Environmental Site Assessments Section Public Outreach

One of the strategic goals of the ISGS includes having a strong public educational outreach program. As primarily PESA contract staff, our group's contributions to this goal has been as diverse and long-standing as the contract work load allows. ESA Section staff routinely visit classrooms around the state giving customized as well as our most popular presentations. These often include hands-on exhibits of rocks, minerals, fossils and equipment as well as demonstrations, simulations, role-playing games, and earth science trivia for elementary levels. More "career-based" activities and advanced presentations are given for the older classes. We have also sponsored individual students on career days as job shadows. We regularly attend rock shows, help judge at science fairs up to the state level and assist with ISGS public field trips.

Even with a busy IDOT PESA work load, our staff interact with hundreds, if not thousands, of students annually in many venues. We also have given workshops for teachers on geographic information systems (GIS) to the faculty of an entire school district. Our senior staff teach lectures and labs and segments of classes at the undergraduate level in environmental science (DeVry University-Tinley Park campus, Sci-204) and guest lecture in environmental geology at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana (Geol-280). Also at the University of Illinois, senior ESA Section staff collaborate to teach a large portion of a graduate-level Landscape Architecture Department course (LA-550) in environmental site assessments, which features an actual property assessment and field screening techniques.

View ESA Eduction Outreach Slideshow (Offline - Sorry!)

Updated 04/21/2010 SLD