Collaborate with the ESA Committee on Diversity and Education to develop a three year strategy for contributing to K-12 education. We will review suggestions about ESA’s niche in K-12 education, gathered over the past year from K-12 educators, education researchers, and ESA members. We will refine needs in the field of K-12 ecological education that ESA should address, then identify and prioritize actions in one or more of the following areas:

• Programming for students, including expanded opportunities for students to engage with authentic ecological research and conservation efforts, while sharing with the ESA community their insights about the needs of youth in ecological education.
• Programming for educators, which may provide opportunities for teachers to interact with scientists in a way that helps to advance meaningful K-12 ecological education and to enhance scientists’ effectiveness in understanding the needs of educators.
• Programming for professional development providers, including support for  those involved in developing teacher capacity for ecological pedagogy, scientific practices, and understanding.
• Expansion of the educational research network, to advance engagement of ESA members in the educational research community, and education researchers in ESA.
• Policy level efforts,  addressing education policies that lay the foundation for how youth in the United States experience ecological education.

We will end the session by reviewing strategic mechanisms and partnerships to achieve results at scale, to balance our resource limitations with the scope of our vision. All are welcome!