Secretary Regan Presents UNCG Doctoral Student with Environmental Education Certification

North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality Secretary Michael Regan made a visit to UNC Greensboro on November 12 to award Ti’Era Worsley her North Carolina Environmental Education Certificate and to visit with faculty.

Ti’Era is a doctoral student in the Department of Teacher Education and Higher Education at UNCG. She researches informal science education with middle school youth and STEM. Ti’Era’s current research interest include looking at social interactions among African American youth and how it affects their quality of work. She focuses on STEM education but has a passion for environmental education and for working with minoritized youth. She likes working with this specific population because it gives them an opportunity to engage in STEM in ways that are culturally relevant to them.

Ti’Era’s community partnership project was working with a cultural/Spanish immersion program to host a professional development workshop that focused on outdoor education. They wanted ideas on activities that would support their curriculum and show them how to use the resources they have access to within their space. The teachers and assistants were interested in outdoor education but were unsure how to implement it into their curriculum. She was able to share resources and create a google drive that provided them environmental education activities in Spanish.

Ti’Era says she naturally takes a community-based approach to teaching and believes in co-creating and co-planning. “The EE Certification program has provided me the content knowledge to help bridge the gap of people's perspectives about environmental education and building environmental literacy. After participating in the certification program, I think about environmental issues with a diverse mindset. I understand that different people have very different connections to the outdoors and what may be pressing to some is not very pressing to others. I have become better at understanding the importance of the outdoors from different perspectives.”