Imaginations Abound Early Learning Center

     It was our pleasure to have been invited to a local daycare center to teach a little about water quality! The local daycare is called Imaginations Abound Early Learning Center in Alexandria, Kentucky. The cute little daycare had five students for us to teach to that ranged in age from two to five years. We did not teach for very long, but they thoroughly enjoyed our Buddy the Fish lesson. Buddy the Fish starts out in a clean tank of water, but as he swims past factories, construction sites, and trash dumps, his water becomes increasingly gross. The students get to dump the different pollutants into the water, making the lesson relevant, fun, and engaging with the students usually being eager to dump stuff in and genuinely concerned about Buddy's well-being. This experience was fun for all and we look forward to being invited to more daycare centers in the future!

Celebration of Student Research and Creativity

     This week was the culmination of a project and presentation we have been working on for a little while here. At Northern Kentucky University, we had the amazing privilege of being able to do a twenty minute presentation at this year's Celebration of Student Research and Creativity about what we have accomplished over the past couple semesters and how the 5E Model is more inclusive and modern than the preceding front-loading and teacher-lead models of the past. We began the presentation with talking about what the 5E Model is and how the students we were teaching to were involved in this model both on an individual lesson level and also as a week-long module level. Then we went on to talk about how we, as student workers and student instructors, were experiencing the 5E model ourselves while we learned the content we needed to in order to teach and as we actually learned about the 5E model. Afterwards, we described our personal experiences and how being involved in the program has impacted us both on a personal and professional level.

The $4.99 App about Water Quality and Now an App for All the Carbon Footprint Competes in Washington.

     Sixth-graders going to a creek. It is fun, they get to be in the water, they learn about water quality, but the experience doesn’t have to end there. There’s so much to continue learning about water quality and you can’t constantly bring the people physically to the streams for it, so the idea of an app that would be on the hands of children that tend more to be outside would make them interested on how all the environmental aspect and sustainability come together.

     "They are more interested on the bugs than the app” says Rosemarie Santos, interim Director for the Center of Environmental Education, which is good. The app helps be civically engaged, more responsible, and by doing that with children and elementary-school teachers the impact is even bigger as they are the new generations.

     This first app actually inspired a second one. This one goes beyond water and gives visibility of a person’s carbon footprint. The interesting aspect is that a prototype is being developed as part of a phase 1 grant and if successful (compete and win in April 2015 in Washington) it can go to a phase 2 for further development. The app helps the person economically (‘you can save this $$ if you used the bus or walk versus using the car’), at a health level (‘you can burn these calories if you walked there versus driving’), at an environmental level (‘you can reduce these metric tons of CO2 if you walked versus drive, or lower the heater in X degrees’), and at a social level (‘given traffic conditions you can reduce the CO2 if you waited’).

     Dr. Christine Curran is proud of the students’ coordination from Marketing, Informatics and Environmental Sciences. All the best for them in April 2015!

Sources: The Northerner. "Environmental Evolution" December 2014 http://goo.gl/2GZ5ZV  and WNKU. “Students create an app to track carbon footprint” February 2015 http://goo.gl/hDrtzi

NKU Jumps Right in the Middle of Environmental Evolution

     The Northener (the independent student newspaper of NKU) is doing a great job sharing the advancements in Environmental Education and Sustainability as strategies that are setting NKU apart. The online article gives a lot of existing examples of these efforts. Here is a preview of some of them.

     A Director for Energy Management and a Sustainability Manager will be hired to solidify and bring to life the sustainability agenda as part of NKU’s Strategic Plan. This will ensure NKU catches up with compliance commitments (e.g. it hasn’t reported its carbon footprint since 2009) and coordinates efforts that so far were one-off’s. NKU wants carbon neutrality by 2050, only 35 years away and a lot to do and fund.

     Griffin Hall is a lead case for environmentally sustainable construction and the new Health Innovations Center follow the LEED standards which ensure sustainable Energy & Environmental designs. LEED has categories (certification, silver, gold, and platinum) and the higher means more expensive construction but the on-going return outweighs the initial investment. NKU seeks Silver as a minimum standard for every construction in campus.

     Transportation is also a key opportunity: students and faculty need to use bus, car-sharing and bicycles much more to lower the CO2 footprint. Since NKU is in a suburban location it makes it comfortable to come by car, each student or faculty on their own. Creating awareness that TANK, for instance, is free for students is a key aspect of the Transportation planning and perks to make people choose public transportation.

     Lastly, the Center for Environmental Education (CEE) created ‘Environmental Lessons’ that would be shared at schools nationwide. This was funded by NASA (yes! NASA…) and will radically change the environmental literacy of children. CEE also runs reforestation events, chats, field trips with local K-12 students, and even an app development that for $4.99 teaches helps you learn about water quality.

Source: The Northerner. "Environmental Evolution" December 2014 http://goo.gl/2GZ5ZV

This is why I love where I work.  You never know who is going to come by and visit or what you are going to be doing.  Life here is one adventure after another. 

Thanks Lloyd High School for inviting us to your Annual STEM Expo.  It was wonderful meeting your students and introducing them to our worms.  It was great to see them so excited about learning the connections between worms, engineering and geology.  Can't wait see you again. 

We braved the cold on March 28th and had a great time planting trees with the Northern Kentucky Urban and Community Forestry Council at the Reforest Northern Kentucky 2015.

It was a amazing to be with 280 people all dedicated to improving the environment.  

We had so much fun, we forgot to get pics.  :(  Boo hiss.  Luckily the Northern Kentucky Urban and Community Forestry Council has a bunch.  Check it out at http://on.fb.me/1bU9S8J.

Why Worms in Your Office can Actually be a Very good Thing.

     In a project that started in February 2015 and lasts for 10 weeks The Northener (the independent student newspaper of NKU) is highlighting 10 cool offices in NKU. Each office tenant tells the stories behind why their office looks and how it creates a good environment. It turns out that one of the offices has several hundreds of worms! But that actually is a VERY GOOD thing. How can that be?!  Read on…

     The operations hotspot for the Center of Environmental Education is Rosie Santos’ office at Founders Hall. Among the lively wall colors, postcards and plants Rosie keeps a special green box with worms. What originally was brought into the office to explain and teach about decomposers in the nitrogen cycle, turned out to be an addition to the office that actually helps being friendlier to the environment without much especial or extra effort. The worms eat scraps from biodegradable food. You just need to add the small pieces of left-overs, things like meat, dairy, egg shells, or coffee grinds. Even shredded paper! The office space is evidently a great place for this, it doesn’t produce smell or noise, doesn’t require special sunlight, and also doesn’t require special attention apart from removing their soil every once in a while and keep on adding small amounts of their ‘food’, which is your biodegradable waste.

    The result is a type of soil that is rich in nitrogen and it can be used as a potent fertilizer for the plants that for sure people have in the offices. This helps create a virtuous cycle in which you eat healthy, you put biodegradable waste to be organically recycled, then the produced soil is put to nurture more and healthier plants, and why not food! 

This certainly helps the office spaces be more sustainable but it is also useful for people’s homes. Setting the box isn’t difficult, you can buy in the internet (a simple search for ‘worm composer box’ gives several results with prices for all budgets) and there are many videos on the internet that explain everything in under 5 minutes. It’s a simple, free and a direct way of helping the planet.

Source: Carrie Crotzer, Kody Kahle, Lindsey Rudd, Wyatt Nolen. "Top NKU Offices" 9 Feb. 2015. Web. 14 Mar. 2015. 

<http://thenortherner.com/multimedia/top-offices/index.html>