Criteria III

Knowledge of Environmental Education Resources and Facilities - 30 hours

Total of 30 hours with a maximum of 10 hours per experience (At least 10 hours of the 30 must be site visits to Environmental Education Centers).

The intent of Criteria III is to increase knowledge of EE resources and facilities and to encourage networking opportunities. These hours can include EE-related workshops, seminars, conferences, lectures, programs, etc. that are held indoors, outdoors or as webinars or online courses if they relate directly to EE.

At least 10 hours must be visits to Environmental Education Centers. A site visit consists of a visit to a recognized N.C. Environmental Education Center and should involve activities such as viewing educational exhibits, exploring interpretive trails or gardens and speaking with educational staff. Site visits are not part of workshops but are typically done on your own with the purpose of familiarizing yourself with the facility. For example, you may stay after a workshop held at an Environmental Education Center to tour the center on your own time or you may explore a center with your family on a weekend trip.

You must have a total of 10 site visit hours in Criteria III. Five of those hours must be outside of your home region and the remaining five can be in your home region. You can use the map below to help plan your visits or use the zip code search feature to find Environmental Education Centers near you. You may visit areas outside of N.C., but these cannot count towards your out of region requirement. If you live outside of North Carolina, you are required to do at least 5 site visit hours in North Carolina (in any region or combination of regions of the state).

This interactive map shows environmental education centers in North Carolina. Use your mouse to hover over a county, and a list of centers will appear. If you see that your county does not have any environmental education centers, try clicking on a neighboring county. To be directed to the website for an environmental education center, click on "Text Version" and navigate to your county.

*The regions on this map are consistent with the North Carolina Association of Environmental Education Centers section representatives map and the Environmental Educators of North Carolina's (EENC) membership sections: Western, Piedmont, Central, and Eastern. For the purposes of Criteria III site visits, the Office of Environmental Education considers all counties in the Central and Piedmont sections as "Piedmont," Western as "Mountain" and Eastern as "Coastal."