SCB Newsletter

NOTE: As many of you may be aware, the SCB websites experienced unusual downtime over the last few weeks. Our websites are now live and available to serve you; however many pages are still offline and will not load correctly (you will see an error that reads "The filename, directory name, or volume label syntax is incorrect" -- we are aware of these problems. We are dealing with a SQL Injection attack. These types of attacks are known to exploit website vulnerabilities with the intent of distributing viruses and malware. We are working to correct the problems and clean up the data corruption this has caused. Thank you for your patience while we work through this problem. More information is available here.

CONSERVATION EDUCATION: Natural history training

In 1996, the adult education program at the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center faced a challenge--how to better serve our mission of providing academically challenging natural history education opportunities to adults and present offerings that would attract more than five or six participants at a time. When confronted with this typical nature center problem, we tend to fall into one of two traps. The first is to enter a downward spiral of low attendance, disappointed presenters, failure to secure presenters, lower attendance, and so forth. The second pitfall is to measure success solely on the basis of attendance and, in the effort to succeed, find ourselves presenting classes on basket weaving and Tai' Chi. Over time, we found ourselves in the second trap, and while there is nothing wrong with making Christmas ornaments out of gold spray painted pine cones, this was not meeting our environmental education mission. In an effort to both serve our mission and attract more people, we created the Naturalist Certification Program.

The Naturalist Certification Program has four components:

Nineteen classes covering a wide range of natural history topics (e.g., basic ecology, birds of Texas, meteorology).

Elective readings and/or field trips about which students must write brief synopses.

A final exam covering class materials and Eugene Odum's text Ecology--A Bridge Between Science and Society.

Volunteer service at any natural history related institution.Students are given a two-year time frame in which to meet these requirements, but that limit is not set in stone. Many of the participants have jobs and families so we try to make the program as user friendly as possible. However, students must pass at least 85% of the final exam to receive certification.

After establishing the format of the program, we approached local universities to see if they were interested in co- sponsoring the program. Eventually, we entered into a contract with the University of Houston's Division of Distance and Continuing Education. They handled marketing, registration of students, and maintained student records while we recruited instructors, formatted the class offerings, handled testing, and served as liaisons between students and the program.

The arrangement with the university was a mixed blessing. While it did lend an important endorsement to the program and relieved us of many administrative chores, it came at a financial cost that had to be passed along to students. Ultimately, citing the lack of profit, the university dropped out of the program--emphasizing the basic conflict between our interests. The Arboretum's goal was natural history education, and considered it acceptable to subsidize such efforts. The university was more interested in the bottom line. We now face the challenge of providing a consistent program to two groups: one finishing a program in order to attain a university-endorsed credential, and another starting the program as solely an Arboretum offering.

The Naturalist Certification Program is still going strong. Each of the classes draws around 20 students. In a very real sense, creating a program that is intriguing to students is only half the battle. It also has to be intriguing to potential instructors. Instructors, many of whom also teach in local universities, enjoy interacting with eager adult learners. Even so, it can be a challenge to find good instructors. Although we do pay an honorarium, their main motivation has always been a shared belief in the value of natural history education.

How do we find instructors? University department heads were a good first contact. They informed us of faculty and graduate student list servers on which we posted solicitations for instructors. We also keep our ears open and ask arboretum volunteers to do the same as they attend seminars around town. As we established a reputation for being on the lookout for instructors, people started coming to us with suggestions for presenters. The best source by far, however, has been current instructors who spread the word among their colleagues. We have learned several important lessons from our experience.

Explore partnering with other organizations with awareness of what each can bring to the table.

Realize that your program must appeal not only to students, but also to any outside presenters.

Use open mailings, university department list servers, even advertisements if necessary to attract the best presenters.

If the program does not have some widely recognized credential tied to it, make sure the content and format are solid enough for the program to create its own legitimacy.

The Naturalist Certification Program has helped us to serve our mission while growing an audience who will pay to take the classes. Our experience has instructed us that the key to both lies in abandoning a random offering of classes and creating a meaningful context (in this case natural history and ecology) in which individual topics and activities are tied together.