The Northeast Michigan Great Lakes Stewardship Initiative, through the Community Foundation for Northeast Michigan, has been named one of the five winners in the second annual UL (Underwriters Laboratories, Inc.) Innovative Education Award program. The organization will receive a grant of $25,000.
The NEMIGLSI is a regional network of education and community partners collaborating to protect the Great Lakes and natural resources of Northeast Michigan through hands-on learning in, and with, the community. During the 2015-2016 school year, the NEMIGLSI network supported 94 educators in 32 schools across eight Northeast Michigan counties, involving more than 4,100 youth - approximately 20 percent of the region's total student population - in stewardship projects.
"We were impressed by how this Michigan initiative encourages youth to present the source of the problem and implications of the problem to various audiences and how they enabled youth to advocate for feasible solutions," Cara Gizzi, director of public safety education and outreach said. "The judges noted that this year's winning programs demonstrated the lasting returns on investing in sustained contact with the learners over months as well as years. NEMIGLSI and the other winners are the ideal 'deep learning' programs that offer effective, meaningful, and measurable engagement in STEM learning that can be readily tracked over time."