Progress 09/15/06 to 08/31/11
Outputs
OUTPUTS: The Environmental Science (ES) Program at White Earth Tribal and Community College (WETCC) was designed to train students for careers in natural resource management and is based on a naturalist approach to learning science. The major focus of this project was to expand the instructor's knowledge of wildlife science and the skill of tracking, then to infuse this into the ES curriculum. The result was the Tracking Curriculum consisting of modules focused on learning about wildlife through their tracks and sign and on using tracking data to read and monitor the landscape as a whole. Curriculum development was a multi-year process in collaboration with professional trackers and wildlife researchers/educators, followed by testing of the modules and refinement based on assessment results. Fifteen environmental science courses were taught during the grant period with a total enrollment of 147 students. Tracking Curriculum (TC) components were created, tested, assessed, and improved for the following courses: Introduction to Environmental Science (IES), Ornithology, Introduction to Ecology (IE), and Natural Resource Management (NRM). The ES course was the first to be designed and was taught four times during the grant period. As a result, it now has the most refined modules. Learning outcomes, instructional strategies, field activities, and assessment strategies were created for all courses. The goal of the IES modules was to introduce students to the footprint characteristics of the mammal families and to some of the standard gait patterns. The Ornithology modules focused on an important tracking skill referred to as "bird language" by naturalist training expert, Jon Young. The goal is to collect data about the landscape through interpreting the behavior and vocalizations of birds. For the IE course, the goal was to document the interactions and relationships between organisms in an ecosystem. Students used tracks and sign as a primary data source for monitoring the presence and behavior of animals. The NRM course is the capstone for the ES program. The TC module was a project monitoring Timber Wolves and other rare carnivores in the Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge (TNWR) using a tracking protocol created by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Finally, a series of three Law Enforcement Tracking workshops were sponsored for Tribal Conservation Officers. The instructors for these events came from Joel Hardin Professional Tracking Services (JHPTS). Twenty two individuals participated in at least one workshop. Presentations on the WETCC Tracking Curriculum was given at the March 2008 American Indian Higher Education Consortium meeting held in Bismarck, ND and at the October 2009 First Americans Land Grant Consortium (FALCON) conference in Washington, DC. PARTICIPANTS: The project participants are as follows: Dr. Steven Dahlberg, PI, is the Environmental Science Instructor at White Earth Tribal and Community College. He was responsible for all of the project activities. Gabriel Spence, professional tracker and naturalist trainer. He provided professional development training to the PI and support on the curriculum development. At the time of his involvement with the project he was the lead tracking instructor at the Wilderness Awareness School in Duvall, WA. Kurt Rinehart, professional tracker, educator, and wildlife biologist. At the time of his involvement he was the Outdoor Director at the Mountain School in Vershire, VT. Joel Hardin, Founder and lead instructor for Joel Hardin Professional Tracking Services which provides tracker training and consulting to law enforcement, the judicial system, the military, and civilian search and rescue organizations. Dr. Dahlberg received training in tracking, naturalist training, and tracker education from each of the other individuals listed above. This included three weeks of wildlife tracking and naturalist training and three weeks of training in law enforcement/search and rescue tracking. TARGET AUDIENCES: The target audience for this project was the Environmental Science students at White Earth Tribal and Community College. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.
Impacts
Assessment results indicated positive student feedback from all the modules and modest success in achieving the student learning outcomes. The biggest weakness is inherent in the subject itself. Tracking is the pinnacle of the naturalist's arts. It takes at least a decade of dedicated effort to become a competent tracker. Many of the skills students are being asked to demonstrate in the IE and NRM courses, in particular, are very advanced for their level of experience. It will likely take several more iterations of these courses to find the happy medium of challenging the students without completely overwhelming them. Both the ES course and Ornithology designs have been successfully tuned to the capabilities of the typical students, the former by nature of the number of iterations of the course taught so far and the latter because of the ES instructors growing experience with this type of module development. Seven of the 22 participants in the JHPTS workshops were able to qualify for certification levels within the JHPTS program, five at the Basic level and two at the Apprentice level. The ES instructor is one of those who has achieved Basic Certification. The Tracking Curriculum approach continues to attract students and serve as a model for integrating science as practiced in both the Western and Anishinaabeg traditions. The skills, approaches, and concepts presented are equally interesting, useful, and challenging to students regardless of their heritage or career goals. The major challenge has been in addressing most students' lack of prior experience with this set of knowledge and competencies. This has driven us to seek means for addressing this challenge by working with naturalist training activities for youth and to promote tracking as a useful skill in other venues like law enforcement and resource conservation.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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Progress 09/15/08 to 09/14/09
Outputs
The Environmental Science Program at White Earth Tribal and Community College (WETCC) is specifically designed to train students for careers in natural resource management, but it can also serve as a gateway into other scientific or technical fields. The curriculum is based heavily on the work of Jon Young and takes the naturalist approach to learning science. The earliest curriculum development focused on Indigenous plant knowledge because of the expertise of the instructor. A major focus of this Equity grant has been to expand the instructor's knowledge of wildlife science and the skill of tracking, then to infuse this knowledge and skill into the Environmental Science curriculum. The model that has been created is the Tracking Curriculum, which consists of modules focused on learning about wildlife through their tracks and sign and on using tracking data to read and monitor the landscape as a whole. Curriculum development has been a multi-year process of designing these modules in collaboration with professional trackers and wildlife researchers/educators, then testing the modules in the curriculum and improving them based on assessment results. Grant funds have also been used for field guides, track casts, skulls, and other instructional materials useful to teaching wildlife science. The other major focus of activity has been to provide nutrition education opportunities at the college by designing a Wild Food Curriculum. The concept is to build on the highly successful Wild Food Summit sponsored each year by the WETCC Extension Service. The goal of the curriculum is to teach nutrition science within the context of traditional Anishinaabeg foodways. The current goal is to complete the development of an Anishinaabeg Nutrition course that will achieve these nutrition education goals, promote and sustain Anishinaabeg culture (part of the mission of the college), and meet the general education needs of students. PRODUCTS: Four environmental science courses were taught during the grant period with a total enrollment of 42 students. Two contained tracking curriculum components: Environmental Science (ES) and a new course, Ornithology. The tracking modules in the ES course were taught with a narrower scope in response to past assessment data. Students demonstrated greater success in lab activities, but were still easily confused by sign in the field because they did not consistently apply the systematic identification process presented in the lab. The Ornithology course was designed to focus on an important tracking skill referred to as "bird language" by Jon Young. The goal is to collect data about the landscape through interpreting the behavior and vocalizations of birds. The primary learning outcomes for the course were for students to develop their awareness skills and knowledge of local birds. Specifically, they were expected to be able to identify regional bird species by physical and behavioral characteristics, and by habitat needs/preferences; and to interpret bird behavior birds in order to make and test hypotheses about the environment. As an example of the latter, if Black-Capped Chickadees, which are relatively tolerant of human activity, become agitated, students would speculate on the source of that agitation based on their knowledge of Chickadee behavior and attempt to collect more data to refine their hypotheses. At the level of this course the objective was for students to demonstrate the process allowing them to continue build knowledge and skill over time. A new integrated course entitled Science, Art, and Sacred Places was created and taught by adjunct instructors and supported by Equity funds. This course focused on the art and biology of ancient petroglyph sites in the region. Learning goals for the science portion of the course were parallel to those for the ES course minus the tracking curriculum components. Steven Dahlberg has attended one tracking intensive in the fall of 2008. The Anishinaabeg Nutrition course curriculum was completed in November 2008. Stephanie Williams along with JoAnn Larson, another WETCC Extension staff member, worked with a nutrition education consultant to finalize the syllabus, learning outcomes, laboratory activities, and other aspects of content. However, an Anishinaabeg cooking class was already proposed for Spring 2009 by other faculty members, so it was decided to postpone the initial offering of the nutrition course until the 2009-2010 academic year. There were three Traditional Practitioner presentations during 2008-2009 focused on traditional plant knowledge, one on local medicinal and edible fungi, and a fifth on traditional uses of natural fibers. Finally, harvesting, processing, and cooking equipment were purchased for the Wild Food Curriculum. OUTCOMES: Assessment results from the ES course indicated that student achievement is about the same as last year with the exception of one student who brought extensive experience to the course. It appears that tracking is a difficult skill to learn for students without previous experience and/or extensive motivation to learn the material. This course serves as both an introduction to the ES major and as a general education science requirement. Thus, student experience and motivation levels vary dramatically. Fortunately, with students who identify as Environmental Science majors, we have observed much higher levels of achievement and significant improvement. We will continue to monitor this pattern to determine its robustness over time. Assessment data from the Ornithology course, again, indicate that success is most strongly correlated with the student's prior knowledge and experience. All students demonstrated the ability to gather data on important avian characteristics and behaviors in the field and use those to identify species. The same student identified above was the only one able to exceed the baseline standards to successfully question and interpret bird behaviors. DISSEMINATION ACTIVITIES: An overview of all NIFA supported activities at WETCC and their role in promoting wellness on the White Earth Reservation was presented at the October 2009 First Americans Land Grant Consortium (FALCON) conference in Washington, DC. FUTURE INITIATIVES: We will continue to refine the Tracking Curriculum to make it more effective at achieving the goal of training naturalists capable of going on to further education and/or employment in the natural resource management field. The main goals are to find more effective ways of building tracking skill and to find other ways for students to read and analyze ecological communities. Curriculum modules based on the methodology for reading the forested landscape presented in the book of that title by Dr. Tom Wessels have been created for the Introduction to Ecology course. It will be tested and assessed during the fall of 2009. Finally, a new module on managing small woodlots will be designed for and incorporated into the Natural Resource Management course and tested in spring of 2010. Two foci for future improvement of the ES curriculum were identified: aquatic sciences and mycology. Collaborators for faculty development and the design/implementation of curricular components in aquatic sciences have been identified at St. Olaf College and Minnesota State University, Moorhead. Plans for collaborative activities are being developed. Mycological components and professional development will come from continued collaboration with an independent mushroom grower and consultant, and through courses offered by two companies, Fungi Perfecti and Soil Food Web, located in the Pacific Northwest. The Anishinaabeg Nutrition course is currently on hold. The proposed instructor is on indefinite medical leave. Attempts will be made to find a suitable replacement. Finally, we will continue to improve the collection of resources and course materials available for both programs and continue to expand the cohort of Traditional Practitioners available to present culturally relevant knowledge in these classes.
Impacts
The Tracking Curriculum approach continues to attract students and serve as a model for integrating science as practiced in both the Western and Anishinaabeg traditions. There are certainly other factors at play, but enrollment in ES courses has increased dramatically in recent semesters. This report only captured the beginning of this trend. The skills, approaches, and concepts presented in the curriculum are equally interesting, useful, and challenging to students regardless of their heritage or career goals. Students' lack of prior experience with this set of knowledge and competencies continues to be a challenge. However, our efforts to address this through tracker training activities for both youth and law enforcement officers continue to produce positive outcomes, particularly increased visibility for and interest in our ES programming.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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Progress 09/15/07 to 09/14/08
Outputs
The Environmental Science Program at White Earth Tribal and Community College (WETCC) is specifically designed to train students for careers in natural resource management, but it can also serve as a gateway into other scientific or technical fields. The curriculum is based heavily on the work of Jon Young and takes the naturalist approach to learning science. The earliest curriculum development focused on Indigenous plant knowledge because of the expertise of the instructor. A major focus of this Equity grant has been to expand the instructor's knowledge of wildlife science and the skill of tracking, then to infuse this knowledge and skill into the environmental science curriculum. The model that has been created is the Tracking Curriculum which consists of modules focused on learning about wildlife through their tracks and sign and on using tracking data to read and monitor the landscape as a whole. Curriculum development has been a multi-year process of designing these modules in collaboration with professional trackers and wildlife researchers/educators, then testing the modules in the curriculum and improving them based on assessment results. Grant funds have also been used for field guides, track casts, skulls, and other instructional materials useful to teaching wildlife science. The other major focus of activity has been to provide nutrition education opportunities at the college by designing a Wild Food Curriculum. The concept is to build on the highly successful Wild Food Summit sponsored each year by the WETCC Extension Service. The goal of the curriculum is to teach nutrition science within the context of traditional Anishinaabeg foodways. The current goal is to complete the development of an Anishinaabeg Nutrition course that will achieve these nutrition education goals, promote and sustain Anishinaabeg culture (part of the mission of the college), and meet the general education needs of students. PRODUCTS: Four environmental science courses were taught during the grant period with a total enrollment of 36 students. These courses were Environmental Science (ES), Field Biology of Plants (FBP), Introduction to Ecology (IE), and Natural Resource Management (NRM). Three had Tracking Curriculum (TC) components. The TC modules for the ES course had previously been developed and taught, but improvements were made based on this experience. These will be discussed below. During this grant period learning outcomes, instructional strategies, field activities, and assessment strategies were created for the IE and NRM courses. The primary focus for IE was to document the interactions and relationships between organisms in an ecosystem. Students mapped these then analyzed the relationships based on knowledge of natural history, ecological functions and the physical parameters of the site. Students also described examples of basic ecological principles at work in those communities. Tracks and sign were the primary data source used for monitoring the presence and behavior of animals. Therefore, a major portion of the class dealt with improving students' skill in reading these. The NRM course was designed as the capstone for the ES program. Students were first introduced to the Holistic Management rubric. The remainder of the course focused on evaluating management plans used by Tribal Resource Managers on the White Earth Reservation and on monitoring rare carnivores in the Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge (TNWR) using standard tracking protocols. Students met with local resource managers during the semester. These individuals discussed the goals, activities, etc. of their agency. Students then analyzed these activities using HM and/or were given scenarios to analyze based on the information presented by the resource managers. Results were presented in class and as written reports discussing the students' perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of current management activities along with recommendations. For the monitoring activities students laid out transects in the core area of the TNWR wolf pack. They walked those transects three times during the height of the wolf breeding season to collect data on wolf and other carnivore activity. These data were analyzed to estimate pack size, breeding activity, and other characteristics of the population. Overall, the focus of this course was to allow students to deal with real management issues, strategies, and techniques. There were four Traditional Practitioner presentations during 2007-2008 and all focused on traditional plant knowledge. Equipment purchased for the ES program included mammal and bird skulls to be used in ecology and wildlife identification labs. Harvesting, processing, and cooking equipment were purchased for the Wild Food Curriculum. Several meetings were held to develop the Wild Food Curriculum. The main accomplishments were the creation of goals and learning outcomes for an Anishinaabeg Nutrition course that would meet both nutrition and general education standards. The remainder of the development work will be completed in the 2008-2009 period. OUTCOMES: Assessment results from the ES course indicated positive student feedback from these modules and modest success in achieving the student learning outcomes. The biggest weakness identified was that the scope of the modules was too broad. Students were introduced to too many tracks and gait patterns. They did not develop enough competency with this range of material, hence the modest success in achieving the learning objectives. As a result we decided to reduce the number of species and gait patterns covered when offering of this course in the future. Student achievement in the IE course was similarly limited by their inexperience in reading and interpreting tracks and sign. Some students with previous experience were much more successful, but those introduced to tracking in the ES program simply did not have enough time to become journeymen trackers before beginning this course. Because of this the goals for the monitoring activities in NRM were narrowed from what was initially conceived to those outlined above. Thus, the main outcome from this work has been gaining a clearer picture of what the typical student is capable of with respect to goals of the Tracking Curriculum. DISSEMINATION ACTIVITIES: An overview of the WETCC Tracking Curriculum was given at the March 2008 American Indian Higher Education Consortium meeting held in Bismarck, ND. FUTURE INITIATIVES: We will continue to refine the Tracking Curriculum to make it more effective at achieving the goal of training naturalists capable of going on to further education and/or employment in the natural resource management field. The main goals are to find more effective ways of building tracking skill and to find other ways for students to read and analyze ecological communities. One tool that will be employed in the future is the methodology for reading the forested landscape presented in the book of that title by Dr. Tom Wessels. This method will be integrated into the IE course in fall 2009 and, based on how successful it is there, incorporated into the NRM course in spring 2010.
Impacts
The Tracking Curriculum approach continues to attract students and serve as a model for integrating science as practiced in both the Western and Anishinaabeg traditions. The skills, approaches, and concepts presented are equally interesting, useful, and challenging to students regardless of their heritage or career goals. The major challenge has been in addressing most students' lack of prior experience with this set of knowledge and competencies. This has driven us to seek means for addressing this challenge by working with naturalist training activities for youth and to promote tracking as a useful skill in other venues like law enforcement and resource conservation.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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Progress 09/15/06 to 09/14/07
Outputs
To date the science instructor has attended two tracker trainings. He has twice spent time in the field with professional trackers, and continues to refine his skills with two to three independent tracking sessions per week. He and Gabriel Spence have outlined the scope and sequence, and learning outcomes of the tracking curriculum in the environmental science (ES) program. These outcomes include the ability to demonstrate a detailed knowledge of the characteristics, attributes, and ecology of at least fifty local organisms; document and describe the activities of and interactions between them through the interpretation of tracks and sign; conduct field research on animal populations using track surveys, live trapping, and other established techniques. These abilities will be developed in four courses; Environmental Science, Field Biology of Plants, Introduction to Ecology (IE), and Natural Resources Management (NRM). This work has been reviewed by a second tracking
consultant who also provided a draft outline of the scope and sequence for the Introduction to Ecology course and several recommendations for activities within that course. He is currently drafting suggestions for course learning outcomes. This work is scheduled to be finalized by mid-August. The WETCC Extension Coordinator and former Tribal Herbalist, Stephanie Williams, has taken over responsibility for the wild food curriculum after the departure of the FSN instructor. She is attending a wild foods training in California, and has spent at least one day per week visiting community members with wild food knowledge and/or researching the literature. Both Stephanie Williams and Steven Dahlberg have had three meetings with individuals from University of Minnesota (UMN) Extension, nutrition educators, graduate students, and others to plan the development of the local and wild foods curricula. The focus of this work has been on developing a new course, Anishinaabeg Nutrition, which will
serve several purposes within the WETCC curriculum. To date there have been three Traditional Practitioner presentations (all on wild plant identification and uses). One more is scheduled for early August and the final one will occur in the IE course in September. Students have taken part in at least ten field trips in four separate courses to date; including trips to Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge, Sand Hills Environmental Learning Center, Itasca State Park, White Earth Rediscovery Center, and several other local sites.
PRODUCTS: The overall learning outcomes, and scope and sequence for the tracking curriculum have been developed. Draft learning outcomes for the Anishinaabeg nutrition course are currently being edited by the University of Minnesota graduate student collaborating on the wild foods curriculum project.
OUTCOMES: Changes have been made to the requirements for the ES program in order to more effectively meet the learning outcomes developed through this project. Specifically introductory biology and physics courses were replaced by Environmental Science and an introduction to geosciences, respectively, because their learning outcomes more closely match the program outcomes. These changes have been submitted to the Board of Trustees for approval. A new course, Introduction to Ecology, is scheduled to be taught in fall 2007. Enrollment is ES courses remained steady at six to eight students throughout this academic year. Approximately two-thirds of those students have met the requirements of and received credit for those courses. In addition, the students have demonstrated achievement of the course learning outcomes through a variety of projects including oral presentations.
DISSEMINATION ACTIVITIES: There have been no dissemination activities to date.
FUTURE INITIATIVES: Work will continue on the tracking curriculum. First, learning outcomes and activities to support them will be created for the IE course. This course will be taught in fall of 2007. Also during the fall 2007, the Natural Resources Management course will be designed using the same process as for the IE course. The NRM course is then scheduled to be taught in spring 2008. This course will include service learning partnerships or similar concrete leaning activities with professional resource managers in the area. Work on the Anishinaabeg Nutrition course continues. The course design will be completed by October 2007 and the course will be first taught in spring 2008. The partnership will then turn their attention to adapting the modules of the course for a K-12 audience.
Impacts
The primary impacts of the project have been in the areas of student recruitment/retention and in partnership building. The ES program has grown in lock step with the development of the tracking curriculum. I am convinced, based on student feedback, that this is not just coincidence. In particular, we are finally attracting the young outdoors enthusiasts this program was designed for. It appears they see the benefits of the tracking curriculum outweighing their fears over the math requirement and other indimidating factors. The White Earth Natural Resources Department and the regional National Wildlife Refuge personnel have indicated strong interest in working with us on projects of mutual interest like track surveys, invasive species monitoring, etc. These partnerships have not been solidified yet, but show much promise. This type of collaboration is a major part of the mission of the college and the tracking curriculum is proving to be an effective vehicle for it.
The wild foods curriculum project has attracted several enthusiastic participants from the University of Minnesota. It is likely that a number of valuable educational products will result from these relationships over the next three years.
Publications
- No publications reported this period
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