“Drawing from Nature,” a monthly children’s feature that appears in the Los Angeles Times and is written by Carol Felixson, the Director of Education and Community Outreach at UCLA’s Stunt Ranch Santa Monica Mountains Reserve and the Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden. Each article features an animal or a plant found at the reserve or in the garden. The articles are illustrated with artwork created by children and include instructions to readers for how to do the art at home. Transect 23:1 (Spring 2005) features this program in “Young Readers Explore the Art of Nature” (pages 6-7) and can be downloaded at: http://nrs.ucop.edu/Transect-Stunt.htm. A number of reserves host public lecture programs that give the public in remote parts of the state an opportunity to hear from the University’s top field scientists. These include the McLaughlin Natural Reserve http://nrs.ucdavis.edu/mclaughlin.html near Clear Lake, the Sagehen Creek Field Station http://sagehen.ucnrs.org/index.html north of Truckee, the Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory http://vesr.ucnrs.org/index.html south of Mammoth, and the Hastings Natural History Reservation http://hastingsresrve.org in Carmel Valley. The development of the Internet has also opened up a number of new science education opportunities for NRS reserves. Each day 3,000 to 4,000 people log on to the James San Jacinto Mountains Reserve’s Web-based environmental observatory http://www.jamesreserve.edu/weather.php to follow the development of chicks in nest boxes or observe bird-feeding behavior. Likewise, the public can watch trout moving upstream via Sagehen Creek’s underwater “fish cam” http://sagehen.ucnrs.org/fish-cam.htm or watch developments in an owl nesting box at the Hastings Natural History Reservation site http://www.hastingsreserve.org/Webcams/WebcanIntro.html. While all of these Internet-accessible projects are primarily designed to aid ongoing scientific research on site, they are also inspiring a new generation of prospective scientists and engineers. In addition to conducting its own programs, the NRS lends support to the science education efforts of other University programs: The UC Berkeley Lawrence Hall of Science Research Camp for High School Students program http://www.lawrencehallofscience.org/classes/campsres.html# coastal uses both the Sagehen Creek Field Station and the Bodega Marine Reserve. School trips to the Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography regularly visit the nearby Scripps Coastal Reserve, while visitors to the Seymour Center at UC Santa Cruz’s Long Marine Laboratory often include a visit to the overlook at Younger Lagoon Reserve. Faculty in the California State Summer School for Mathematics & Science Program (COSMOS) http://www.ucop.edu/cosmos/ bring high school students to the San Joaquin Freshwater Marsh near UC Irvine and the Younger Lagoon Reserve near UC Santa Cruz to conduct field investigations. |
