Early Childhood Education Meets Environmental Education in Professional Development – Stephany Hancock Inspired in part by experiences with the Nature Preschool at Merry Lea, and leveraging her own past experience as a preschool educator, Stephany developed in-service professional development materials for preschool teachers that focused on using natural spaces…
Food Forests: Sustainable Food Production in an Unsustainable World – Matt Davidson Compared to traditional agricultural methods, food forests have several advantages. A food forest is a type of garden that mimics a natural forest ecosystem, made up of diverse perennial plants – including different species and…
DISTURBANCES: A DRIVER FOR CHANGE IN MERRY LEA’S FOREST ECOSYSTEMS – James Austin Maintaining stability in all types of ecosystems is vital to maintaining natural functions. For this study, I selected six core forest ecosystems of different ages within the 1,189 acres of the Merry Lea Property…
KINDERFOREST AT MERRY LEA ENVIRONMENTAL LEARNING CENTER: THE TEACHER AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATOR EXPERIENCE IN YEAR ONE – Joey Hughes The purpose of this study is to evaluate the experiences held by educators from Merry Lea and the Wolf Lake Elementary kindergarten classes throughout the 2017-2018 Kinderforest program. This qualitative…
DO TEACHERS ATTRIBUTE INCREASED ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION LESSONS IN THEIR K-12 CLASSES AS A RESULT OF A PRE-SERVICE ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION FIELD COURSE AT MERRY LEA – Ken Bauer I investigated the long-term effects of the Goshen College BIOL-340 Field Experiences in Environmental Education course, a preservice teacher course primarily completed by…
AN ASSESSMENT OF A PRE-SERVICE CLASS IN OUTDOOR ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION FOR GOSHEN COLLEGE STUDENTS – Lee Renshaw I investigated a Goshen College outdoor education pre-service course, called BIOL-340, for students majoring in elementary education. BIOL-340 differs from most other outdoor education training programs in that it fully immerses…
ENHANCING FOOD SYSTEM PERCEPTION AND PERSONAL FOOD CHOICES: SUMMATIVE EVALUATION OF AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL HANDS-ON LEARNING EXPERIENCE – Mingla Charoenmuang The purpose of this project is to develop and refine an environmental education curriculum on food systems for students from kindergarten to grade five. The curriculum is designed to…
TREE SELECTION PATTERNS: WOODPECKERS & NUTHATCHES AS A CONTROL FOR THE EMERALD ASH BORER – Abigail Bradley Dense infestations of emerald ash borer (EAB) in ash-dominated forests of the Upper Midwest potentially offer an opportunity for woodpeckers and other birds to take advantage of this temporarily-abundant food source. Anecdotal accounts…
HORTICULTURE AS A PATHWAY FOR INVASIVE SPECIES AND THE ROLE OF THE RETAIL GARDEN CENTER IN PROMOTING NATIVE PLANTS – Miranda Davies Throughout history and now at an unprecedented rate, human mediated changes make some species more rare, even causing extinction, while at the same time human activity facilitates some…
MONITORING SALAMANDER POPULATIONS THROUGH CITIZEN SCIENCE – Amy Berry Engaging citizens in the collection of data for scientific purposes allows scientists to gather a lot more data than they could otherwise. The cover board method of salamander monitoring is appropriate for school age youth, can be adapted for various skill…
