Coalition for Earth Science Education Holds Its Fourth Annual Meeting

The national headquarters of the United States Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia, recently provided a scenic and historical backdrop for the fourth annual meeting for the Coalition for Earth Science Education.

The theme of the meeting, "Enhancing Networking and Cultural Diversity through Collaboration," brought in people from all over the nation from various backgrounds for one purpose: to enhance the quality of earth science education for all Americans.

Keynote presentations were given by acting USGS Director Thomas J. Casedevall and Mike Mayhew from the NSF Geo-sciences Directorate, as well as by representatives from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the GLOBE Program.

SCEC was represented in the poster sessions with Sara Tekula presiding.

Also represented in short presentations or poster sessions were the American Meteorological Society, the Center for Science Education, Northwestern University, the Gulf Coast Marine Laboratory, the Ohio State University, USGS Menlo Park, Ameri-can Geophysical Union, the Program for Earth System Science Education, the Universities Space Research Association, the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research, the U.S. Satellite Laboratory, and NASA.

Tekula presented a talk and poster session titled "From the Field to the Classroom and Back: Encouraging Application of Earth-quake Research Results for Students and Teachers." She identified barriers to efficient communication between information provid-ers and end users and demonstrated how concepts in knowledge transfer activities were also important in the educational arena.

"It is imperative that students and teachers are treated as equal partners, both in the each other's eyes and in the eyes of the outside world," Tekula specified. "They are all end-users of a product (a piece of knowledge) and will ultimately apply what they learn to the real world."

The meeting provided a platform for several "hot topics" in earth science education, such as the National Science Education Standards and the implementation of them in the classroom.

Before parting ways after the four-day meeting, those in atten-dance vowed to work together to support the standards in some sort of nationwide initiative. SCEC Outreach plans to play a large role in this initiative for the state of California. For more informa-tion about CESE, email Frank Ireton of AGU at

FIRETON@KOSMOS.AGU.ORG.