Location: This position is based at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) in Edgewater, Maryland. SERC is a research center of the Smithsonian Institution, located on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay, approximately 10 miles south of Annapolis, Maryland, 40 miles west of Washington D.C., and 40 miles south of Baltimore, Maryland. The SERC campus contains nearly 2,700 acres of forest, agricultural areas, wetlands, and streams, and sits directly on the Rhode River estuary.
Description: The Public Engagement Program at SERC is searching for a postdoctoral fellow to participate in a project related to professional development for environmental educators. The fellow will lead development and implementation of professional development workshops for K-12 educators related to human impacts on urban estuaries. This work will incorporate SERC research, as well as looking at the ways that policy, communities, and non-profit organizations impact the sustainability and utility of the resources and environmental services provided by these systems. Additionally, the fellow will have broad latitude to develop research related to environmental education, educator professional development, and/or intersections of formal and informal STEM education.
The fellow will join SERC’s public engagement team, which includes staff with expertise in environmental education and citizen science. They will also actively work closely with SERC research and technical staff. SERC research is focused on understanding the causes and consequences of environmental change for marine, freshwater, and terrestrial ecosystems. There will also be opportunities for this team member to collaborate with staff from other Smithsonian units, including the Smithsonian Science Education Center.
Each year, SERC engages thousands of people through its public engagement programs. The public engagement programs cover hands-on field trip opportunities for K-12 students, professional development for educators, internships for high school and undergraduate students, online, onsite, and classroom-based citizen science projects, and public programs for families and adults. The public engagement team works to find ways to make SERC research more relevant and accessible to a wide range of audiences, and to work to provide direct benefits to members of our community.
