The Many Facets of Environmental Centers

"In the long term, the economy and the environment are the same thing. If it is unenvironmental it is uneconomical. That is the rule of nature"-Mollie Beattie

There is much more to running a nature center then what meets the eye. The longer I have been and the more time I've spend behind the scenes, the more I've realized that the education component of a center is just one of  many cogs of the machine. This really struck home with me while working on a larger center for a summer where of the full-time positions, 80% of them involved working in something other than teaching. It really takes more than just a teaching component to run a successful nature center, it also takes business, technology, and communication savvy to make things happen.

Diagram of the how each component of a nature center works together

Education
Taking graduate level classes in Environmental Education has helped me to realize that there is so much more to education than stringing together a series of activities related to each other. There is an art as theories and learning models blend together to make a lasting impression on learner of all ages. The best environmental educator are more storytellers or director than a teacher, directing students along a unseen plot in a way that the learning isn't just heard but experienced. That being said, most centers juggle around part-time instructors which during the busy months can be a whirl of scheduling. Of any of the facets of environmental education this component ends up being the the most memorable part of the center but in reality is only one part of it.

Science/Technology
While environmental education has begun to move away from teaching solely science to a more holistic approach, I personally feel that EE centers still have an obligation to science at their core. One great way that centers across world can aid science is by promoting citizen science projects. Some programs, such as the Christmas Bird Counts, can be national projects while other such as local watershed monitoring projects, involve collecting data on a local scale. In many cases, even taking good stewardship of the nature center's land itself teaches scientific knowledge. An aspect which I feel has a tendency to get pushed to the side a bit is technology. Newer technology can sometimes be hard for many centers to adopt as it is expensive and always seems to be changing. Needless to say, technology may be tool nature centers have in connecting students to nature.

Communication
The rise of the age of social media has added a layer of complexity to the communication. Gone are the days where print media ruled. Now, sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even Pinterest have been adopted by many nature centers as they've realized social media is a powerful tool to reach their intended audience. Using social media has allowed for nature centers to reach members where they are as smartphones give the Internet at people's fingertips. While there has been the adoption of online communication, those more traditional forms such as email, newspaper advertisements and even snail mail are still extremely important lines of communication. The key is to keep communications current to fit the attention span of the current culture.

Business/Nonprofit Leadership/Administrative
This side of running a nature center is the one that I am least familiar with this one is arguable the most important. There is a lot that goes into administering a nature center, from talking to donors to grant writing to scheduling events, etc. Add onto that the legal and accounting side running the center and it's enough to make my head spin...

As you can see, the fun part of being of starting off in the EE field is that there are options of what areas you can focus on. While education may be the focus of the center, without the other facets no nature center would be able to run successfully. For this post I decided to stick to shorter descriptions of each. If there's interest, I would be more than willing to post a more in-depth analysis of each.

What part of facet of running a nature center are you most interested in? Let me know in the comments below or on tweet your answer to me @eeNatureGuy!