The Office of Environmental Education supports and promotes quality environmental education throughout North Carolina. This is accomplished through several initiatives including:

• Serving as a clearinghouse for EE materials, information and workshops. These resources are shared through the Office’s Web site, online monthly newsletter and the NC-EE Listserv.
• Informing K-12 teachers, college professors and pre-service teachers about EE opportunities for their students as well as for their own professional development. The Office produces an educator’s guide, coordinates a week-long summer institute for teachers and demonstrates to educators how EE can be used to integrate curriculum and meet the objectives of the NC Standard Course of Study.
• Managing the NC Environmental Education Certification Program. This program requires participants to complete EE workshops, participate in outdoor EE experiences, demonstrate teaching skills and design and implement a community project. Participants gain their certification after 200 hours of training.
• Designating, supporting and promoting more than 190 Environmental Education Centers across the state. The Office produces a guide to the EE centers and helps promote them and their events through the Web site, listserv, newsletter and the media.
• Managing the NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources Library. The library maintains a model EE collection that can be circulated to the public. It also hosts EE workshops and provides bibliographies of EE materials.
• Disseminating EE materials to the adult public. This includes the Discover Your Ecological Address initiative that includes brochures about one’s ecological address, the Discover NC’s River Basins booklet, and informational pamphlets for each of the 17 basins in the state. Adults are also reminded of the connection between the environment, recreation and health through the basin publications and made aware of environmental issues surrounding consumer choices on the “Informed Consumer” section of the Web site.
• Collaborating with other DENR Divisions as well as outside agencies to create quality environmental education materials and workshops.

Photo by Eli Strull
Courtesy of the WNC Nature Center