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AmeriCorps Project Ocean Change Coordinator
URL: http://www.nationalservice.gov/programs/americorps
Company / Organization: AmeriCorps
City: Wilmington, NC
Application Deadline: 26-Aug-16
Description:
This program is based at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington. Youth Programs serves as a pipeline between the university and the Pre-K to 12th grade community. By building on the strengths of UNCW faculty, staff, students and facilities, we create academically enriching programs that provide Youth with relevant university experiences, UNCW students with experiential and service learning opportunities, and Faculty and staff with outreach partnerships. One of our most successful and impactful K-12 programs is MarineQuest. Its’ mission is to offer programming that provides young people with opportunities to explore, discover and value our marine habitats and encourages them to develop into environmentally responsible adults
Purpose of the position
The purpose of the position is to help MarineQuest achieve its mission specifically with underserved populations in southeastern North Carolina, and to serve as a role model for ocean stewardship to these youth. To accomplish this, the member must promote the Ocean Literacy Principles (specifically #6: the ocean and humans are inextricably interconnected and #3 : the ocean is a major influence on weather and climate) to underserved middle school children in coastal Southeastern North Carolina. To achieve this the Member will create a STEM curriculum that teaches students about the ocean and climate change.
Through their efforts, the member will help these children understand that their actions can impact the ocean and in turn, a damaged ocean can impact them, that they have a responsibility to care for the ocean, and that they are capable of helping to care for the ocean through their actions.
Requirements:
Position responsibilities
The duties and responsibilities of this position are to engage youth in grades K-8th in ocean stewardship in such way as to affect a lasting change in their attitude towards the ocean and actions in support of ocean conservation. To achieve this, the member will:
- Develop new curricular materials related to anthropogenic impacts on the environment and climate change, sea level rise, and coastal resiliency. These will be integrated into the MarineQuest curriculum and used as part of Project Ocean Change.
- The Member will work with schools and community centers in rural coastal counties of southeastern NC to schedule programs during the school year. During the summer, the Member will provide programs for appropriate camps such as those sponsored at the schools or as part of MarineQuests scholarship outreach.
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The Member will engage youth with a citizen science program focused on weather/climate monitoring and support their efforts to maintain participation.
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The Member is expected to monitor youth participation and attitudes throughout their tenure with the program. This includes administering pre and post assessments of ocean (hydrosphere and atmosphere) health awareness and an attitudinal survey.
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The Member is responsible for communicating with the Youth Director and school officials about the project. He/she is responsible for reporting on progress made, any impediments to actions he/she needs to accomplish the goals of the project, or changes that might need to be implemented for project success.
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It is the Member’s duty to obtain all materials, supplies, equipment necessary to implement any particular lesson by requesting them from the MarineQuest director in a timely manner. It is the Member’s duty to conduct a careful program of evaluation and to reflect upon the data collected to improve his/her actions as the program progress; and to make recommendations for how the program should progress after their term has ended.
Qualifications
- Bachelors degree in marine science or environmental science with focus on coastal studies; experience interacting with/presenting to youth
- Experience in data collection, some knowledge of statistical analysis will be helpful
- Ability to speak Spanish and translate middle-school level material into Spanish will be a plus
- Ability to drive in North Carolina, including a 12-passenger van (must be at least 21 years of age)
- Proficiency with Microsoft Office suite, particularly Word and Excel
- Confident presentation/public speaking skills
- Must be comfortable working with youth ages 5-14
- Must be able to work in partnership with teachers
- Must be confident in communicating with parents when needed
- First aid/CPR training is required (can be obtained at UNCW once selected as Member)
- Due to interaction with youth in a coastal setting including the beach, lifeguard certification is a plus
Essential Functions/physical demands
The member will serve as the Coordinator for project Ocean Change. The member will:
- Prepare ocean themed outreach lessons to teach school children in grades k-8 about anthropogenic impacts and climate change, sea level rise, coastal resiliency
- Implement these lessons in areas of southeastern North Carolina that serve economically distressed families, many of whom are part of the Hispanic community
- Plan, organize and implement a summer camp for highly interested/ motivated youth from this community to help them develop into ocean conservation student leaders
- Provide similar outreach programming to youth who are members of military families living on Camp Lejeune
- Encourage participation by these youth in citizen science program
Preferred schedule
UNCW will be serving schools within a 2.5 hour radius of Wilmington, there will be days on which the Member will be asked to start work as early as 6:00 am in order to travel to rural communities. If there are numerous such trips in a week, the Member will work less than 5 days so as not to work more than 40 hours in the week. The Member will drive a university supplied vehicle for these work related visits. The member will be expected to work on occasional Saturdays for special events where we would like to highlight the Ocean Change program. When the Member works on the weekend he/she will be expected to take off a similar amount of time the following week to balance the 40 hour expectation, unless hours are needed to maintain schedule for AmeriCorps hours served by the end of the term. The Member can expect to observe the university holiday/vacation schedule.
Point of Contact: Sue Kezios