Overview of a citizen science approach to integrating research and education priorities: A public-private partnership between Schoodic Institute and Acadia National Park

Note – This poster is intended to serve as an overview and introduction to 4 submissions by Emma Albee, Abe Miller-Rushing, Seth Benz, and Hannah Webber. We’d like to request that these posters, if accepted, be presented... [ view full abstract ]

Note – This poster is intended to serve as an overview and introduction to 4 submissions by Emma Albee, Abe Miller-Rushing, Seth Benz, and Hannah Webber. We’d like to request that these posters, if accepted, be presented adjacent to one another in a series. This paragraph should be excised after review. Thank you.

Schoodic Institute at Acadia National Park is a nonprofit partner to the National Park Service on connecting people to nature through science research and education. Schoodic Institute and Acadia partner in management of the Schoodic Education and Research Center, one of 20 National Park Service Research Learning Centers around the nation.

Citizen science is our approach to integrating meaningful research and education experiences in support of Acadia National Park’s priority of understanding and responding to rapid environmental change. Together with university researchers and many other partners, Schoodic Institute and Acadia National Park are developing a diverse portfolio of citizen science projects. While each project is unique and requires careful consideration, our public-private partnership provides room for innovation and testing of new approaches. Acadia provides a powerful opportunity to connect with a wide audience, and the National Park Service can be a vehicle for bringing successful approaches to national scale.

In a series of posters, we will present the efforts of our partnerships to 1) integrate and coordinate multiple citizen science projects and engage diverse audiences, 2) improve teaching and data literacy to support desired educational outcomes for teachers, students, or diverse volunteers in citizen science, 3) leverage historical, lost, or overlooked citizen science records to enhance current research, and 4) connect citizen science research with natural resource management in a National Park. In each poster we present the challenges faced when balancing the needs of all stakeholders, and the solutions we’ve developed together.