Annual Conference

Bringing it Home: Elements of Effective Diverse Education

March 1-3, 2013 - Blanding, Utah

Overview: This year Four Corners School of Outdoor Education and its BOEP program are partnering with Utah State University and their iUtah EPSCoR project. iUTAH, (innovative Urban Transitions and Aridregion Hydro-sustainability), is a statewide effort to improve water sustainability in Utah. Funded by the National Science Foundation's EPSCoR program (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research) this five-year project will assist in building the human and research infrastructure needed to sustainably manage Utah's water resources. iUTAH will invigorate statewide research productivity through an integrated program that enhances research, human, and cyber infrastructure capacities related to understanding how population pressure, a changing climate, and altered land use affect water resources and the sustainability of urban and natural ecosystems. iUTAH is an interdisciplinary effort among researchers from Utah State University, the University of Utah, and two dozen other Utah institutions of higher education, government agencies, industry, and non-profit partners.

BOEP is a program of the Four Corners School of Outdoor Education (FCS). It is a year long, professional development program committed to helping teachers on the Colorado Plateau discover the power of "place" in everyday learning, empowering their students to grasp the significance of their own place. This conference is an annual event to bring together teachers, and other educators from the Colorado Plateau Bioregion, to learn bioregionally focused, place-based, hands on, cross-curricular, outdoor education lessons.

iUtah, as well as Four Corners School, have a goal to increase the institutional, individual, disciplinary, and geographic diversity of the STEM enterprise in Utah in order to address the water sustainability issues facing Utah and the Mountain West, and this conference is a first step in that process. iUTAH is integrating diversity plans throughout the project to enhance institutional, individual, disciplinary, and geographic diversity of STEM teaching and learning.