History

Ideal Segue

Participants

Segues

Keystone Plants

Workshop 2007

Workshop 2008

The workshop was organized and co-chaired by David Reedy and Will McClatchey.

Approximately 40 participants gathered in a conference room provided at Lake Forest College. The participants represented 30 educational institutions in North America and one in Europe.

David Reedy began with a ten minute overview presentation and then asked two of the Extended Community Evaluators, Nathaniel Bletter and Linda Lyon, to discuss their own activities in developing Ethnobotany Segues to Science.

Discussion proceeded for 1 and 1/2 hours with consensus obtained on the following points:

• The Segue development needs to be extended to include K-12.
• Several of the Extended Community Evaluators will submit grant proposals in the fall and these will be supported by the group with shared letters of support and shared preliminary data from Hawaii and elsewhere.
• A united front should be developed for course development since most of the representatives are not involved in schools with full programs where curriculum is being developed. Those institutions with full curricula should support development of single courses elsewhere.
• The Segues workshop group should expand and emphasize the points of the upcoming year of science education and the 50th year of the Society for Economic Botany.
• The Segues workshop group should jointly apply for funding to support the workshop at the SEB meetings at Duke University in 2008 and do this as part of an effort to involve more basic educators, students, and those who can really use the tools being developed.

Participants provided the following feedback points from the workshop:

• The workshop was not well publicized so not enough people attended.
• The workshop was scheduled during a concurrent session so some people could not attend who really wanted to.
• The workshop time was too short for the discussions that needed to be held.
• Readings should have been distributed in advance.
• The introduction power point was useful but needed to have a handout.
• Although at first it was unclear where the workshop was going, it become clear that this was an organizational meeting to get everyone talking and moving in the same direction.
• The workshop should probably have been divided into three groups, those working at large institutions with programs, those at smaller schools, and those at botanical gardens.
• I liked the fact that there was good discussion about high school education and its importance in preparing students for understanding science in college. Incorporating the Segue idea into state science fairs may be a way to spread this widely and leverage it into the group that will enter college.

Participants with further feedback points should send them to David Reedy or Will McClatchey for inclusion above.