top of page
AmeriCorps-Horizontal-Olive_PNG.png

Serve with AmeriCorps Kansas! Led by the Kansas Association for Conservation and Environmental Education (KACEE), the Environmental Education Corps (eeCorps) AmeriCorps Program places AmeriCorps members at organizations throughout Kansas to focus on increasing environmental literacy for PreK-12 students and building capacity for environmental education in the region.

AmeriCorps is a network of national service programs offering the opportunity for individuals of all ages and backgrounds to serve and meet community needs. Members address the most critical problems in the areas of education, economic opportunity, veterans and military family services, health, the environment, and disaster services.

 

In exchange for a specific term of service, AmeriCorps members earn a living allowance as well as an educational award to pay back qualified student loans or to finance college, graduate school, or vocational training.

 

For more information about the AmeriCorps State program and FAQs for members, please visit this website.

americorps kansas white logo.png
River

"There is a mountain of evidence that suggests EE is a powerful way to teach students. Over 100 studies found that it provides transformative learning opportunities that bring tremendous results and engage young people in the world around them in meaningful, collaborative ways. There is no doubt that environmental education is one of the most effective ways to instill a passion for learning among students.”

— Dr. Nicole Ardoin, Stanford University Graduate School of Education and Woods Institute for the Environment

The Need for eeCorps in Kansas

The AmeriCorps Kansas eeCorps Program was launched in 2022 and is modeled after similar programs in Colorado and Kentucky.

In 2020, Fort Hays State University (Clay, 2021) conducted a survey of 224 urban, suburban, rural, and frontier rural teachers across multiple grades and subject areas in Kansas with the goal of trying to understand educators’ perspectives on barriers to environmental education in the classroom. Several barriers were identified which limit the inclusion of EE as a part of what every child experiences in school. Barriers include lack of field experiences, and lack of training and materials specific to grade level, subject and/or geographic region. The following data creates a compelling rationale for supporting educators to teach EE in their classrooms: When asked, 73.6% of teachers surveyed said they would be likely to integrate environmental education into their teaching if barriers were addressed.  Skilled, professional environmental educators are needed to address these barriers identified by classroom teachers; they support student learning through field trips, school-based programming, and teacher professional development. But Kansas has a chronic lack of environmental educators to meet the needs of students and teachers. That's where eeCorps comes in. KACEE leads the eeCorps program in Kansas, working with a number of AmeriCorps 'host sites' across the state. These sites—nature centers, zoos, and other sites offering EE—host AmeriCorps members who support, deliver and develop environmental education programming to area students. For each of the host sites, there are currently only 1-2 educators who provide EE to PreK-12 students in their communities and supporting EE instruction in classrooms. For example, the Nature Reach program in Pittsburg has only one staff person serving 20 districts with just under 20,000 students in a 50 mile radius. On average, Nature Reach provides programming to 4,000 students, or only 20% of those within a 50-mile radius. Further, because of the chronic lack of funding and capacity, programs like Nature Reach have a fee associated with providing programming and service, which disadvantages districts with lower income bases.  With support of AmeriCorps at sites like Nature Reach, the fees can be eliminated and more students can be reached thanks to the additional capacity that eeCorps members provide. Thanks to the AmeriCorps position at Ernie Miller Nature Center, the program was able to expand to offer EE to early childhood students, an audience they were not previously serving. At Nature Reach, the AmeriCorps member provided environmental education to new audiences and reached over 1700 additional students. Further, the evaluation data collected indicates that 86.2% of elementary students reported increased knowledge and aptitude toward taking good care of the environment. As we continue to expand the eeCorps program, we will continue to grow capacity for delivery of high quality and non-biased environmental education at host sites across the state. Through increased ability to deliver programs, doubling capacity, consistency, ability to create and deliver new EE programs, there is also the potential to develop climate change programming and offer more programming to Title 1 Schools.

Young Volunteers

What do eeCorps Members do?

eeCorps members work directly with teachers, schools, and environmental education providers to:

  • Provide support in expanding the reach of EE programming

  • Increase the impact of EE programming

  • Provide access to equitable learning experiences for all PreK-12 students.

Questions?

Leonore.jpg

Contact Leonore

Leonore Enfield

lenfield@kacee.org

KACEE AmeriCorps Coordinator

Host Sites with Open Positions

Serve with eeCorps Kansas! We are excited to share that we are recruiting for eeCorps positions at these host sites in Kansas. Click on the images below to learn more about each host site:

KACEE Horizontal Logo with AmeriCorps Logos cropped.png
bottom of page