{"id":56839,"date":"2020-09-18T16:42:19","date_gmt":"2020-09-18T20:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/?post_type=news&#038;p=56839"},"modified":"2020-09-21T08:32:35","modified_gmt":"2020-09-21T12:32:35","slug":"ncmns-teacher-education-unit-receives-2020-exceptional-environmental-education-program-award","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/news\/ncmns-teacher-education-unit-receives-2020-exceptional-environmental-education-program-award\/","title":{"rendered":"NCMNS Teacher Education unit receives 2020 Exceptional Environmental Education Program Award"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"img-responsive\" src=\"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Megan-and-Melissa_-Edit-2_800.jpg\" alt=\"Megan Chesser Davis and Melissa Dowland\" \/><span style=\"font-size: 12px;\">Megan Chesser Davis (left) and Melissa Dowland. Photo: Mike Dunn.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>(Raleigh) \u2014 NC Museum of Natural Sciences\u2019 Teacher Education Coordinator Melissa Dowland and Teacher Education Specialist Megan Chesser Davis received the\u00a02020 Exceptional Environmental Education Program Award today. The award was presented by the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/eenc.wildapricot.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Environmental Educators of North Carolina<\/a>\u00a0(EENC), the state\u2019s professional organization for environmental educators, for the pair\u2019s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/learn\/educators\/online-workshops\">online professional development series<\/a>, launched at the end of March in response to COVID-19.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.canva.com\/design\/DAEIAYwxsOc\/xi0PCZ-Rd3q-yrI-jb4uEA\/view?utm_content=DAEIAYwxsOc&amp;utm_campaign=designshare&amp;utm_medium=link&amp;utm_source=recording_view\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Award Announcement Video<\/a><\/p>\n<p>According to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/eenc.wildapricot.org\/Awards\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">EENC website<\/a>,\u00a0the \u201cExceptional Environmental Education Program\u00a0Award recognizes a program, education center, organization, partnership or educational system that exemplifies excellence in environmental education. The program reaches far beyond the usual magnitude and degree of scope and scale to create: a sustainable commitment to environmental education, a more environmentally literate public, a stronger profession for environmental educators, and otherwise supporting EENC\u2019s mission and objectives.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When confronted with the challenges that COVID-19 placed on their normal way of working with educators, Dowland and Davis quickly came up with a plan to provide high quality, impactful resources that can be used by educators and students to explore the natural world, whether they are together in a classroom or only able to connect virtually.<\/p>\n<p>Christy Flint, Interim Head of Schools and Lifelong Education, said, \u201cI am so pleased that Megan and Melissa are being recognized by EENC for their efforts to keep people interested and engaged in exploring the natural world during these challenging times.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Many of the videos and activities developed and produced by Dowland and Davis have also been made available to the general public on the Museum\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/news\/nature-neighborhood-create-a-nature-journal\/\">Exploring Your Nature Neighborhood<\/a>\u201d web page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56841,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/56839"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/56839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naturalsciences.org\/calendar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}