Growing up in a remote mountain area in southwestern China, I could touch the natural world freely since early childhood. So climbing mountains, finding mushrooms, watching birds and picnicking in the woods are the best memories in my mind. After spending 17 years in natural areas, I went to Beijing for college in 2004. On the first day I went to Beijing Forest University, I joined the Scientific Exploration and Outdoor Life Association (SENOL). It was SENOL that opened ways for me to connect to various national and international environmental non-profit organizations. In 2005, leading a SENOL summer team as a freshman to the Tetraena mongolica Maxim Nature Reserve in Inner Mongolia triggered my concern about human impact on the environment. Tetraena mongolica Maxim has been endangered since the 1990s and is still threatened by goat browsing, logging, and pollution from mining. The conflicts between human needs and environmental conservation motivated me to explore a “win-win” solution.
These became my concerns for graduate study at Beijing Normal University in 2008. My experiences in Dr. Qiong Gao’s laboratory enabled me to access model simulations of social-ecological systems. For my Master thesis, I made several field trips to the northern farming-pastoral transitional belt, an ecologically sensitive area in China. I found the marked transformation between farmland and grassland due to different life styles of local people, which inspired me to study land-use spatial-temporal variations. Dr. Gao, who graduated from Cornell University in 1987, encouraged me to pursue a PhD in the US.
Environmental education has fascinated me since I started doing volunteer work at Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) in Beijing. In the summer of 2009, as a teaching assistant of the Eco-English project of JGI, I worked with two high school students from the US in environmental education at the Experimental School attached to Haidian Teachers Training College of Beijing. Once a week we offered a forty-minute interactive course in English for high school students addressing a range of topics including endangered species, moon bear farming, and energy consumption to global warming. This experience inspired me to continue participating in environmental education programs. In the summer of 2010, I worked as an intern at JGI helping the Green Life Action program promote low carbon life styles. I designed the toolkits for communities and companies focusing on a range of topics from energy and water saving, to green shopping to recycling. These experiences motivated me to learn more about environmental education.
In August 2011, I started my PhD under the supervision of Dr. Marianne Krasny in the Department of Natural Resources at Cornell University. Since then, I have been working for EECapacity, a national environmental education training program. I was a teaching assistant for the first online EECapacity course -- Urban Environmental Education -- taught by Drs. Alex Kudryavtsev and Marianne Krasny, which inspired my interests in online learning and social network analysis.
Through EECapacity online courses and workshops, I connected with environmental educators across the US, which helped me develop my research questions and identify research participants for my dissertation. Specifically, at the national training workshop in Washington D.C. in May 2012, I connected with state consortia leaders and piloted a study in California, Colorado and Maryland. Two co-leaders of the Pennsylvania State Consortium showed their interests of examining professional networks in their consortium. I started working with them to conduct surveys and interviews, as well as attended one of their group meetings. In April 2014, Drs. Alex Kudryavtsev and Marianne Krasny facilitated another online learning community -- the Urban Environmental Education project-based online learning community -- in which participants co-authored on an eBook. I thought it was another great example of professional development programs for environmental educators and decided to conduct research with this group.
Thanks to the chance to participate in the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) annual conference in October 2011, I started to build my professional networks with scholars and environmental educators all over the world. In summer 2014, I did an internship with NAAEE in Washington D.C. during which I helped organize workshops and write reports. I co-authored State Environmental Literacy Plans, 2014 Status Report with Judy Braus and others. Further, I helped to organize a weeklong workshop for Community Climate Change Fellowship at the National Conservation Training Center in West Virginia, and met with 26 fellows and conducted a pre-survey in this group.
In fall 2015, I visited Dr. Nicole Ardoin’s Social Ecological Lab at Stanford University as an exchange scholar. It was a wonderful experience to connect to diverse scholars working on cross-disciplinary research. Also I audited Dr. Mitchell Stevens’ course and connected to Lytics Online Learning Research Lab where I met several researchers working on online learning especially Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
During my recent two academic visiting trips back to China, I connected with many environmental education leaders, scholars and practitioners. Given the growing interests and support for environmental education in China, I am planning to conduct international programs and research to bridge environmental education communities in China and the US.
These became my concerns for graduate study at Beijing Normal University in 2008. My experiences in Dr. Qiong Gao’s laboratory enabled me to access model simulations of social-ecological systems. For my Master thesis, I made several field trips to the northern farming-pastoral transitional belt, an ecologically sensitive area in China. I found the marked transformation between farmland and grassland due to different life styles of local people, which inspired me to study land-use spatial-temporal variations. Dr. Gao, who graduated from Cornell University in 1987, encouraged me to pursue a PhD in the US.
Environmental education has fascinated me since I started doing volunteer work at Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) in Beijing. In the summer of 2009, as a teaching assistant of the Eco-English project of JGI, I worked with two high school students from the US in environmental education at the Experimental School attached to Haidian Teachers Training College of Beijing. Once a week we offered a forty-minute interactive course in English for high school students addressing a range of topics including endangered species, moon bear farming, and energy consumption to global warming. This experience inspired me to continue participating in environmental education programs. In the summer of 2010, I worked as an intern at JGI helping the Green Life Action program promote low carbon life styles. I designed the toolkits for communities and companies focusing on a range of topics from energy and water saving, to green shopping to recycling. These experiences motivated me to learn more about environmental education.
In August 2011, I started my PhD under the supervision of Dr. Marianne Krasny in the Department of Natural Resources at Cornell University. Since then, I have been working for EECapacity, a national environmental education training program. I was a teaching assistant for the first online EECapacity course -- Urban Environmental Education -- taught by Drs. Alex Kudryavtsev and Marianne Krasny, which inspired my interests in online learning and social network analysis.
Through EECapacity online courses and workshops, I connected with environmental educators across the US, which helped me develop my research questions and identify research participants for my dissertation. Specifically, at the national training workshop in Washington D.C. in May 2012, I connected with state consortia leaders and piloted a study in California, Colorado and Maryland. Two co-leaders of the Pennsylvania State Consortium showed their interests of examining professional networks in their consortium. I started working with them to conduct surveys and interviews, as well as attended one of their group meetings. In April 2014, Drs. Alex Kudryavtsev and Marianne Krasny facilitated another online learning community -- the Urban Environmental Education project-based online learning community -- in which participants co-authored on an eBook. I thought it was another great example of professional development programs for environmental educators and decided to conduct research with this group.
Thanks to the chance to participate in the North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) annual conference in October 2011, I started to build my professional networks with scholars and environmental educators all over the world. In summer 2014, I did an internship with NAAEE in Washington D.C. during which I helped organize workshops and write reports. I co-authored State Environmental Literacy Plans, 2014 Status Report with Judy Braus and others. Further, I helped to organize a weeklong workshop for Community Climate Change Fellowship at the National Conservation Training Center in West Virginia, and met with 26 fellows and conducted a pre-survey in this group.
In fall 2015, I visited Dr. Nicole Ardoin’s Social Ecological Lab at Stanford University as an exchange scholar. It was a wonderful experience to connect to diverse scholars working on cross-disciplinary research. Also I audited Dr. Mitchell Stevens’ course and connected to Lytics Online Learning Research Lab where I met several researchers working on online learning especially Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
During my recent two academic visiting trips back to China, I connected with many environmental education leaders, scholars and practitioners. Given the growing interests and support for environmental education in China, I am planning to conduct international programs and research to bridge environmental education communities in China and the US.
Quote
“Every individual matters, every individual has a role to play, every individual makes a difference.” -- Jane Goodall