Instructors learn to use environmental resourcesSFlb

By Denise Dick

denise_dick@vindy.com

Youngstown

Science and social- studies teachers in Mahoning and Trumbull counties met this week to learn about environmental sustainability and how it relates to their teaching.

The Environmental Sustainability Institute for Teachers ran Monday through Friday at Youngstown State University. It’s funded by the Ohio Environmental Education Fund of the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

The institute was organized by three members of YSU’s Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences: Felicia P. Armstrong, associate professor; Colleen E. McLean, assistant professor; and Lori Kumler, part-time professor.

Armstrong said 22 seventh- through 12th- grade teachers are participating, including one from Stark County.

“It’s a lot of work,” she said. “There’s a lot of reading they have to do every night.”

Participating teachers earn continuing-education credits.

Armstrong said the institute also allows teachers to also see how sustainability may be incorporated into the new state standards.

The workshop focused on energy, water and air, climate and land use and featured speakers as well as “field trips” to different sites including the Thomas A. Swift Metropark in Trumbull County, which boasts one of the first pervious parking lots in the area, and McCarthy Systems, a Poland solar power provider.

Jeff Komorek, a 13-year chemistry and physical science teacher at Howland High School, said the workshop emphasizes how everything is interconnected.

“If you have a dam in Warren, it will have an effect in Lowellville,” Komorek said.

Rawchell Carter, a YSU junior majoring in integrated social studies education, participated in the workshop to try to learn more about her field. She found the session on new energy particularly interesting.

One speaker brought in a robotic car and “ran it using hydrogen,” she said. “That was the most interesting thing so far.”