Recruitment and Outreach

Participant recruitment in each of the three, annual Institutes will target K-12 pre- and inservice teachers of urban, rural, and resource poor students; faculty researchers; and specialists such as post-doctoral science or science education students, curriculum developers, science supervisors, informal science educators, and assessment and evaluation professionals. A maximum of 24 participants (15 inservice teachers, three preservice teachers, and six specialists) will be selected for each Institute in cooperation with professional associations such as the National Marine Education Association (NMEA), the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE), the National Estuarine Research Reserve Systems (NERRS), the Biennial Conference in Chemical Education, and the 29 Sea Grant Programs. Other professional science and environmental organizations will be contacted for assistance in the recruiting process with special attention given to those organizations which have significant numbers of minority educators in their memberships, i.e., the Council for Greater City Schools. Advertisements and articles in national science education newsletters and journals will publicize the program. An application brochure will be developed for the Polymer and Marine Science Institutes. This application brochure will be used for participant solicitation and recruitment through hard copy and on this project's Website which will also be linked to each Sea Grant Program and the BRIDGE (electronic resource center for teachers at http://www.marine-ed.org/), housed at the Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences.

The annual Polymer and Marine Sciences Institutes will convene a selection committee to choose participants from the applications submitted. Each Institute will make efforts to have near equal participant representation by states/territories. Further, for each of the three annual Institutes, there will be six teams with four participants in each team. The teams will include one elementary teacher, one middle school teacher, one secondary teacher, and one specialist. Participants will be selected on the basis of applicants' willingness to:


The Polymer and Marine Science Co-Principal Investigators will assist teacher participants in these tasks.

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