Effective November 2006, the ERC Newsletter will be published once monthly on the first Tuesday of each month.

PFI staff members Jennifer Frick-Ruppert, Kevin Fischer, and Ryan McCormack recently attended the annual convention of the North American Association of Environmental Educators, which was held in St. Paul, Minnesota. This convention is arguably the most important national gathering of environmental educators, the very group that PFI serves in its workshops. All three staff members had the opportunity to interact with potential participants, advertise our workshops, and learn more about targeted areas of environmental education. The staff members attended different workshop sessions and “strands” in an effort to interact with as many people as possible and to learn about different topics. One of the people highlighted at this conference was Safiya Samman, the Director of the USDA Forest Service—Conservation Education. One of her current initiatives is getting the “forest to the classroom” program into more states, and PFI hopes to be on the vanguard of this exciting effort.

In an effort to reach more of our local community, PFI is exploring a partnership with the Friends of the Transylvania County Library. In exchange for using their new state-of-the-art conference room, we will schedule one presentation from each summer workshop there and open it to the general public. Many community members are interested in the subjects we teach, and often ask about registering for our courses. Because our workshops are designed for educators and usually fill, we generally discourage community members from registering to take the courses unless they are also educators. By opening up one lecture to the public, however, PFI can bring its message of conservation education to a wider audience and into our local community.

PFI's website is located at www.brevard.edu/pfi.

Keystone College’s campus was very busy over the weekend with Homecoming activities. Following the Homecoming Parade down College Ave., Tim Eichner, Assistant Director of KceeI, led a tour of Keystone’s own maple sugar shack and briefly demonstrated the maple sugaring process.

Howard Jennings, Director of KceeI, has just returned from the 2006 National Association of Biology Teacher’s conference in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This conference ran from October 11-14, 2006. Although many topics related to biology were covered, the main discussion points at this conference were Global Warming, Intelligent Design vs. Evolution, and Stem Cell Research. No doubt the information on Global Warming will be of significant use for the course that KceeI plans on implementing in 2008 on Climactic Change and the Forested Ecosystem.

On Wednesday, October 18^th, KceeI will attend the 16^th Annual Evening for Northeast Pennsylvania’s Environment held by the Pennsylvania Environmental council and the Northeastern Pennsylvania Environmental Partners. Among the recipients of the 2006 Environmental Partnership Award is Woodbourne Forest & Wildlife Sanctuary. Dr. Jerry Skinner, Keystone College biology professor and KceeI facilitator, serves as the naturalist for the sanctuary. KceeI works very closely with Dr. Skinner and the sanctuary especially during the Forests and Society course. Keystone College President, Dr. Edward G. Boehm, will be serving on the reception committee for banquet. KceeI will have a display table with information on the institute and future course offerings.

In other news, KceeI has begun preliminary discussions for the design of the 2007 brochure. The layout and design will be different and we will be using a different cover this year. The picture for the cover was actually taken by a Keystone College student. Next year, KceeI hopes to hold a photo contest for course participants and possibly use a winning photo on a future brochure cover.

Just a reminder…

• To view the continuous water quality monitoring sites , click on the following link: http://www.waterontheweb.org/data/index.html
• If you would like to view the Northeast, check out the live “Streaming Camera” at www.atlas.keystone.edu/video.htm
• KceeI’s brochure may be viewed at its website in a printable Adobe PDF form at http://www.kceei.keystone.edu/Documents/2006/brochure.pdf

KceeI’s website is located at www.KceeI.keystone.edu.

Pacific Forest Institute

For updated information on the Pacific Forest Institute, please visit our website at:

http://www.jessup.edu/academics/pacificforestinstitute.

For more information on ERC Broadband, please visit the website at: www.ercbroadband.org.

News about AAM program and partner activity may be found at the following Web sites:

General News and Information:

http://www.aamprogram.org

Partner News and Program Activity:

http://www.aamprogram.org/introduction/aam_partners.aspx

Western North Carolina AAM Program Activity:

http://www.aamlearning.org/

AAM Curriculum and Evaluations:

http://www.aamprogram.org/curriculum/