Families

The Environmental Studies Program at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation's Brock Environmental Center offers a unique opportunity for students to expand their understanding of sustainable economics and business innovation, social sustainability, environmental sustainability and natural resource stewardship. Through experiential learning and community partnerships, students will learn about sustainability and expand their hands-on STEM experiences. Local environmental issues will contextualize students' challenge-based, collaborative, and design-thinking learning experiences. Integrated interdisciplinary instruction and service learning projects will broaden student knowledge of local and global issues pertaining to sustainability.

This program prepares students for post-secondary education and provides opportunities to investigate careers related to the environment and sustainability. Students will acquire the globally competitive skills necessary to be successful in pathways after high school and to become future scientists, politicians, and business leaders within our community and larger world. Through advanced placement coursework, students will secure a high school diploma, earn college credits and make an impact on our local environment, while benefiting from a partnership with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.

Goal of the Program

The goal of the Environmental Studies Program is to empower students in the program to broaden their understanding of sustainability through:

• Utilizing the natural community as a context for learning about environmental and sustainability issues
• Implementing environmental service learning projects
• Integrating interdisciplinary instruction
• Incorporating challenge based, collaborative and design thinking learning
• Earning the Board of Education's Seal for Excellence in Science and the Environment

Curriculum/Coursework

This program is for juniors and seniors. Students will attend the program every day for a partial school day and will travel to or from their home school for the other part of the day.

While at the Brock Environmental Center 11th grade students will take:

• AP Environmental Science
• Sustainability Core Concepts and Environmental Systems
• Natural Resource Management
• Watershed Hydrology

In year two of the program, 12th grade students will take:

• Topical Research
• Senior Independent Study: Internship Experiences with community partners