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Ecologists Educators and Schools:Partners in GK-12 Education


ECOS Guide to the Ecology of the Northern Rockies

Scientist Volunteers

Ecologists Educators and Schools No Child Left Indoors
Partners in GK-12 Education

No Child Left Indoors!

ECOS is a partnership program for enhancing teaching skills of graduate students in the sciences and promoting hands-on science education in K-12 schools. We use the schoolyard and adjacent open areas in western Montana as outdoor laboratories for learning about the environment.

Ecology and environmental sciences graduate and undergraduate students from the University of Montana are showing K-12 students and their teachers how to use an ecological lens for viewing their schoolyard. Instead of a playground, they learn to see an ecological laboratory filled with organisms with interesting adaptations and interactions. The ECOS teams model what ecologists do by immersing themselves in ecological investigations in their schoolyard and classroom laboratories.


Target Range cottonwood grove

Target Range: A degraded cottonwood grove becomes an outdoor classroom

At Target Range School, the ECOS team and students transformed a neglected  and unsafe cottonwood grove at the edge of the schoolyard into an outdoor classroom and nature observatory to be enjoyed by the entire school.  Local companies, parents, and the Montana College of Technology generously volunteered their time, products, and labor to the project.  Currently, the major excavation and landscaping work is complete, with minor aesthetic details remaining. 
Inquiries completed in the outdoor classroom include tracking studies and tree sampling.

 

The ECOS program is sponsored by the University of Montana's Division of Biological Sciences, and the College of Forestry and Conservation.

Carol Brewer Program Director, Division of Biological Sciences Paul Alaback Program Co-Director, College of Forestry and Conservation

Funded by the National Science Foundation
ECOS is supported by the GK-12 Program of the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.