Science association honors UAF professor

Dr. Elena Sparrow (pictured at right), UAF professor of resources management, has been named the 2008 Emma Walton Distinguished Service Award winner by the Alaska Science Teachers Association. The award recognizes educators who make extraordinary contributions to the advancement of science education.

Sparrow, who established the GLOBE program in 1996, is the Alaska GLOBE Program director. The program promotes collaboration between students doing inquiry-based investigations of the environment and the earth system. She has trained teachers from over 60 Alaska schools. Sparrow is the grant writer and director for the National Science Foundation Seasons and Biomes Program. This program provides teacher training and student data collection about the seasons. It also provides an opportunity for students who live in similar biomes around the world to link up and share their observations and conduct research investigations. She directs the Schoolyard Long Term Ecological Program. SLTER provides an opportunity for rural students to spend six weeks working with a researcher at the University of Alaska. She also directs the Education Outreach program of the National Science Foundation-funded Alaska EPSCoR program, providing professional development workshops for teachers and giving rural high school students an opportunity to conduct genetics research on Alaska animals or conduct environmental science investigations.

Sparrow has been active in integrating the scientific knowledge of Alaska’s Native people into the K-12 curriculum. At the collegiate level, working with the Association for Polar Early Career Scientists, Sparrow has been involved in training scientists just starting their careers, teaching them how to write proposals for their research or education outreach projects. At UAF, she teaches science research and earth science education. She is co- principal investigator of the GK-12 Teaching Alaskans, Sharing Knowledge program which works to enhance learning in Title One schools by partnering University of Alaska science, mathematics, or engineering students with K-12 classrooms. Sparrow is director of the University of the Arctic International Polar Year Higher Education Outreach Office and education outreach director of the International Arctic Research Center and Center for Global Change. She is also the president and founding member of the Association for Women in Science-Alaska Chapter.