EETAP Acronym Alphabet Soup:  Consortium Making Strides Toward Priority EE Goals

By Mike Kaspar, EE Training Coordinator, EETAP

 The Environmental Education Advocate - Summer 1998

The following information is provided to you as a service of the National Environmental Education Advancement Project (NEEAP). We encourage you to use it and please credit the National Environmental Education
Advancement Project where appropriate.

What do CEE/WILD, NAAEE, NEEAP (UWSP), NIU, OSU, PLT, UM, UWSP, WestEd, and WET all have in common? Besides being a jumble of letters like an alphabet soup, these acronyms represent nine national organizations and universities that make up the largest consortium of environmental education (EE) institutions to date devoted to EE training. They are all partners of the Environmental Education and Training Partnership, otherwise known as EETAP. The complexity of EETAP makes it necessary to provide a greater understanding of this meaningful and historic project.

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NEEAP Consultant Corky McReynolds, Coordinator Abby Ruskey, and Resource Person Libby McCann present a meeting facilitation skills workshop to 40 EE leaders at the National WET Conference.

Origins of EETAP
The Environmental Education Act of 1990 authorized the EE Division of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). Funding was also made available for EE training. In 1995, the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) was awarded the largest of the USEPA's grants. EETAP was launched, beginning a new era of synergy and professionalism for the field of EE. With a budget of approximately $2 million every year, EETAP is the largest coordinated effort for EE training nationally, if not worldwide.

EETAP is devoted to three overarching goals: 1) Quality EE Training; 2) Access to Quality EE Materials; and 3) Capacity Building for EE. In addition to these goals are core themes that all partners have incorporated into their workplans and are working to implement. The core themes include: a) linking EE to education reform, b) increasing diversity in EE, c) utilizing communication technology for EE, and d) promoting synergy.

Supporting Quality EE
To support EETAP's goal of quality EE training, three EETAP partners are taking the lead. The Council for Environmental Education (CEE) and their program known as Project WILD; Project Learning Tree (PLT); and National Project WET have furthered their award winning curricula and teacher training programs to mesh with EETAP's goals and objectives.

Project WILD is improving the quality of EE training by working on a national service learning initiative and promoting the use of technology. Through EETAP, they funded the first electronic field trip in Texas that reached over 150 teachers and 7,000 students.

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Sandra DeYonge (Project WET), Brenda Gipson (Nat. Coalition Building Inst.) and Gus Medina (EETAP) at the NEEAP/NAAEE Leadership Clinic. Brenda also provided another workshop on diversity at the Project WILD National Conference.

Project Learning Tree (PLT) is improving the quality of EE training as they create workshops that delve deeper into EE issues than those addressed during traditional workshop formats. PLT is being correlated to state and national educational standards which helps educators successfully meet systemic education reform goals.

Because of EETAP, National Project WET (Water Education for Teachers) devised the first of its kind evaluation of different kinds of informal education training models used by programs such as WET and similar projects such as PLT and WILD.

Providing Access to EE Materials
In many studies, access to materials was found to be a barrier for teachers trying to teach about the environment. To address these concerns and needs, another purpose of EETAP is to provide access to quality EE materials and to develop and use environmental education guidelines. The Partners taking lead responsibility for this objective include Northern Illinois University (NIU), Ohio State University (OSU), and University of Michigan (UM).

EE materials are now more accessible than ever before through the efforts of these Partners. For example, OSU has developed and tested a training program for accessing resources on-line. At UM, work with EE-Link has made EE materials readily accessible through computer technology, and made the Internet more usable and productive for EE.

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WestEd provides an array of online computers at the EETAP Partners' national conferences. Here Paul Nowak, Jr. (UM), Richard Wenn (WestEd) and Robert Olson (MN EE Leader) strategize services for the EE community.

NIU’s project, the National Project for Excellence in Environmental Education, created the first set of Materials Guidelines for EE that are aimed to help developers of activity guides, lesson plans, and other instructional materials produce high quality products. The Guidelines also provide educators with a tool to evaluate the vast assortment of available EE materials.

Strengthening EE Programs
  The three remaining EETAP Partners, NAAEE, WestEd, and NEEAP (UWSP), provide EETAP funded services for EE capacity building at the state and local levels.

The North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) is the managing Partner of EETAP and has taken many steps to strengthen EE at the state level. NAAEE created the Urban Leadership Collaboratives, recognizing that EE training is sorely lacking in urban areas. In addition, NAAEE’s affiliate state EE organizations are being provided many services to help strengthen EE at the state and local level.

WestEd, formerly known as the Far West Regional Education Laboratory, has two roles. By supporting the California Systemic Implementation Network, they play a pivotal role in school reform. In another project, WestEd developed an Internet site, the EdGateway, to foster connections between those who promote EE and those who promote systemic reform.

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EETAP Management: Ed McCrae (NAAEE), Gus Medina, and Mike Kaspar (EETAP) were all smiles at the 1998 NEEAP/NAAEE Leadership Clinic.

Finally, the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point (UWSP), through the National Environmental Education Advancement Project (NEEAP), has become the recognized leader (along with NAAEE) in strengthening EE at the state level. One of NEEAP's services is the Leadership Clinic, one of the most comprehensive leadership training programs for those achieving EE initiatives at the state level. The annual Leadership Clinic uses contemporary strategies and techniques for developing and encouraging leadership, and for that reason, has become one of the most popular institutes of leadership development. This is only one of the many leadership and organizational development services NEEAP offers through the EE2000 program.

There has been nothing like EETAP before. Its accomplishments are impressive and, because of its many services and quality of work, it will make a significant mark on the development of EE for years to come. To learn more about EETAP, visit our website at http://eetap.org.

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