Pacific Grove Museum 2022

The Watershed Guardians program will provide resources and opportunities for underserved students to build understandings of their local watershed. By participating in the Watershed Guardians community science program, students will develop agency to create environmental change in their communities through classroom, field, and community-based action projects. 

The program has been working to provide resources to eight new Watershed Guardian partner schools. These schools will contribute water quality data to the GLOBE database consistent with long-term monitoring projects along the Salinas and Carmel River Watersheds. Students will have multiple points of contact with Museum educators in the classroom before and after a field trip. 

The Watershed Guardians curriculum will culminate in action projects designed by students to invoke positive change in their community.

Watershed Guardians curriculum is project-based.  Students craft a question, design a study, collect data in the field, access data from the GLOBE database, create reports communicating their findings, and create a community conservation action project based on their research.  The exciting addition in the coming school year is to have all students in the program eligible to participate in a Watershed Guardians Student Research Symposium.  Projects from this symposium can also go on to participate in the GLOBE Student Research Symposium.  

The program plans to benefit 2,000 middle and high school students during the 2022-2023 school year. The grant will fund the purchase of one set of water quality sensors and two sensor interfaces.

Learn about Pacific Grove's grant from 2021 here. 

Results from 2022:

These funds enabled us to purchase additional gear allowing almost 2000 uses by over 1000 6th-12th grade students throughout Monterey County in 2022. This included the entire 7th grade at one local school. Through focus groups held throughout the year and teacher exit surveys conducted just after each program ends, we have learned that teachers prefer to bring more than one class at a time to the field. The water quality kits purchased with these grant funds allowed us to expand our capacity to work with more students simultaneously in the field.

Thanks to the funds from YLACES we were able to expand our capacity to support 35 students, during a 3-day program with Monterey County Office of Education’s Migrant Education Program. This program culminated with a core group of six students presenting their research at the Elkhorn Slough GLOBE Student Research Symposium in May of 2022.