By Tom Wood, SCI-Chesapeake Bay Co-Director
On April 23 and 24, 2016, the SENCER Chesapeake Bay Center for Innovation held a meeting on the beautiful campus of the Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation in Front Royal, Virginia. The meeting focused on developing community partnerships and five collaborative proposals emerged.
The new course proposal topics range from environmental studies courses for non-majors to interdisciplinary pre-service education. Several of the courses incorporated concepts of bioinformatics, using data collected among collaborative courses taught around the Chesapeake Bay. Others emphasized greening the curriculum by focusing on the Bay specifically, and using active learning. Faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students from Dabney S. Lancaster Community College, Delaware State University, George Mason University, Hood College, James Madison University, Penn State Lehigh Valley, Stanford University, Towson University, and Trinity Washington University were represented at the meeting.
In addition to the sessions on developing and nurturing the partnerships, SENCER Co-PI Monica Devanas delivered the opening keynote address and welcomed new participants to the SENCER community. The enthusiasm of the participants through the meeting about collaborative course and program development will be represented with sessions and presentations at future national and regional SENCER meetings.
Photo credit: Tom Wood