Kathleen Paul, Director of the Pennsylvania Center for Environmental Education, recently presented a workshop at the 37th annual conference of the North American Association for Environmental Education held in Wichita, Kansas.

Over 800 participants, including formal and non-formal educators, policy makers, business representatives, and representatives of state and federal agencies, explored topics ranging from research activities in the field of environmental education to new curricula and initiatives being developed all over the northern hemisphere.

Ms. Paul’s workshop, titled “Environmental Education Grows Up: Making Sustainability Relevant to Adults,” attracted a full house of educators, agency representatives and researchers. As one strategy for making information about the environment useful to adults, Paul introduced the new PCEE website which provides adults with tools and resources to make their professional and personal lives more “green” and earth-friendly.

“From its very beginning, Environmental Education was always meant to make a difference in people’s lives,” Ms. Paul argued. “The processes that we understand as Environmental Educators are the same ones that homeowners and business owners and farmers and township supervisors need to understand if they want to make earth-friendly decisions while saving money by adopting green, sustainable practices. Here at PCEE, we want to make it easy for them to find the information and the resources that they need to do so.”

This opinion was echoed throughout the conference by keynote speakers Daniel Barstow (Chair of the Center for Earth and Space Science Education) and Jerome Ringo (President of the Apollo Alliance), who discussed the need to engage the adult populace in resolving climate change and promoting environmental health.

Ms. Paul will serve on NAAEE’s newly-formed Sustainability Commission, created to address these issues and develop a “sustainability strand” of workshops and presentations for the next annual conference, scheduled for October 2009 in Portland, Oregon.

11/7/2008