{"id":207124,"date":"2023-11-28T07:30:33","date_gmt":"2023-11-28T12:30:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=207124"},"modified":"2023-11-28T14:09:41","modified_gmt":"2023-11-28T19:09:41","slug":"extension-educators-launch-school-based-green-infrastructure-initiative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2023\/11\/extension-educators-launch-school-based-green-infrastructure-initiative\/","title":{"rendered":"Extension Educators Launch School-Based Green Infrastructure Initiative"},"content":{"rendered":"

As anyone who\u2019s ever seen an overwhelmed storm drain or sloshed across a flooded sidewalk knows, urban development and heavy precipitation often combine to spell trouble for communities. But outside the land development field, few people are aware of existing stormwater management infrastructure and how they can implement local flooding solutions.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A team of environmental educators and professors within UConn Extension has recently been <\/span>awarded a $100,000 grant<\/span><\/a> from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to carry out an innovative model of community-based education to help address this problem. The UConn team is partnering with school districts and NGOs in several of Connecticut\u2019s disproportionately affected communities to create on-the-ground stormwater management solutions. In addition to mitigating storm damage and enriching local water quality, these solutions will provide valuable educational experiences in environmental stewardship.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe students, the teachers, and the nonprofits all come together and \u2013 with our help \u2013 plan and then carry out a low-impact development project,\u201d says Nicole Freidenfelds, project manager and Natural Resources Conservation Academy (NRCA)<\/a> program coordinator. \u201cIt gets the students involved and seeing that they can make a change in their community and also benefit the environment.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rain gardens, bioswales, green roofs, and permeable pavements are all examples of projects that high schoolers may learn about or help implement, according to Freidenfelds.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cStudents and teachers are extra proud of that because it’s something that they can see that they accomplished; something very tangible,\u201d says Michael Dietz, co-project manager and director of the Connecticut Institute of Water Resources. \u201cWe can even show them how many gallons of stormwater that particular device or installation will treat in a given year.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Each participating school within the partner school districts \u2013 Hartford Public Schools and Windham Public Schools \u2013 will be able to implement a system that makes sense for their specific geography and needs, while also translating classroom environmental lessons into real-world practice.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe main goal of all our programming within the Natural Resources Conservation Academy is to foster environmental literacy, so that students can have a grasp of these issues that exist within their communities and advocate for solutions,\u201d says Laura Cisneros, co-project manager and director of the NRCA.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This new project builds upon groundwork laid by a previous Extension initiative, the Teacher Professional Learning program (TPL). TPL was a three-day workshop geared toward high school science teachers, equipping them with lesson plans and familiarizing them with online mapping tools to teach their students about water and sustainability science. The response to TPL was so overwhelmingly positive, the team says, that it inspired them to bring students into the process.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe original TPL focused on the connections between what we do on the land \u2013 our land use decisions \u2013 and water quality,\u201d explains David Dickson, co-project manager and director of the Center for Land Use Education and Research (CLEAR). \u201cSo the curriculum that was developed for high schools was based on that concept, and this is sort of following up on that by getting a little bit more hands-on. Kids are actually part of the solution here. And that pushes them further along \u2013 going from learning about it to actually being involved and helping to address the problem.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The ambitious project will be supported by community partner organizations: Keney Park Sustainability Project, the Garden Club of Windham, and Traprock Ridge Land Conservancy. Each organization is receiving $5,000 from the total award amount to carry out local programming and assist the students and teachers with building their green infrastructure installations. Friends of Pope Park and the Windham\/Willimantic branch of the NAACP have also signed on to the project as advisory partners.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This program seeks to address two major challenges faced by the state of Connecticut. The first is that climate change continues to increase precipitation rates and storm activity \u2013 underscoring the need for sustainable land-use solutions as the state continues its economic and urban development.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The second is that <\/span>Connecticut is one of the most racially segregated states in the nation<\/span><\/a>, owing to historical and current government policies and practices which have often isolated communities of color from economic opportunity, environmental health, and community safety. By actively promoting environmental literacy within underserved communities (areas which have a greater proportion of households above the poverty line and\/or more people of color than the state average), the team hopes to mitigate some of the effects of these practices.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While the communities will benefit directly from these water diversion projects, the team also hopes for some ripple effects in students\u2019 and educators\u2019 lives.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Freidenfelds says she hopes students come away from the experience with a renewed interest in environmental stewardship, and maybe even a new idea for a career path \u2013 \u201cmaybe even seeing themselves continuing this work beyond high school.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Supported by a $100,000 grant from the EPA, the program will partner with two CT school districts and three sustainable development organizations to bring hands-on projects to students and teachers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":175,"featured_media":207127,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2224,1715,2471,2304,2300,2076,2387,2235,2227],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2413],"class_list":["post-207124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cahnr","category-community-impact","category-economic-development","category-extension","category-natural-resources-environment","category-research","category-sustainability","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-edu-homepage"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-25 15:15:21","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207124"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207124\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207393,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207124\/revisions\/207393"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/207127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207124"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=207124"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=207124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}