As the academic director of the 1998 Woodrow Wilson Environmental
Science Institute (ESI98-Rutgers), I'd like to welcome you and share
some of our goals and hopes for the institute. My name is Anna Matteoda
and I am a physical oceanographer at the Institute of Marine and Coastal
Sciences, Rutgers University. This letter will introduce you to some of
the faculty who will work with us this summer and explain how we hope
you will contribute to the program. We'll continue communicating with
you from now until the summer institute begins June 28, 1998, via email
and by mail for those of you who have yet to establish email accounts.
Please feel free to call Geri Marchioni, Conference Manager at
609-452-7007 x 21 or email her at marchioni@woodrow.org.
Currently, we are constructing a set of web pages at the Leadership
Program for Teachers (LPT) to serve you prior to, during, and after the
institute. Those of you who have provided us with your email address are
receiving this message via the email list instead of by surface mail.
The email list will provide information on academic activities and
administrative concerns, and email is another way to communicate your
questions regarding environmental science concepts and structure of the
institute. Those of you who receive the letter by surface mail are
urged to get an email account as soon as possible. Please see the web
site at
http://www.woodrow.org/teachers/es/institutes/1998/r/
Our institute will be organized around topics related to global climate
change and we have invited you to share a classroom or professional
development experience appropriate for the institute's theme. If you
have not yet submitted one to three ideas for the classroom or
professional development activity you will present, please do so
promptly.
Your involvement in the institute will be at least four-fold, you will:
1) participate in activities led by resident faculty and visiting
faculty,
2) share a classroom or professional development activity preferably
related to the theme of the institute,
3) integrate use of the Internet, including developing a collaborative
standards-based web product,
4) collaborate with LPT and teacher-colleagues in preparation for
leadership activities to be conducted after the institute.
Now, don't panic!!! There will be a lot of people working with us to
accomplish these goals. Our resident group, so far, includes me, Tim
Donahue, and Larry Price. My research interests include the study of
estuaries and coastal seas using a combination of instruments deployed
from ships and remote sensing imagery gathered by satellites. In the
course of my research I collaborate with, and learn from, other
scientists, such as meteorologists, biologists, and chemical
oceanographers. Another strong interest of mine is educational outreach
to grade schools. I have conducted short workshops and a number of
classroom presentations at all levels of K-12 education. My favorite
student group so far has been the pre-school and kindergarten set: they
have so much enthusiasm and great questions!
Tim and Larry are with the Global Rivers Environmental Education Network
(GREEN). They have lots of experience leading professional development
workshops and developing classroom units on hands-on science. Visit
GREEN's web site to learn more, http://www.econet.apc.org/green/ .
We also have a line-up of university professors and visiting faculty who
will provide mentoring in small groups as you tackle your research
projects. So far we have Dr. Jim Miller, another oceanographer from my
department with expertise in climate, meteorology, and earth science in
general. Other faculty members from the Institute of Marine and Coastal
Sciences at Rutgers are Dr. Waldo Wakefield, a fisheries biologist, who
has studied fish populations in many different environments ranging from
Alaska to the coast of new Jersey; Dr. Oscar Schofield, a marine
biologist interested in primary production in the ocean, and the
relationship of light with matter in the water, both living (plankton)
and detrital (dead plankton, inorganic particles); Dr. Norb Psuty, a
coastal geomorphologist, who studies the relationship of sea level to
the shape and location of beaches, including beach migration.
>From the Department of Environmental Sciences we have two faculty
members: Dr. Marie Siewierski, a chemist with varied interests including
the effects of global warming on the spread of tropical diseases to
temperate latitudes, and Dr. Bob Tucker, whose interests lie in the
policy aspects of environmental variables, and who deals more with the
human impact side of global climate change. And then there is Dr. Bob
Ford who will be a visiting faculty member for part of the institute,
and whose interests include using remote sensing data (satellite imagery
and aerial photography) to track both natural and human population
changes. He will bring to the institute his unique perspective on the
human impact of global climate change as it refers to particular areas
in the American tropics.
There are approximately 50 other teacher-participants from 18 states in
your institute plus 50 more participants in ESI98-Princeton, plus 40
more in the biology institute at Princeton. We hope that all of you
will serve as resources for each other during and after the institute.
We have lots to do and it should be very exciting! LPT, the visiting
faculty and the resident faculty are all eagerly looking forward to
working with you on the web and in person during the summer institute.
Best Regards,
Dr. Anna Matteoda, Director ESI98
IMCS - Rutgers University
71 Dudley Rd.
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8521