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1 July, 2004TEA Program -- Changes Dear TEA Community, We are excited to tell you about upcoming developments in the Teachers Experiencing Antarctica and the Arctic Program. As most of you know the TEA Program is wrapping up its five year grant at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) and the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL). While there is no provision currently in place to send teachers to the polar regions, TEA WILL continue to support several aspects of the polar learning community. Some of these components are TEA and NSTA travel grants, NSTA travel grants for Associates, facilitation of Mentoring Resource Groups, Regional Workshops, maintenance of the TEA web site, and publication of the TEA newsletter, Voices from the Community. The TEA grant will be moving to the University of Rhode Island's Office of Marine Programs (OMP) for the next year. While AMNH and CRREL remain supportive of the TEA Program, neither institution will be officially involved. The TEA Program appreciates all the efforts of AMNH and CRREL to support the growth of TEA over the past five years and thanks them for their work. We believe that were it not for that support we would not be where we are today -- a polar learning community of over 600 educators and scientists! We do anticipate continued collaboration with these institutions. We also extend our deepest appreciation to the National Science Foundation's Division of Elementary, Secondary, and Informal Education in the Directorate of Education and Human Resources and the Office of Polar Programs; they continue to offer solid support to the TEA Program and community. TEA, OMP, NSF, and staff at AMNH and CRREL have all been working hard to see that this transfer occurs with as little disruption as possible to the day-to-day operations of the Program. The only significant piece lost during this move is a summer Transfer Workshop. It was not possible to run a Transfer Workshop and move the grant this summer. Stephanie Shipp and Debra Meese will no longer be Principal Investigators on the TEA grant. A year ago, Stephanie moved to the Lunar and Planetary Institute (where she uses the many lessons learned from her experiences with the TEA community daily), reducing her role in the TEA Program. Though she will no longer be part of the TEA management, she hopes to always be part of the TEA family. Deb is continuing her research on ice cores and is working on several projects including the Siple Dome ice core and the International Trans Antarctic Scientific Expedition ice cores. Deb hopes to continue to hear from the TEA community and continues to be involved in various educational programs. Marge Porter and Arlyn Bruccoli continue with TEA as co-PIS. Arlyn will continue to manage the project full-time; she is your first point of contact regarding any questions you have related to the TEA Program, although the grant oversight and management responsibility for the no-cost extension year will reside with the new PI and co-PI at OMP. Jason Petula will continue to facilitate MRG groups. Steve Stevenoski will continue to develop and support TEALive. The TEA web site will stay at Rice University through the fall when it will then be migrated to URI. This move will ensure that the site is available after this initial no cost extension year. We would also like to recognize the support of Rice University and in parcticular the fantastic work of April Metz, Rob McDonald, Sam Carter, and Mike Hardy for their tremendous efforts to work with the TEA community to build and maintain the web site. Rob will continue to work with TEA while the site is moved to URI. We would also like to thank Susan James at the Museum for her work on TEA during this past year. We are pleased to introduce some new leaders of the TEA team. Sara Hickox, Director of URI's Office of Marine Programs, will be the new TEA PI and Gail Scowcroft, OMP Associate Director, will serve as a new co-PI. Sara and Gail have many years of experience working with educators. One of the many projects developed by URI's Office of Marine Programs is the NSF-funded ARMADA Project: Research and Mentoring Experiences for Teachers. Sara and Gail serve as PIs on the project that is sending five teachers on Arctic research experiences this summer. See http://www.armadaproject.org/ for ARMADA Project details and highlights of the Summer 2004 research experiences. Details about other educational endeavors in which OMP is involved can be found at http://omp.gso.uri.edu. We are excited about the connection with OMP and believe it is a great opportunity to expand on the work of TEA. Contact information for: Arlyn Bruccoli arlynb@tea.rice.edu PO Box 444 Corinth, VT 05039 Marge Porter School (860) 749-2270 ext 4402 marjorieporter@sbcglobal.net Somers High School Science Department Ninth District Road Somers, CT 06071 Sara Hickox, Director, Office of Marine Programs sara@gso.uri.edu University of Rhode Island Narragansett Bay Campus Narragansett, RI 02882 Gail Scowcroft, Associate Director, Office of Marine Programs Office 401-874-6724 gailscow@gso.uri.edu University of Rhode Island Narragansett Bay Campus Narragansett, RI 02882 Thank you all for your continued involvement in the TEA Program! We look forward to another active and productive year together. Best wishes, Marge, Arlyn, Deb, and Steph
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