Grant: 22-022E
Project Title: Sea Turtle Academy STEM: Empowering Students to Build Solutions to Sea Turtle Threats
Project Manager: Sarah Rhodes-Ondi
Organization: Sea Turtle Conservancy (Non-Profit Organization)
Grant Amount: $12,652.00
Completion Date: 2023-10-05
Summary: The Barrier Island Sanctuary Management and Education Center (BIC), located in the heart of the Archie Carr National Wildlife Refuge, has a responsibility to train the next generation of stewards of sea turtles and their critical nesting habitat. Sea Turtle Academy (STA) field study education programs have reached up to 3,000 students in both Brevard and Indian River Counties. There is strong demand from Title I, private and charter schools for the STA program, however, many schools lack the bus funds to attend. This project will fund bus transportation for these students. The STA program also includes a follow-up outreach program option for classes. In response to the Science and Engineering framework and cross-cutting concepts in the Next Generation Sunshine State Standards, the BIC team will create an integrated STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) outreach program that encourages students to think critically about sea turtle threats, collaborate, problem solve and build solutions to these threats. The threats sea turtles face can be sad and overwhelming to young children. However, by focusing on solutions minded thinking, the BIC team aims to empower the next generation of stewards of the Carr Refuge to not only be informed of threats sea turtles face but to also build solutions to save sea turtles from disorientation on nesting beaches, boat strikes, incidental takes by fisheries and predators on nesting beaches.
Results: The Sea Turtle Conservancy at the Barrier Island Center has completed all of our tasks and deliverables for 22-022E. We reached 304 students from four Title-1 schools with the new hands-on, integrative STEM outreach program: Building Solutions to Sea Turtle Threats. All were awarded bus scholarships to participate in our Sea Turtle Academy programs and then staff was sent to deliver the new STEM outreach program.
One challenge that emerged during this grant implementation was that the Brevard County Environmentally Endangered Lands Program administrators removed the EEL intern from their budget during 2023. We recruited a dedicated college student volunteer, Mairi Brooks, who served 10 hours per week during the fall of 2022 and spring of 2023. She was later hired as the permanent part-time Naturalist for the EEL program at the BIC. Mairi was critical to delivering both the Sea Turtle Academy school study programs and the STEM outreach component of this grant.