What is the EEC?

The Environmental Education Center (EEC)is part of the Kentucky University Partnership for Environmental Education (KUPEE). Founded in 2002 with the help of funding from the U.S. Department of Education, KUPEE is a partnership of all the state Universities in Kentucky. Kentucky is the only state to have an Environmental Education Center at every public institution.

MSU’s center provides funding for supplies and equipment to ensure that all pre-service teachers at Morehead State University may receive some training in environmental education. We also do outreach and research in environmental issues and environmental education.

What does the EEC Do?

Some of our activities include:

• Support basic psychological research on how students’ learn about the environment, and why environmental metaphors help kids learn math and science concepts faster.
• Involve middle school teachers from eastern Kentucky in scientific research.
• Train teachers and community volunteers in Kentucky Watershed Watch as part of Licking River Watershed Watch
• We act as the regional source of materials and training for Project Wet
• We partner with local solid waste coordinators, and the MSU Energy Conservation Office, to help with local recycling education efforts, and in basic research on electronic waste in illegal dumps of eastern Kentucky
• Partner with PRIDE to help elementary students in the region learn about how they affect, and are effected by, their environment.
• Partner with the Daniel Boone National Forest Cumberland Ranger District, Morehead Office, to help provide teacher training in Wonders of Wetlands.
• We train and certify teachers in Project Food, Land, and People, Project WET, Project WILD Aquatic, Project GLOBE,  Project Learning Tree, and Population Connection
  
• With Northern Kentucky University, and a host of willing partners, we run an award-winning watershed level Summer Teacher training program Reading the River

Why Environmental Education?

The Kentucky Environmental Education Council has determined that there is a demand and need for more environmental education in the Commonwealth. Environmental issues and problems are political, social, mathematic, biological, and physical; therefore, environmental education can provide a students with a reason to learn all the topics. In an increasingly interactive nation, citizens will be needed who have the ability to critically evaluate complex topics.

Environmental Education provides an integrating context for learning. Research shows that when students, especially those in the critical elementary and middle grade, can have a hands-on interactive learning experience with a relevance to their life, they will learn all subjects better. We strongly support, and are striving to meet, the goals set forth in Land Learning and Legacy II.

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