The Natural Resource Conservation Academy (NRCA) is an innovative program in conservation and land use planning for a select group of Connecticut high school students. The Academy starts with a week-long field course at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. Throughout the week, students interact with UConn faculty and learn about mapping and geospatial information, water, forestry, wildlife, soils and more. However, to pass muster at the Academy the work/fun doesn’t end there!  In the months to come, students complete a natural resource project in their communities, using the skills and knowledge that they gained over the summer.

Quite a few CLEAR (Center for Land Use Education and Research) faculty participate in the summer field course. Because of its obvious superiority to all the other disciplines, Day One of the Academy is dedicated to mapping and geospatial information. All CLEAR programs involve some form of the STEM disciplines – Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. However, CLEAR is partnering with many of our UConn colleagues in two large efforts directly providing STEM education. CLEAR faculty are extensively engaged in the Natural Resources Conservation Academy (NRCA), an innovative program in conservation and land use planning that connects Connecticut high school students, adult volunteers and teachers with conservation efforts at the community level. And with an overlapping but different set of partners, CLEAR faculty are critical to the success of the Environment Corps (E-Corps) initiative at UConn, a program of innovative undergraduate courses that combine classroom instruction, service learning, and Extension outreach.