al, June
2009. Public Participation in Scientific
Research: Defining the Field and Assessing Its
Potential for Informal Science Education.
Washington, DC: CAISE), citizen science projects
across the nation are seeking new ways to step up
public involvement in field science from
contributory projects that involve laypeople in
the collection of data (usually through observation,
identification, and monitoring) and towards more
collaborative or co-created projects in which
citizens play active roles in the design,
implementation, analysis, interpretation, and
dissemination of research and its results.
During a two-year
project called Citizens, Science, and
Conservation (CSC), NAS and its partners will
develop and test new strategies for collaborative
engagement with seniors and older teens in field
research conducted in four communities adjacent to
IBAs. This Pathways Project will: 1) develop new
models for increasing the numbers of seniors and
high schoolers participating in field research; 2)
adjust and enhance citizen science programming at
NAS and its IBAs so that seniors and youth are more
than contributors - they will actually help to
design studies, analyze data, and translate results
into action; and 3) explore how best to recruit,
train, and retain seniors and youth by understanding
what motivates their involvement and how
intergenerational and professional-lay groupings
affect learning, behaviors, attitudes, and life
goals.
The CSC project
examines four key questions that have import for
citizen science projects nationwide:
1) How can we better
recruit and retain senior citizens and urban and
rural youth as collaborators in field research? 2)
How does an increasing level of involvement and
responsibility in becoming collaborators field
science programs correlate to changes in attitude,
knowledge, or behavior? 3) What training and/or
mentoring for professional staff and laypersons is
most effective in increasing scientific skills among
seniors and youth in order to prepare them to be
capable and active collaborators in field studies?
4) What new methods regarding the preparation and
launch of seniors and youth as full collaborators in
field studies at NAS’ IBAs are applicable to ISE
peers that manage other citizen science projects?
Public
Audiences:
Senior Citizens (aged 60 +) and Youth in grades 9-12.
Major collaborators in the CSC project are the
NARSVP (with 500,000+ members) and Earth Force, a
nonprofit youth organization committed to
environmental education, service learning, and
reaching under-served adolescents and teens. In the
CSC project, NAS will work with these two
organizations to broaden its reach to people who
have not traditionally been involved in field
science and its applications to conservation, and
help them discover meaningful life goals in these
endeavors. To do so, NAS must learn how to recruit
and sustain deep relationships with seniors and
youth, facilitate the roles that these two audiences
can play as collaborators in field research and
conservation science, study ways that seniors and
young people as well as scientists and lay people
might interact most effectively while in training,
in the field, and during data analysis and
applications to conservation needs in IBAs, and
study cognitive and affective impacts of such
collaborations upon both citizens and professionals.
The first of 78
million baby boomers turned 60 in 2006. As more baby
boomers retire, the senior volunteer force will
swell dramatically, providing the nation with a
large reservoir of worldly and experienced citizens
who are role models for others, who are capable of
contributing their maturity and knowledge to
scientific endeavors, and are often interested in
mentoring youth. Yet the NARSVP reports that only 2%
of its members are active in conservation projects
in their communities.
The other key public
audience is urban and rural youth of high school age
(grades 9-12). NAS has a national diversity
initiative designed to engage people of color and
other traditionally under-served audiences in STEM.
Many of its IBA programs are located in communities
where NAS has ongoing relationships with
organizations committed to reaching people of color
and other under-represented groups. The four urban
and rural communities that will be the test sites
during the proposed grant period all host Audubon
chapters and/or Nature Centers that have alliances
with community organizations that serve both seniors
and youth; all are also served by regional NARSVP
and Earth Force chapters. In addition, organizations
that frequently associate with NAS researchers in
IBAs, such as the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the
National Park Service, major research universities,
and community colleges often have established
relationships with scout troops, boys and girls
clubs, Ys, and other community-based organizations
that serve youth. Earth Force, along with other
youth organizations in communities adjacent to IBAs,
will be instrumental in recruiting and helping NAS
staff to understand the needs, interests, and
potentials of teenagers involved in this pilot
study.
Professional
Audiences:
Audubon Centers; NAS regional chapters; IBA staff;
Earth Force and NARSVP staff and volunteers;
informal educators.
All will benefit from professional development
activities that prepare them to collaborate with
teams of seniors and youth who help frame research
questions, gather and analyze data, and determine
conservation strategies for IBAs in their
communities. Training sessions, hosted by the US
Fish and Wildlife Service, will be transferable to
other ISE professionals who manage similar citizen
science programs. We will conduct front-end research
to ascertain the best strategies for engaging
seniors and under-served teens. With pathways
funding from NSF, we seek insights into how to
promote consistent and valid field research skills
among seniors and youth, engage them in authentic
field research in collaborative working groups, and
involve them in follow-up conservation activities at
IBAs and other endangered habitats. At the
conclusion of the project, pathways funding will not
only expand the number of trained senior and
teenaged volunteers who work as partners with NAS
field scientists, but also the CSC, by publishing
its project results, will assist other organizations
that rely on lay citizens to monitor and study
wildlife to channel the mature talents of seniors
and the youthful energy of teens.
IBAs—The
Need to Diversify and Deepen Citizen Involvement in
Conservation Research
Over
53 million people in the U.S. are actively involved
in watching or feeding birds (US Fish and Wildlife
Service, 2006). The NAS has the longest-standing
citizen science program in the US: its Christmas
Bird Count has run continuously since 1900. Other
citizen science programs at NAS include the Great
Backyard Bird Count and IBA Adoption Groups that
help monitor species, conduct site assessments, and
carry out conservation project under the guidance of
or in collaboration with NAS scientists. As the US
partner to BirdLife International, NAS has the
alliances, networks, and resources necessary to
deepen public participation in research and
conservation.
IBA
sites are designated according to standardized
criteria that quantify the need for consistent
monitoring, research, and conservation. IBAs support
significant numbers of one or more species of
at-risk or endangered species; provide habitats for
species that are restricted in their distribution;
provide habitats for biome-restricted species or
species otherwise dependent on or representative of
unique habitat types; or have a large proportion of
a species’ population during defined times (e.g.,
the area is a migratory stop-over site; it hosts
large colonies of breeding birds; it is a niche
habitat for range-restricted species; it is an
important wintering site; and/or it has resident
populations of endangered species).
BirdLife International established the IBA program
in the 1980s to help conserve bird populations by
setting science-based priorities for habitat
conservation and safeguarding critical bird
habitats. Since the program’s inception, more than
10,000 IBAs have been identified in 178 countries.
NAS launched its own IBA initiative in 1995. NAS
has staff, chapters, nature centers, and partners in
48 states that work to identify additional IBAs and
train adjacent community members to implement
research-based strategies to protect these sites. To
date, more than 2,100 IBAs have been identified by
NAS in 42 states; these account for 300 million+
acres of habitat. Clearly, no single entity has the
capacity to monitor, study, and protect such large
swaths of land throughout the nation. NAS therefore
established IBA Adoption Groups in key urban and
rural areas throughout the nation to help manage
these sites. IBA Adoption Groups are comprised of
Audubon staff, local community leaders, and citizen
volunteers. IBA assessment processes use
science-based methods for prioritizing conservation
activities and are thus prime opportunities to teach
laypeople how to use the tools and methods of field
research and translate research results into action
by designing and implementing conservation efforts
in critical bird habitats.
STEM Content
The CSC Program
falls primarily within the NSF-funded disciplines of
biology and environmental science. Activities will
also engage laypeople in the information sciences
through the use of GIS, GPS, and other mapping
activities that are the core technologies of species
monitoring. Citizens also exercise math skills
during data mining and data analysis phases. The CSC
Program will focus on sophisticated concepts,
themes, skills, and methods, and also make explicit
the entire spectrum of scientific processes – from
discovery to experimentation, verification,
implications, consequences, and applications. NAS
staff and other researchers in the CSC Program will
mentor youth along with senior citizens and provide
teens with compelling field experiences that augment
their formal education and interest in STEM
careers.
Building on
Educational Research and Prior Work
This CSC pathways
proposal draws upon lessons learned from NAS’s own
citizen science programs as well as others, such as
those funded by NSF at the Cornell Laboratory of
Ornithology’s (Classroom FeederWatch, Project
PigeonWatch, BirdSleuth, NestWatch, and Urban Bird
Studies) and recommendations from the Inquiry Group
Report recently published by the Center for the
Advancement of Informal Science Education (CAISE:
see citation on p. 1 of this narrative).
Recommendations from staff at IBA Adoption Groups
and BirdLife International, as well as other
organizations that involve lay citizens in field
research, also inform the design of the proposed CSC
program. Findings from the work of key researchers
at the Citizen Science Toolkit Conference (Cornell
Lab of Ornithology, June 20-23, 2007) such as Hague
Vaughan (“Citizen Science as a Catalyst in Bridging
the Gap between Science and Decision-Makers,”
Citizen Science Toolkit Conference, presentation by
the Director of the EMAN Coordinating Office,
Environmental Canada) were particularly influential
and helped to shape this project.
As part of our
analysis, we will explore how different
collaborative groupings affect the engagement and
motivation of seniors and young people taking part
in NAS research and conservation programs. The CSC
project will advance the field of citizen science
programming by motivating audiences that do not
often engage in field science and conservation
programs to become not just involved, but fully
invested. The CSC project will document what aspects
of collaborating in field research have the most
positive attraction and holding power for people who
are both early and advanced in their life spans, and
what values and life goals seem to sustain their
engagement in science and conservation. The CSC
project encourages seniors and youth to become
engaged in local land use and planning issues, which
is yet another extension of citizen science:
translating research results into action and
influencing future studies in science as well as in
the stewardship of endangered species and important
habitats.
PROJECT
DESIGN
NAS, working with
NARVSP, Earth Force, and the US Fish and Wildlife
Service (which will host training sessions at their
facilities), will recruit seniors and young
volunteers in four communities adjacent to IBAs and
study how to immerse these two groups in authentic
scientific processes: experimental design, planning
and implementation; threat analysis; monitoring of
site characteristics and critical species;
calculation and analyses of annual variations in
bird populations; identification of limiting
factors; and activities to modify bird habitats to
improve vitality and ensure viability. The CSC will
broaden current citizen science models by enabling
its volunteers to collaborate and even co-create
scientific studies on important bird habitats in
ways that are relevant to laypersons. The pathways
project will be conducted in four states where IBAs
require further research and remediation, and NAS
and its CSC partners (NARSVP, Earth Force, & the US
Fish and Wildlife Service), have firmly established
programs and staff.
§
Minnesota:
The Mississippi River Twin Cities IBA extends
from St. Paul/Minneapolis through four counties
encompassing 37,000 acres of land and water along
the Mississippi Flyway, a major migratory corridor
for North American water fowl and shorebirds. This
IBA has a large heron rookery and nesting Bald
Eagles and Peregrine Falcons. Major threats to the
IBA come mainly from human pressures from the large
adjacent urban area. Its land and waters are
degraded by barge traffic, recreational boating,
channel dredging, and sand and gravel mining.
§
Illinois:
The Bartel Grasslands IBA outside of Chicago
is a key wet grassland breeding and nesting area for
declining species, including Bobolinks, Eastern
Meadowlarks, Grasshopper Sparrows, Dickcissels, and
Henslow’s Sparrows. Threats to the IBA include
invasions by non-native plants, encroachment of the
surrounding forest, and disturbances caused by human
traffic. The Bartel IBA is fortunate to have one of
NAS’ most active citizen volunteer programs.
§
North Carolina:
The Highlands Plateau IBA at the southern end
of the Blue Ridge Mts. is one of the most abundant
areas for Blackburnian Warblers, Golden-crowned
Kinglets, and Rose-breasted Grosbeaks. Peregrine
Falcons were re-introduced here successfully and
nest in the area. The Highlands Biological Station
is a key center for research and conservation of the
IBA which is experiencing habitat loss and
fragmentation due to residential and commercial
development, air and water pollution, and rapid
sedimentation of its waterways.
§
Arizona:
The Salt and Gila Riparian Ecosystem IBA near
Phoenix has a rich abundance of plants and fish due
to its perennial supply of nutrient-rich waters. It
is the year-round home to a large number of
fish-eating and wading birds, including Long-billed
Curlews, ospreys, herons, and egrets. The IBA is
monitored closely by the Sonoran Audubon Society due
to the high risk of diversion of its waters to the
City, illegal dumping, pesticide run-off, and risk
of accidental fire.
Upon
funding, all primary team members from NAS and
project partners will meet with advisors and
evaluators to set goals, establish benchmarks, and
agree on formats and instructional methods during
the preparation of professional scientists and
educators who will, in turn, support citizens
collaborating on scientific and conservation
efforts. Training modules and materials will be
developed within the first quarter while IBA sites
each begin to recruit and screen ~ fifty citizen
volunteers. Citizens will be asked to commit to a
one year involvement of at least (and
hopefully more) five hours/month, to have relevant
interests or backgrounds in birding or wildlife,
science, conservation, and outdoor experience, and
to get approval from parents or physicians as
appropriate. The first pilot for the CSC will be
launched in the Bartel Highlands IBA near Chicago,
where staff is most experienced in working with
citizen volunteers. Shortly after the launch in IL
and following a review by project evaluators, all
other IBA CSC programs will be initiated. Each will
begin with a 2 or 3-day training workshop for
seniors, youth, scientists, and other local leaders
to establish a core working group of ~ eight
experienced field staff from NAS, Earth Force, and
the US Fish and Wildlife Service and ~fifty
volunteers in each IBA. Training and collaborative
research experiences will be entirely site-based.
Scientists and civic leaders will explain the
history, biology, and ecology of the IBA and its
current status. Based on volunteers’ interests,
teams will discuss the parameters of testable valid
field work questions which, in turn, will be worked
up by the entire group into research designs. Corps
of teams will then self-select to do monitoring,
data collection and analysis, inventorying flora and
fauna, remediation planning, etc. All will “get
dirty” doing grounds work: weeding out non-native
plants and redressing litter, water quality and land
degradation issues. Skills in using common field
technologies and applying mathematical equations to
analyze bodies of data will be cultivated among
laypersons who will learn, do, and then teach
others. We expect that some attrition among
volunteers will occur; some researchers will prefer
to remain “solo”, and some citizens will emerge as
reliable cohorts and co-creators of field activities
who work capably alongside scientists.
Project
Deliverables
1)
A
front-end needs assessment
of recruited seniors and youth to gauge baseline
knowledge levels in biology and environmental
science, outdoor skills, interests or prior
experience in volunteering, noting which individuals
have an interest in conservation, STEM careers, or
mentoring youth.
2)
Four
distinct, thoroughly-evaluated pilots of
collaborative citizen science programs,
yielding insights into how intergenerational and
professional-citizen groupings affected all
participants.
3)
If the evaluation results
on this pathways study are sufficiently positive, we
will develop a plan for implementing
collaborative and co-creative citizen volunteer
programs nationwide in continued partnership
with Earth Force and NARSVP throughout NAS’
nationwide network of 48 state IBA programs, 50+
nature centers, and 24 state and 480 local chapters.
4)
Final
project and evaluators’ reports
will document how the CSC program endeavored to
deepen the ways in which the lay public participates
in research and conservation at NAS, moving
volunteers in a progression from contributors to
collaborators and co-creators of scientific studies
and conservation, providing guidance to ISE peers
who manage similar citizen science programs.
Project
Evaluation
RMC
Research Corporation will conduct front-end,
formative, and summative evaluations for the CSC
program. While the number, gender, age, and
qualifications of all participants and the focus of
research and conservation efforts will vary at each
of the four pilot sites (the IBAs in MN, IL, NC, and
AZ), a uniform evaluation scheme will be used so
that a reasonable consistency in defining measures
of program effectiveness can be acheived. Critical
project activities, such as volunteer recruitment,
training sessions, the launch and conclusion of
field research and conservation efforts, etc., will
all be documented by RMC researchers who will apply
the following mix of quantitative and qualitative
methods:
-
Front-end needs
assessment of volunteering youth and seniors.
-
Professional staff training evaluation
(observation/surveys/focus groups).
-
Post-recruitment
site staff surveys and interviews (data about
recruitment strategies, successes, and
demographic information about volunteers).
-
Intermittent
interviews with senior-youth and scientist-lay
volunteer pairs or groups who work together in
IBA field sites (document quantity and quality
of such groupings, assess engagement and
satisfaction levels).
-
IBA staff
baseline and final interviews (program successes
and challenges regarding engagement, volunteer
retention, volunteer activities and outputs
related to research, stewardship projects, etc.)
-
Final interviews
and surveys among volunteers to assess changes,
if any, in participant’s STEM knowledge,
attitudes, and behavior; gather data on the
satisfaction with program supports (training,
mentoring), and involvement in field research
and conservation activities.
-
Structured
online journals to gather volunteer responses to
different program components, such as study
designing, data collection, analysis,
conservation activities, use of IT tools, maps,
etc.
-
Final volunteer
focus groups for each site (via video conference
or webinar) with a sampling of youth and senior
volunteers for in-depth discussion of program
satisfaction, strengths, program supports, and
suggestions for future implementation.
PROJECT PERSONNEL
AND MANAGEMENT
NAS will manage the
project, working collaboratively with the NARSVP,
Earth Force, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service
(training partner) and program evaluators (RMC
Research Corporation). Senior staff from BirdLife
International will attend national training session
to share exemplary case studies and best practices
developed through their citizen science programs
with 100+ organizations worldwide. Advisors will
work with the NAS Core Project Team to design
training sessions, sharing their own case studies
and best practices, and will be charged with the
development of training modules and materials for
use in community training sessions in the four IBA
sites. Each IBA site will designate team leaders who
work directly with senior and youth volunteers and
cooperate with program evaluators to ensure the
accuracy, timeliness, and consistency of data
collection. Pathways funding from NSF will enable
each IBA site team to offer an internship to an
undergraduate or graduate student in the sciences so
they may be mentored in public education activities
and develop leadership skills during the CSC
experience.
Core
Project Team
NAS PI Judy Braus,
M.A. in
Environmental Education, is the Senior Vice
President of Education and Centers at NAS. She has
served as Director of Education at the World
Wildlife Fund, Manager of Environmental Education at
the U.S. Peace Corps, and Director of Environmental
Education at the National Wildlife Federation. She
oversees budgets, advisor relations, and staff and
volunteer training.
NAS Co-PI: Iain
Stenhouse, Ph.D.
in Cognitive and Behavioral Ecology, is the Senior
Scientist for NAS’ Important Bird Areas (IBAs). He
served as the Director of Bird Conservation for
Audubon Alaska, where he developed the Alaska
WatchList and effective partnerships with
community organizations.
John Cecil, M.S.
is the
Director of NAS IBAs, and the project manager for
CSC. He provides guidance and support to IBA pilot
sites, identifies research and conservation
priorities. Cecil and Remington oversee the
operational aspects of the CSC project, and
coordinate reporting and visioning with PIs.
Charles Remington,
B.S., is
the Director of Field Support East, Education and
Centers. He has over twenty years of experience in
environmental education. In his current position at
NAS, he serves 19 NAS Centers and aids them in
program development, staff/volunteer training, and
outreach to underserved audiences. Remington assists
Cecil and is the primary liaison with project
evaluators.
Earth Force:
CSC Project coordination with national and regional
chapters of Earth Force, a youth empowerment
organization dedicated to environmental education,
service learning, and outreach to at-risk youth, is
managed by the CEO, Lisa Bardwell. She
assists the recruitment of underserved youth.
NARSVP:
Melodye Kleinman
is the Immediate Past President of the NARSVP Board
of Directors. She will coordinate the CSC project
team with leaders in regional chapters of NARSVP’s
Senior Corps to recruit volunteers in communities
adjacent to pilot site IBAs.
U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service
will provide training facilities and support to
research and conservation projects at the four pilot
site IBAs. Janet Ady, Chief of Education
Outreach, National Conservation and Training
Centers, serves as the liaison to the CSC project.
External Evaluator:
The RMC
Research Corporation,
a learning research organization that work with
programs in both formal and informal settings.
Alice Apley, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate,
is the lead evaluator from RMC for the CSC program.
Dr. Apley has substantial experience managing
evaluation studies for NSF/ISE-funded projects, and
recently conducted a two-year evaluation of the
Jumpstart-Experience Corps, a pilot project to
create new service opportunities for older adult
volunteers.
Confirmed
Advisors:
Richard Bonney, Ph.D.,
Director of Program
Development and Evaluation at the Cornell Laboratory
of Ornithology; Frank Gill, Ph.D., Chief
Scientist Emeritus, NAS; Joe Heimlich, Ph.D.,
Professor, Ohio State University, Environmental
Studies Graduate Program and Senior Research
Director, Institute for Learning Innovation;
Thane Maynard, Executive Director of the
Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden; Jackie Odgen,
Vice President of Animal Programs and Environmental
Initiatives, Disney World Resort; Eleanor
Sterling, Director of the Biodiversity Center at
the American Museum of Natural History; David
Thomas, Ph.D., Director of IBAs, BirdLife
International.
Invitations
to advise the CSC program
have been extended to: Bill Spitzer, Ph.D.,
Vice President of Programs and Planning, New England
Aquarium; Iantha Gantt-Wright, President and
Founder of the Kenian Group Diversity Coaching and
Consulting; Julian Agyeman, Ph.D., Associate
Professor and Chair of Environmental Policy and
Planning at Tufts University; Gus Medina,
Program Manager of the Environmental Education and
Training Partnership.
