Spotlight on the Gulf of Maine Institute
By John P. Terry, PhD
President, Gulf of Maine Institute
In the late 1990s, Drs. Stephen Chorover and John Terry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology convened a small group of scientists and educators from throughout the Gulf of Maine (GOM) bioregion to investigate practical approaches to promoting stewardship in perpetuity of the watershed.
Early on, the group reached consensus that the job required committed scientists and a knowledgeable committed citizenry. Tackling the harder question—how might that requirement best be met?—moved the group to meet on a regular basis. Stewardship, they concluded, combines solid science with citizen involvement. Thus evolved the idea of citizen stewards: citizens knowledgeable of the science and capable of forming alliances to take civic action to reclaim the authority, privilege and duty of stewardship.
In a sense, this is a re-invention of the older notion of the “commons” belonging to the public and for the public good with a twist—the public need to protect and preserve the “commons.” Discussion on how best to recruit and prepare citizen stewards had a future orientation and led to a focus on youth.
In 1998, the group gave birth to the idea of the Gulf of Maine Institute (GOMI) with its mission to create future citizen stewards by inspiring youth in partnership with adults to become leaders in stewardship within their communities and the watershed. In 1999, the group formed a steering committee, composed of representatives from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Teams of high-school age youth and their adult mentors were recruited in each jurisdiction.
In 2000, a grant from the Canadian Government’s Millennium Initiative supported GOMI’s first Summer Workshop. Run from a motel in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, and staffed by local volunteers, the workshop exceeded expectations and inspired the founders to move ahead. GOMI has since gained 501(c) status as a non-profit educational organization and grants from TD Bank Friends of the Environment Foundation, US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Toward Sustainability Foundation, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia Governments and the Jessie B. Cox Charitable Trust.
GOMI organized around three initiatives: Community-based initiatives (CBI), Teacher training initiatives (TTI) and community communications initiatives (CCI).
CBI forms the core of the organization and focuses directly on working CBI teams. Each team, composed of six to eight youths and two adult mentors, works for a minimum of two years to address a local environmental concern, such as water quality, invasive species, or loss of critical habitat.
“It is all about connections. I was amazed and excited when I saw what was being accomplished through GOMI,” said Kathy Leonard, science teacher at Haverhill High School in Massachusetts. “To have a group of students/individuals becoming viable members of their communities to promote change, working to improve their living conditions, the conditions of native flora and fauna, and therefore the conditions of the Gulf of Maine, was appealing.
With help of grants from the Jessie B. Cox Charitable Foundation and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), TTI developed a partnership with Tufts University’s Master of Arts in Teaching program to employ the CBI Summer Workshop as a field-site for teaching teachers to adapt their curricula to place-based education.
The CCI currently publishes GOMI Currents, a quarterly electronic newsletter. Planned for CCI are annual bioregion-wide conferences to begin in the fall of 2010. More about GOMI and these initiatives may be found at http://www.gulfofmaineinstitute.org.
Summer Workshops
Over the past decade, GOMI has recruited, developed, trained, and provided technical and financial assistance to scores of CBI Teams across the Gulf of Maine watershed. Each summer, the GOMI invites teams to participate in its weeklong residential workshop.
At the workshop, which changes venue from one jurisdiction to the next each summer, teams from diverse locations such as fishing villages, suburbia and urban neighborhoods, celebrate the human diversity of the bioregion – national, ethnic, cultural and economic – as they learn stewardship skills.
Youth learn why sustainable stewardship of the bioregion requires citizen stewards and gain insight into how that is done. As they share their local work and findings and develop friendships and networks across political boundaries they learn to act locally and think bioregionally.
“GOMI has offered my child the opportunity to explore advanced science with real-world scientists, work collaboratively with students from social-economic and ethnic backgrounds varied from our own, and develop an awareness of and passion for the natural world around him.” said Lisa Furlong, the parent of a high-school junior who has been involved in GOMI since the eight grade.
Joining the youth at the workshop are the teachers participating in the GOMI/Tufts TTI program. Here teachers learn firsthand the joys and power of place-based experiential learning and teaching. Exceptionally committed and qualified volunteer leaders in science, education, and environmental conservation staff the workshop itself.
This summer the Institute celebrates its 10th anniversary by returning to Nova Scotia. At the Annapolis Basin Conference Centre in Cornwallis, starting June 28 and running through July 5, four Nova Scotia teams (Digby/Islands Consolidated, Barrington High School, Bear River Reserve and Shelburne High School) will be joined by New Brunswick’s Tantramar Wetlands team (Sackville); four Massachusetts teams (Chelsea, Newburyport, Concord and Haverhill), Concord New Hampshire’s Plus Time NH Green Team and the GOMI/Tufts teacher team. At the conclusion of their summer’s work the youth will present what they have learned and achieved to a panel of educators, scientists and planners. Their presentations provide a unique opportunity for professionals to learn first hand the important role youth can and do play as citizen stewards. For the youth it is an excellent opportunity to practice the skill of public presentation.
Teachers receive graduate credit for their involvement and develop a plan for implementing place-based education in their curriculum and community and collaborate and share information with each other, GOMI, and the Gulf of Maine Council via an Internet based educator’s toolbox. The Toolbox employs state-of-the-art interactive Web 2.0 technology, including an online community, social networking, and blogs, and provides an educator’s digital toolbox and distance learning courses all developed under the watchful eye of Philip Gay, Program Manager, Curriculum Resource Center, Tufts University.
“It can be very hard for public school educators in low-income communities in the US to maintain the strength of our visions, during machine-scored, test-driven times like these. GOMI kept me going strong, and I’ve finally gotten approval of my proposal for a field-based environmental chemistry course next year,” said science teacher Mary Porter from Revere, Massachusetts. “Last summer, it was a privilege for me to be “embedded” with a GOMI team of young student activists from Canada and New England, to actually go out in the field and measure dangerous air pollution… in Chelsea.”
Regional Efforts and Partnerships
Each spring GOMI conducts regional mini-conferences, one in the Maritimes and one in New England. At the conferences, which change venue each year, respective regional teams present their local projects, and learn firsthand about another community and its environmental issues. Other youth and interested educators, scientists and planners are invited to these conferences.
GOMI recently organized a Merrimac River watershed initiative named Up, Down and Under, or UDU for short. UDU currently includes the CBI teams from Newburyport and Haverhill, MA, and Concord, NH. UDU’s purpose is to collaborate within the river’s watershed on water quality issues. In the effort, GOMI teams are joined by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Parker River National Refuge and the Merrimac River Watershed Association.
In a developing relationship, GOMI is working to bring online a network of Model Informal Education Centers (MIECs) that engage Gulf of Maine citizens of all ages. This effort involves partnership with: Tufts University, the Gulf of Maine Council on the Marine Environment, Oceanswide, a non-profit organization based in Maine that uses remotely operated submersible vehicles (ROVs) as a tool for engaging people in ocean science and stewardship; the Sustainable Ocean Studies Program, a place-based, informal educational program for rising 11th- and 12th-graders and recent high-school graduates offered through the Wayneflete School (Portland, Maine); the USFWS Parker River National Wildlife Refuge (Newburyport, MA); PlusTime NH (Concord, NH), Tantramar Wetlands Centre (Sackville, New Brunswick), and the Tusket River Environmental Protection Association (Tusket, Nova Scotia). Each of these partners has a dedicated, experienced staff and shares a common mission and commitment to promote sustainable stewardship, in perpetuity, of the Gulf of Maine and its watershed.
In conjunction with the Gulf of Maine Council’s Outreach Committee, GOMI will launch a first bioregional conference in the fall of 2010. The conferences will bring together youth, scientist, educators, planners and other interested parties with the goal of promoting citizen stewardship. Youth will have the opportunity to share their work and scientists the opportunity bring their knowledge to the public.
For more information on the GOMI activities and to pick-up a copy of GOMI Currents please go to
http://www.gulfofmaineinstitute.org.
GOMI, like the ecosystem itself, constitutes a complex set of relationships with multiple connections and outcomes. The obvious outcomes are, of course, the number of teams and the number of people in their communities they impact as a direct result of their CBI efforts, the teachers and the number of students they reach out to in their classrooms, and the many others who may be reached via the regional and CCI efforts.
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