Check out GK-12 Fellow Amanda Charbonneau’s research on invasive species this week at the BEACON blog:

http://beacon-center.org/blog/2014/06/16/beacon-researchers-at-work-what-makes-invasive-species-successful/

The 2014 KBS K-12 Partnership, sponsored by the NSF GK-12 and KBS LTER, invites you to join us for our morning plenary research talks at the Summer Institute. Events will run from Monday June 23 – Wednesday June 25. Plenary talks will be in the KBS Auditorium from 8:30 – 9:30 AM each day.

Monday June 23, 8:30-9:30 AM

Dr. Jason Gallant

MSU Zoology

Talk Title: Shocking tails from around the world: electric fish in the genomics era

Brief excerpt from online bio: I completed my postdoctoral research in July, 2013 working in the evolutionary genetics laboratory of Sean Mullen at Boston University, where I studied the genetic basis of mimetic wing patterns in Limenitis and Heliconius butterflies.  I received my Ph.D. in July 2011, working with Carl Hopkins and David Deitcher at Cornell University.  Here, I studied the evolution of signal form and electric organ morphology among the Mormyrid electric fishes of Africa in the genus Paramormyrops, which  have undergone explosive speciation in West Central Africa (Cameroon, Gabon, and Congo). My research has involved the study of a novel vertebrate tissue, the electric organ.  Electric organs have evolved independently in several lineages of fish, and derive (almost) always from skeletal muscle during early larval development.  My thesis projects concerned (1) transcriptional differences between skeletal muscle and electric organ and (2) how evolutionary processes may act upon electric organs (and their transcriptomes) to produce novel signals. Dr. Gallant’s website.

Tuesday June 24, 8:30 – 9:30 AM

Dr. Peter White

MSU Entomology, Lyman Briggs.

Talk Title: Teaching Evolution

Brief excerpt from online bio: I have dual research interests in ecology and science education. With regards to the former, I investigate the biotic and abiotic drivers of Lepidoptera assemblage diversity, richness and abundance over moderate temporal and spatial scales. With regards to the latter, I am working on a project with Jim Smith and Merle Heidemann at MSU to develop and test integrative cases in evolution education. The materials we have developed can be found on our evolution education website: www.evo-ed.com.

Although I am an ecologist by training, I currently teach Introductory Cell and Molecular Biology along with a senior undergraduate research course in Lepidoptera ecology. Dr. White’s website.

Wednesday June 25, 8:30 – 9:30 AM

Dr. Gerald Urquhart

MSU Fisheries and Wildlife, Lyman Briggs

Talk Title: Diversity in the Rainforest and in the Classroom: Why They Are Both Important to Our Future

Brief excerpt from online bio: I am a tropical ecologist and an assistant professor of biology at Michigan State University. I teach in the Lyman Briggs College at MSU, a residential, undergraduate program for the study of science and society. I hold a joint appointment in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife.

My research focuses on the impacts of globalization on tropical forests and their biodiversity. I have worked for over 20 years on the “Mosquito Coast” of Nicaragua in remote locations that are now feeling the impacts of globalization.

A native of Michigan, I attended Lyman Briggs College (where I now teach) as an undergraduate and received my M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. I held a postdoctoral position at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama before coming back to MSU in 1998. Dr. Urquhart’s website.

The KBS K-12 partnership cordially invites you to:

STEM: Environmental Engineering for Sustainability

Wednesday, April 23 from 8 AM to 4 PM.

Below you’ll find our agenda for the day as well as details on our concurrent sessions. Events will continue to update as we develop content. Please rsvp to Sarah at bodbyl@msu.edu if you plan to attend. We look forward to seeing you!

Agenda

8:00 AM Breakfast, Announcements, and Introductions

8:30 AM Speaker: Dawn Reinhold (Assistant Professor of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering at MSU) – Auditorium

9:30 AM Concurrent Session Teasers

9:45 AM Concurrent Session 1

MS/HS: Bread Making as Biological Engineering (Kolonich, Lee, Doherty and Anderson) Terrace Room

EL (elem): Bringing Biology to Urban Design: All aboard the Poop Train! (Jake Nalley and Sara Garnett) Stack 140

MS/HS: The Pig Bang Theory: The Implications of Ignoring Evolution (Amanda Charbonneau and Sarah Jones) Stack 139

MS/HS: Connecting Landscapes in a Changing World (Emily Dittmar and Dani Fegan) Stack 145

11:00 AM Break

11:15 AM Plenary with Doug Landis (Professor and Chair of MSU Entomology Department)

12:30 PM Lunch at McCrary

1:30 PM Concurrent Session 2

EL: Building Bliss for Butterflies (Dustin Kincaid, Susan Magnoli, Cara Krieg) Stack 141

MS/HS: Biofuels, Biology, and NGSS (Joyce Parker – GLBRC) Terrace Room

MS/HS: The Pig Bang Theory: The Implications of Ignoring Evolution (Amanda Charbonneau and Sarah Jones) Stack 139

MS/HS: Connecting Landscapes in a Changing World (Emily Dittmar and Dani Fegan) Stack 145

2:45 PM State of the BEST plots and educational opportunities (Auditorium)

3:15 PM Small Group Work by District and Evaluation (Auditorium)

4:00 PM Teacher Advisory Committee Meeting and Adjourn

Concurrent Session Abstracts

Building Bliss for Butterflies
Target Audience: Elementary School Educators
Presenter(s): GK-12 Fellows Cara Krieg, Susan Magnoli, and Dustin Kincaid.
Did you know that there are more than 50 species and subspecies of threatened butterflies and moths in Michigan? Unfortunately, populations of these striking and important creatures are in decline throughout the world. Luckily, you and your students can help by creating habitat for butterflies in your schoolyard. In addition to providing critical habitat, a butterfly garden can serve as an excellent educational tool for you and your elementary students.  In this session we’ll explore reasons why one butterfly, the Monarch, is disappearing using an interactive game.  Then we will share tips and seeds for building habitat for butterflies in your schoolyard. We will also introduce you to several activities you can use with your students in and around these beautiful spaces.

Biofuels, Biology, and NGSS
Target Audience: Middle and High School Educators
Presenter(s): Joyce Parker – GLBRC.
Cost-effective and sustainable production of the biofuel, ethanol, from plant cellulose is the goal of the Great Lakes Biofuels Research Center. How can we use this authentic modern science to illustrate required content? How can we give students opportunities to practice science while learning this content? What do activities that support the Next Generation Science Standards look like? We will answer these questions by exploring new hands-on, minds-on curriculum materials. Bread Making as Biological Engineering Angela Kolonich, May Lee, Jennifer Doherty and Andy Anderson Rising bread is a little ecosystem that is affected by many factors, including temperature, amount of sugar, type of yeast, and bread flavorings. This presents an engineering design challenge: How do your ingredients affect when you need to start making your bread in order to eat it with dinner? In this session we will use this engineering challenge as a way of exploring an interesting biological system and discuss how to incorporate the engineering design process and engineering practices into life science classrooms.

Bread Making as Biological Engineering
Target Audience: Middle and High School Educators
Presenter(s): Angela Kolonich, May Lee, Jennifer Doherty and Andy Anderson
Rising bread is a little ecosystem that is affected by many factors, including temperature, amount of sugar, type of yeast, and bread flavorings. This presents an engineering design challenge: How do your ingredients affect when you need to start making your bread in order to eat it with dinner? In this session we will use this engineering challenge as a way of exploring an interesting biological system and discuss how to incorporate the engineering design process and engineering practices into life science classrooms.

The Pig Bang Theory, the implications of ignoring evolution
Target Audience: Middle and High School Educators
Presenter(s): Amanda Charbonneau and Sarah Jones
What do pest-resistant corn, antibiotic resistance and pig farm explosions have in common? Sometimes nature fights back against our attempts at environmental engineering, and we must change tactics accordingly.  Humans spend huge amounts of money and time to improve crops or domestic animals, and increasingly, we are finding that evolution can creatively side-step our intended goals. For instance, pest-resistant crops have resulted in new breeds of insects that are immune to our poisons. Modern farmers must find ways to prevent not only damage to their current crops, but evolution in pest populations that will eat their future fields. This workshop will focus on how evolution can hamper our efforts, and have explosive consequences. Students will learn how evolution happens in pest populations and have an opportunity to think critically about a current problem in agriculture using claims, evidence, and reasoning.

Bringing Biology to Urban Design: All Aboard the Poop Train!
Target Audience: Elementary Educators
Presenter(s): Sara Garnett and Jakob Nalley
The biological structures that make up our natural world are engineering wonders. From trees that reach several stories in height with such an extensive foundations that they can withstand hurricane force winds to aerodynamic body types to reduce drag and increase speed. These biological systems are inspiring the urban landscape, like stimulating the construction of skyscrapers, underground subway systems, efficient and interconnected roadway infrastructures and more. But as urban settings become increasingly populated these cities have begun to think more and more about a crucial component of their future feasibility and survival: sustainability. Within this workshop we will delve into the idea of urban sustainability through biologically inspired urban design. We will investigate some currently developed techniques that cities are already investing in, from green rooftops to harnessing the power of algae to heat, cool, and generate electricity within buildings. We will then discuss a number of technologies that are on the urban landscape’s horizon, such as photosynthesizing street lamps, industrial scale urban farming, and tapping into our own human waste to generate biodiesel. All aboard the poop train!

Connecting Landscapes in a Changing World
Target Audience: Middle and High School Educators
Presenter(s): Dani Fegan and Emily Dittmar
Changes to landscapes as a result of human activities infringe on the natural habitats of many organisms, often fragmenting their habitat into smaller, unconnected patches. Conserving habitat patches and creating corridors between them are ways to connect and facilitate movement of organisms between patches in order to reduce the negative effects of habitat fragmentation. However, organisms have different requirements for movement, so corridors are not a “one-size-fits-all” fix. To get the biggest conservation ‘bang’ for our buck it is important to understand the biological needs of various organisms so we can design protected landscapes accordingly. The current lesson will introduce students to the biological effects of habitat size and edges on different organisms and encourage them to think about how best to conserve biodiversity under different scenarios. A case study involving wind-dispersed plant species will be explored, and students will be asked to ‘design’ their own seeds to disperse across different types of landscapes.

Redesigning Agricultural Landscapes  for Multiple Ecosystem Services

Douglas A. Landis, Professor of Entomology, Department of Entomology and Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, MSU

 Globally, agricultural landscapes support plant, animal and microbial communities that provide humans with a variety of ecosystem services. In the past, agricultural science focused almost exclusively on maximizing the provisioning services of agriculture, i.e. increasing the yield of food, feed and fiber. More recently, the critical role of supporting services such as nutrient cycling and soil formation, regulating services including pest suppression and pollination, and cultural services including the recreational and aesthetic qualities of landscapes have become increasingly evident. To sustainably produce food and energy for a rapidly expanding human population, scientists and land managers will need to think creatively about how to maximize the mixture of ecosystem services we can derive from agricultural landscapes. It is likely that future landscapes will need to be explicitly designed and managed to optimize the blend of ecosystem services that each can supply. The advent of cellulosic bioenergy cropping systems provides an opportunity to rethink and potentially redesign agricultural landscapes in the Midwestern US.  Increasingly, studies suggest that perennial and polycultural bioenergy crops can increase agricultural landscape diversity yielding positive impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services, including pollination, biological pest suppression, water quality, and greenhouse gas mitigation. How society chooses to value the complement of ecosystem services derived from agriculture will ultimately determine the structure of these working landscapes.

Participant List

Email Sarah Bodbyl (bodbyl@msu.edu) if you would like to be added to this list.

Comstock: Laurie Anderson, Shirley Gilland, Jan Kiino, Emmy Kimmer, Maren Tillman, Kim Sandefur, Jenny York, Caleb Fisher, Canaan Groff, Mary Grintals, Mark Shenefield (11)

Delton-Kellogg: Connie High, Dale Grimes (2)

Galesburg-Augusta: Mary Sutter Moreland (1)

Gobles: 

Gull Lake: Kim Clancy, Michelle Mahar, Blair Rogers, Ashley Carroll, Margaret Ells, Jennifer Boyle, Laurie Klock, Beth Keller (8)

Harper Creek: Meredith Hawkins, Sandy Erwin, Alissa Renner, Thom Shipley, Amy Smith, Steve Barry, Mason Converse, Erik Crooks, Joe Yurisich (9)

Hastings: Marty Buehler (1)

Kalamazoo Area Math Science Center: Cheryl Hach, Chris Chopp (2)

Lawton: Marcia Angle, Dennis VanWeelden (2)

Martin: Rob Robrahn (1)

Olivet: Marie Toburen, Michael Boehmer, Charles Bucienski, Terri Morton, Elliot London, Russ Stolberg (6)

Parchment: Jodie Lugar-McManus (1)

Plainwell: Lisa Wininger, Marty Green, Noel Muselin, Maggie McGregor, Jackie Warners (5)

Thornapple-Kellogg: Jamie Bowman, Shaun Davis, Mike Rynearson, Beth Bauer, Aubrey Hendricks (5)

Vicksburg: Lisa Harbour, Liz Ratashak, David Nette (3)

KBS & Staff: Tom Getty, Andy Anderson, Jennifer Doherty, Sarah Bodbyl, Cara Krieg, Dustin Kincaid, Jake Nalley, Sara Garnett, Amanda Charbonneau, Emily Dittmar, Dani Fegan, Sarah Jones, Susan Magnoli, Joyce Parker, May Lee, Angela Kolonich, Dawn Reinhold, Doug Landis (18)

WMU Evaluation Staff: Bob Ruhf, Eva (2)

T (57), SS (20)

77 total

Stolberg and Olivet students release salmon fry into the Red Cedar River

On February 27th, Russ Stolberg, a GK-12 partner teacher from Olivet Middle School, was awarded the 2013 Educator of the Year award from the Calhoun Conservation District at their annual meeting held at FireKeeper’s Casino Hotel. This past year, Russ partnered with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources to bring the “Salmon in the Classroom” program in his 8^th grade Earth Science classes where students helped rear almost 100 King salmon throughout the school year. This project culminated in a student led fish release into the Red Cedar at Michigan State University where Michigan DNR and MSU Fisheries and Wildlife representatives spoke with students about what life after release would be like for the salmon, including discussing river ecology and identifying aquatic invertebrates. Russ also has a strong partnership with the Calhoun Conservation District, this year they provided the 8^th grade class with hundreds of saplings that students were encouraged to plant at home as carbon offsets. Russ is also an active member of the KBS GK-12 program and within the classroom he actively fosters an inquiry-based environment through bringing in hands-on labs, carbon time activities, and Data Nuggets. Congratulations Russ!

– Story by GK-12 Fellow Jake Nalley

A few of the bird species commonly observed during Michigan winters

Students in Comstock have been having some strange encounters of the feathered kind.  Fifth graders at the STEM Academy have been learning about the kinds of birds that will visit winter feeders.  Although the world might seem like a harsh polar-vortex tundra this time of year, many native birds stay here in Michigan.  Some arctic birds even migrate down to Michigan for the winter to escape the cold temperatures!  GK-12 fellow Cara Krieg taught Mrs. Grintal’s students how to identify the different Michigan birds common at this time of year.  The class was so excited about this lesson that they were identifying birds outside the classroom window the next day.  Students will use the skills they practiced in this lesson to count birds at a feeder outside of their classroom.  The data they collect will contribute to citizen science efforts to track bird populations world wide.

Citizen science efforts such as these are incredible resources for scientists that study birds.  Every year thousands of citizen scientists contribute their bird counts to the Audubon Christmas Bird Count, the Great Backyard Bird Count, the North American Breeding Bird Survey, and the Cornell run monitoring program eBird.  These programs allow scientists have access to much more data over a much longer period of time than they could ever hope to gather on their own.  These long term records can be used by scientists and resource managers to tell which bird populations are growing or shrinking or whether species ranges and the timing of migration are responding to climate or other environmental changes.

Cara teaches about MI winter birds in Comstock

If you are interested in the Michigan Winter Bird Guide or more information about these citizen science efforts, check out “What’s in my backyard?: Identifying winter birds in Michigan” on the lessons page!

By GK-12 Fellow Cara Krieg, 2014

Earlier this year at the spring (March 21) KBS K-12 Partnership workshop, we partnered with Project GREEEN, a collaborative initiative to ‘develop research and educational programs, ensure and improve food safety and protect and preserve the quality of the environment.’ Project GREEEN funds sponsored the plenary talk, the concurrent session “Big Roots for Big Problems”, and follow-up projects utilizing native plants at three different schools.

Graduate Fellows Tyler and Jake get ready to demonstrate soil erosion in the K-12 workshop Project GREEEN session.

As an extension of the workshop, the Graduate Fellow-led “GREEEN team” chose to use the remaining funds to sponsor community schoolyard native plantings. A call for proposals was sent out to the teachers participating in the March 21 workshop.

The first funded proposal was led by Russ Stolberg, 8^th grade science teacher, Olivet Middle School. Russ reports that his 8^th grade students planted 400 Eaton Co. native grass seedlings, from Hidden Savannah, in two rain gardens on the school campus.

The second proposal was led by Genevieve Sertic, a student of the Kalamazoo Area Math and Science Center (KAMSC). A portion of the funds were used to plant Clematis virginiana, Phlox pilosa, Rudbeckia hirta, Echinacea purpurea and Aster cordifolius in the KAMSC schoolyard gardens. These gardens are maintained by the KAMSC Earthlings environmental club and are used to provide hands-on science experience to KAMSC’s Sizzlin’ Summer Science students (elementary through middle school), and to KAMSC’s high school students through the regular school year to study native plants and interactions with the insects and birds which they attract. The Project GREEEN contribution to the gardens has been highlighted on the KAMSC Earthlings group website at www.kamscearthlings.weebly.com , and in two issues of their student newspaper (Fall and Halloween 2013), found here.

Olivet 8th graders plant native grasses in schoolyard rain gardens.

KAMSC schoolyard garden

The remainder of the funds allocated to KAMSC were used to further Sertic’s own plant-based rooftop agriculture research for the KAMSC Research Team. She presented  Mathematical Modeling of the Benefits and Drawbacks of Rooftop Agriculture at the Southwest Michigan Science and Engineering Fair, spring 2013 and used GREEEN funds to test her mathematical models of plant production given different soil volumes.

The third proposal, led by Jennifer Boyle of Gull Lake, is slated to be completed late Spring 2014. The Gull Lake proposal will improve the native plant community in the Gull Lake Community Schools Outdoor Classroom, a certified Natural Habitat, serving up to 1800 students per year.

Thanks to all who submitted proposals for funding, and congratulations to Olivet, KAMSC, and Gull Lake on your new native plantings, courtesy of your GK-12 Fellows and Project GREEEN!

KAMSC rooftop agriculture experiment

We’re excited to announce our first school-year workshop of the 2013-2014 K-12 Partnership!

KBS is celebrating 50 years of aquatic ecology (join us for the celebration in October); in solidarity, our workshop theme will be: Integrating Water Cycling and Ecosystems.

Below you’ll find our agenda for the day as well as details on our concurrent sessions. Events will continue to update as we develop content. Please rsvp to Sarah at bodbyl@msu.edu if you plan to attend. We look forward to seeing you!

Agenda

8:00 AM Breakfast, Announcements, and Introductions

8:15 AM Speaker: Elena Litchman (Associate Professor of Zoology at KBS) (Auditorium)

9:30 AM Concurrent Session Teasers

9:45 AM Break

10:00 AM Concurrent Session 1

12:00 PM Lunch

1:00 PM Concurrent Session 2

3:00 PM Break

3:15 PM Announcements and Small Group Work by District (Auditorium)

4:00 PM Evaluations, Teacher Advisory Committee Meeting, and Adjourn

Concurrent Sessions

Sex Changes, Drugs, and Rockin’ Dead Zones: Effects of Human Contaminants on Aquatic Organisms
with Sara Garnett, Jake Nalley, and Emily Dittmar, MS/HS
Aquatic organisms can be very sensitive to changes in their environment. Increased human activity has led to large loads of contaminants being introduced to aquatic ecosystems, many of which have not been previously encountered at those levels. In addition to challenges at the individual level, these contaminants have the potential to alter ecological interactions at the community level. In this session, we will explore how over-fertilization of crops in Michigan can lead to changes in food webs and growing dead zones in Lake Erie and the Gulf of Mexico through a lab and an interactive game. We will also explore how a variety of novel contaminants can impact amphibian population dynamics.

Where the Wild Things Are: How Rainfall Drives Food Web Interactions
with Sarah Jones, Cara Krieg, and Dani Fegan, EL/MS/HS
Why would a wildebeest risk crossing a crocodile-infested river? Why does the African savannah have a wet and dry season? In this workshop session we will use the African Serengeti as a case study to examine how weather patterns explain these two seemingly unconnected phenomena. First, we will examine why the water cycle changes between the wet and dry season in Africa. Second, participants will take on the role of African animals and build a living food web. When the dry season comes each player will have to make a choice- will they follow the rain or can they survive until the rains return? For the elementary session we will emphasize the water cycle and food chain relationships and vocabulary. For the high school sessions we will go a step beyond and investigate what happens to the food web interactions when we add human disturbances such as wildlife reserve boundaries or domestic cattle herds.

Wonders of Wetlands (WOW!): improving water quality
with Dustin Kincaid, Susan Magnoli, and Amanda Charbonneau, advanced MS/HS 
Wetlands serve as sources, sinks, and transformers of materials transported across our landscape; thus, wetlands alter the chemistry of surface and ground waters in southwestern Michigan. In this workshop session participants will explore the role that sediments and microorganisms play in retaining sediments and nutrients. The specific objectives will be to explore (1) how wetlands trap organic materials and sediments, and (2) how microbes decompose these materials and cycle nutrients in the absence of oxygen. Participants will accomplish these objectives by observing sediments from several wetlands in the region. Teachers will also learn how to set up a long-term lab experiment that demonstrates how physical and biological features of wetland sediments transform materials and cycle nutrients over time.

Wonders of Wetlands (WOW!) for elementary levels
with Dustin Kincaid, Susan Magnoli, and Amanda Charbonneau, EL 
Wetlands are a ubiquitous part of the southwestern Michigan landscape and provide numerous important ecological services. Wetlands allow water to slowly filter into the ground, which cleans water, provides a buffer against flooding, and re- charges groundwater supplies. They also provide habitat for many animal and plant species. Wetlands provide an opportunity for students to explore parts of the water cycle, food webs, and many other ecological processes. In this session, we will introduce students to different types of wetlands and how they work with a series of presentations, games, and hands-on activities.

Telling the Story of a River
with Sara Syswerda, KBS, and Lisa Wininger, Plainwell Middle School, MS/HS
This session will describe a model for teaching about watershed dynamics, with this particular session focusing on the Kalamazoo River. We will look at maps of the Kalamazoo River and think about the dynamics of this particular watershed. We will talk about issues like evaluating water quality, river morphology, land use change, pollution from industrial sites, and dam removal. We will also work with ArcGIS Online to construct and interpret data in a geographic context.

Tools and Activities for Teaching About Global Carbon Cycling
with Hannah Miller and Andy Anderson, MS/HS
This session focuses on how to use animations, videos, and activities to help middle school and high students calculate how global carbon fluxes are connected with our daily activities and affect the global carbon balance.

Bioprospecting for Better Biofuels (In Your Backyard!)
with John Greenler and Leith Nye, GLBRC, MS/HS
Researchers at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) are investigating microorganisms living diverse environments that can efficiently breakdown cellulose, the primary component of plant cell walls. The enzymes produced by these microbes could be used to more efficiently convert fibrous, plant materials, such as switchgrass, into sugars and then biofuels. GLBRC researchers have made exciting discoveries studying microbial communities living in both unusual environments, such as tropical leaf-cutter ant colonies, and in more familiar places, such as cow poop. Join us to learn more about this fascinating area of biofuels research. We present a simple, classroom-tested lab activity for students to bioprospect for cellulose-degrading microbes in their local environments and share their findings directly with GLBRC scientists.

Participant List

Email Sarah Bodbyl (bodbyl@msu.edu) if you would like to be added to this list.

Comstock: Shirley Gilland, Elizabeth Kimmer, Laurie Anderson (STEM), Karen Rodwan, Canaan Groff, Caleb Fisher

Delton-Kellogg: Connie High, Dale Grimes

Galesburg-Augusta: Mary Moreland

Gobles: Becky Drayton

Gull Lake: Kim Clancy, Michelle Mahar, Blair Rogers, Laurie Klock, Beth Keller, Matt Hawkins, Beth Rhodes, Michelle Mahar, Doug Hoover, Ashley Carroll

Harper Creek: Meredith Hawkins, Alissa Renner, Amy Smith, Joe Yurisich, Sandy Erwin, Nicole Ailes

Hastings: Marty Buehler, Jill Withey, Jamie Dixon, (Ann Beemer?)

Kalamazoo Area Math Science Center: Chris Chopp, Cheryl Hach

Lawton:

Martin: Rob Robrahn

Olivet: Terri Morton, Marie Toburen, Cheryl Worden, Sara Baker, Charles Bucienski, Mike Boehmer, Elliot London

Parchment: Jodie Lugar-McManus

Plainwell: Marty Green, Sandy Brietenbach, Noel Muselin

Thornapple-Kellogg: Shaun Davis, Jamie Bowman, Beth Bauer, Aubrey Hendricks, Michael Rynearson

Vicksburg: Lisa Harbour, Katherine Kay, Liz Ratashak, Dave Nette

KBS: Tom Getty, Andy Anderson, Sara Syswerda, Sarah Bodbyl, Cara Krieg, Dustin Kincaid, Jake Nalley, Sara Garnett, Amanda Charbonneau, Emily Dittmar, Dani Fegan, Sarah Jones, Susan Magnoli

WMU Evaluation Staff: Bob Ruhf +1