The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (WWNFF), the Princeton Environmental Institute, and the Rutgers University Department of Environmental Science and Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences collaborated on a program to provide secondary science teachers with instructional research experiences.

National Science Education Standards (NSES) related to the following were an integral part of the curriculum:

• a systems view of the natural world
• correlation versus causation
• interdependence
• scale
• synergistic effects
• threshold effects, and
• policy implications

The institute began with an overview of systems theory, NSES, concepts and implications of global change. There were eleven lectures delivered by eminent professors and researchers from the two universities. Participants interacted as a whole group of 53 secondary teachers and also worked in three study groups, each led by a member of the WWNFF visiting faculty.

As an integral part of each day's activities, WWNFF faculty and teacher-participants processed what they had observed and learned in light of NSES, how the activities can be translated into local issues, how secondary students can engage in similar research projects, and how through inquiry-based science teaching all students can achieve higher quality learning. Each teacher engaged in a research project with a mentor.