Mountain Studies Institute is looking for students and adults interested in participating in its virtual Resiliency Youth Summit, which will allow students to present their projects about innovative solutions to regional environmental issues to an audience of scientists, community leaders and other students.
The online summit is free to students and adults and will be held from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. April 24.
Ten to 20 students are expected to present projects designed to find solutions to environmental issues in the San Juan Mountains and Southwest Colorado to an online audience of other students, environmental scientists and other interested adults.
In addition, an interactive, collaborative game will be conducted to challenge students to problem-solve for a hypothetical environmental problem.
“Any student is welcome to attend, and any student is welcome to present,” said Jeremy May, education coordinator with Mountain Studies Institute. “Some students have projects through classes or through science fairs and others are working on projects through extracurricular programs.”
Topics will cover issues such as drought, forest health, water quality and impacts of climate change.
A collaborative game at the end of the summit will examine water resource challenges in the San Juan Mountains and Southwest Colorado.
“Essentially, we’re looking at drought, the amount of water and how water is used, and water quality,” May said of the interactive game. “They’ll be looking at these different challenges and then collaboratively coming up with some solutions, with guidance. We’ve gamified these scenarios.”
Also included in the summit will be information for students about career possibilities open in the environmental sciences and natural resources.
“We’re creating a career exploration tool,” he said. “We’re calling it a natural resource career collage. We’ll get professionals from all over the community to create little videos and informational segments that they’ll have online.”
Students can check out the video presentations to learn more about fields involving environmental and natural resource sciences.
Adults are encouraged to participate not only in the career collage, but also in giving feedback about the students’ presentations.
Registration for the summit is available online on Mountain Studies Institute’s website through April 16.
parmijo@durangoherald.com
