EE Providers

For many years, the environmental education field has focused on providing high-caliber programs to address the lack of environmental literacy being seen in our society. It is past time to turn our attention to scale, reach, and equity.

The Landscape of Environmental Education Providers

in the U.S. Southeast

Published October 2020; Updated September 2023

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A collaboration between

Funded in part by

INTRODUCTION

There are numerous organizations providing high-quality environmental education (EE) programs across the southeast. Environmental Education is a process that helps individuals, communities and organizations learn more about the environment, and develop skills and understanding about how to address global challenges (NAAEE, 2022). The southeast faces issues that are common across the country. Most programs operate independently of one another, and little has been done to harness the collective impact of these programs to create large-scale change in each state or throughout the region. Funding often goes toward local, disjointed initiatives rather than larger-scale, capacity-building initiatives. This makes it challenging to sustain these projects in the long term or to extend the impact beyond the local community.

The additional challenge in addressing education issues such as environmental literacy is that there is no central system to work within. The academic standards used to develop and analyze curriculum vary substantially from one state to another. And because most states are “local-control states” (meaning education is governed at the county or district level), even within a single state education can look very different from one county to another.

Aware of these challenges, the Southeastern Environmental Education Alliance (SEEA) conducted a landscape analysis of environmental education efforts in the southeast. This analysis was designed to take a comprehensive look at the environmental education already happening on the ground, identify gaps and barriers to access that prevent successful implementation, and provide recommendations and next steps for increasing environmental literacy efforts in the southeast. This analysis will equip the organizations conducting environmental and conservation-related work in the region with the resources they need to address gaps, allocate resources more effectively, and ultimately meet the goal of increasing environmental literacy levels and stewardship behaviors.

In addition, the analysis will serve as a guide for future strategic-planning efforts in individual states, as well as the regional SEEA collaborative. As a tool, it will help ensure that in the future we continue to focus our limited time and resources in areas where we will have the biggest impact.

Through stakeholder use of this report, educators will have the tools they need to increase the number of students receiving high quality environmental education and broaden the competency of those students to demonstrate improved environmental literacy and age-appropriate stewardship behaviors. Educators and providers will be able to target their efforts in the areas with the highest need, whether that need is demographic, geographic, and/or content based.

A Summary for Busy People

a comprehensive look at organizational reach and program offerings
a better understanding of the staffing, structure, and funding of organizations and how that affects reach and sustainability
organizational strategies for scaling programs for broader, equitable reach
state-level initiatives for scaling programs for broader, equitable reach
state and regional findings to inform future strategic planning efforts

Strengths

646 reporting programs across eight states
2,194,272 students/youth served annually across all programs
16,355 schools served annually
79,857 volunteers across all programs

Challenges

Not all programs responded to the request; therefore, this sample is not necessarily representative of the population as a whole.
Many variables that were used for data collection (e.g., starting rate) do not provide clear means of comparison with other widely available national datasets (e.g., median salary and wages). These issues should be addressed in future iterations of the survey.
Many programs serve multiple counties, making it difficult to accurately determine the scope of services, including gaps and overlaps.
Staff and leadership do not reflect the overall demographics of the state.
The average entry level salary for environmental educators is 15-25% lower than comparable fields.
There is a need to increase opportunities for engagement at the early childhood and high school level in order for students to receive the same level of engagement in environmental education from kindergarten through 12th grade.
There is a need for more support and training around the importance of evaluating programs and better tools to help providers do this in a meaningful way that allows them to strengthen their programs.
There are gaps in services found across the region in rural areas, areas with the highest social vulnerability index, and areas with the lowest income.
There is a need for additional support and training around the importance of collecting demographic information and how it can be used to strengthen programs and opportunities for broader engagement.

BACKGROUND

The main driver of this project was to gain an enhanced understanding of the environmental education providers in the southeast who are working towards the same or similar goals. Through the design and implementation of an environmental education program provider survey tool, we engaged in a robust mapping process to gather and share the insights and offerings of 646 organizations across the southeast. The survey was designed not only to determine who the players were but also to provide a baseline dataset of the current assets and barriers in our field so that we would be equipped to take a more holistic approach to advancing environmental literacy efforts in the region.

At the onset of this project, the leadership team — composed of the Project Director (Ashley Hoffman), Strategy Consultant (Vanessa Morel), and a State Coordinator from the state environmental education associations in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee — spent a considerable amount of time gathering information and insights from other groups who have completed similar analyses, determining what kind of information various partners would like to see in our analysis, and discussing potential partnerships. It was these conversations that led us to a collaboration with EcoRise and the University of Texas. EcoRise had already invested significant resources in survey design as well as data management, analytics, and visualization for their work in Texas and Louisiana. We engaged in an intensive process to merge our surveys and create baseline questions that can serve as a standard for our states as well as a nationwide effort. There are numerous other states that have expressed an interest in adopting this survey tool, which would allow us to compare data beyond the southern US to provide a national perspective on the field.

After merging our survey tool with EcoRise, SEEA launched the regional survey tool through Google Forms on March 17, 2021, across the eight southeast states.

Once the data-collection period closed, our team spent several weeks cleaning the data; this included removing duplicate entries, searching for errors in data reporting, standardizing organizational names, and cross checking information for accuracy. After this concerted outreach effort that included numerous follow-up emails and personal phone calls, we completed this step and saw that we had collected a solid dataset, with 646 organizations (to date) submitting from: Business/LLC (7%); Local, City, State or Federal Government (35%); Higher Education Institutions (12%); and Nonprofit (44%).

DASHBOARD

EE Provider Dashboard

The dashboards are an interactive tool that educators and stakeholders can use to identify EE providers, programs, and schools in their area. The tool provides a quick snapshot of all the findings from our surveys via charts and graphs that can be filtered and exported. Educators can explore specific details through a toolbar that allows them to filter by geographic, school, organization, and numerous other filters to narrow down to their specific needs. Educators and stakeholders can also access a complete list of EE provider and program profiles for the providers who completed the survey.

FINDINGS

To conduct a more in-depth review and analysis of the data, SEEA contracted 2nd Nature Trec, an organization that provides a wide range of services related to the outdoor industry. Their goal is to work alongside existing programs to help them improve what they do. They achieve this through their four pillars: training, research, education, and consulting. Dr. Brad Faircloth oversees the development and planning of research initiatives at 2nd Nature TREC and served as the point person on their team for this project. Dr. Faircloth has a PhD in Developmental Psychology from the University of Notre Dame. Dr. Brad Daniel and Dr. Andrew Bobilya have provided additional support. Dr. Daniel has a long history of involvement with the Southeastern Environmental Education Alliance and a thorough understanding of the field, with more than 30 years of experience as a university professor, wilderness instructor, and field science instructor.

Findings Summary

Mapping

From the regional and state Climate, Education, and Equity maps SEEA created, schools are now able to find environmental education providers in their area and learn more about what they offer. Environmental education providers can also use this data to connect with local schools, look at demographics for their service area, and better understand climate and environmental issues in their community. For example, a food access organization could use the map to find food deserts in their county and work toward addressing those inequities.

In reviewing our findings, we found geographic gaps in most states where no environmental education providers are located. These tend to fall in rural areas, areas with the highest social vulnerability index, and areas with the lowest income. We also found gaps in areas where states reported the highest obesity rates, particularly in Kentucky and Tennessee.

The number of EE programs in each state ranges from 25 (4%; Tennessee) to 133 (23%; North Carolina), with an average of 80 programs per state. Based on this data, it appears that there are gaps in services broadly in Tennessee and Mississippi. According to the data, there are gaps in services in the southern counties in Mississippi and Alabama, southeastern counties of Georgia and South Carolina, in the panhandle of Florida, and the eastern counties of North Carolina and Kentucky (2nd Nature TREC, 2022). Because our data only shows us the headquarters of the providers, we cannot be certain that these areas are underserved, but given that most of the environmental education takes place as field trips or direct teaching, we can make an assumption that many of these areas go unsupported due to the distance it would take to serve them.

Field Trends Dashboard

The dashboard has a wealth of information available for educators and stakeholders. The following serves to highlight some of the regional findings, with the understanding that the data can be sorted by any number of and combination of factors such as state, sector, themes, audience served, and so on. For more details on how to use this tool to dig deeper into the data, please see the dashboard tutorial.

While data varies somewhat from state to state, we found the predominant program themes in the region to be, respectively: Conservation, Outdoor Learning, Biodiversity, Water, and STEM. In Florida and Mississippi, Marine and Coastal understandably ranked in the top five, while North Carolina and Tennessee saw Natural History ranking in the top five.

The primary term being used across the region was overwhelmingly “environmental education,” followed by “outdoor education,” “conservation education,” and “nature-based learning.”

The primary offerings being provided across the region were direct teaching and field trips, with the exception of Mississippi, whose primary offering was instructional materials. The primary audience served across the region tends to be K-5 students, followed by 6-8th grade students. This demonstrates the need to increase opportunities for engagement at the early childhood and high school levels in order for students to receive the same level of engagement in environmental education throughout K-12th grade.

From our initial review, we have gleaned that environmental education providers are doing limited evaluation of their programs. There is a need for more support and training around the importance of program evaluation , as well as tools that can help providers do this in a meaningful way that will help them strengthen their programs.

If we adjust for non-responses, our data shows us that 7% of environmental education staff identify as Black, Indigenous, or Persons of Color (BIPOC), which is significantly lower than the southeast regional average of 28.97% per 2020 US Census Data. We found senior staff to be just 6.5% (2nd Nature TREC, 2022). This has identified a need for more BIPOC staff and leadership in environmental education organizations. Data showed that 18.5% of environmental education organizations had boards that reflected the same or higher BIPOC representation than the region.

In addition, the reported average of students served who identify as BIPOC was 45%, and educators served who identify as BIPOC was 60%, significantly higher than the regional average (28.97%) (2nd Nature TREC, 2022). However, our findings show that very few providers collect demographic data on the audiences they serve (see figures 2 and 3). This skews the data significantly for those organizations who are reporting demographic data, making it challenging to determine who is and is not being served. This also prevents us from being able to address demographic gaps in our region. We anticipate that actual percentages of BIPOC students and educators served is much lower than our data suggests. There is a need for additional support and training around the importance of collecting demographic information and how it can be used to strengthen programs and opportunities for broader engagement.

In a comparison of starting salaries for similar fields, environmental education was found to be lower than all three comparison fields. The average starting salary for environmental education reported in our survey was $29,515 for a full-time position compared to $34,900 for education, $39,100 for forestry, and $37,800 for hospitality and tourism.

RESEARCH

Data collected in the original and new landscape analysis is constantly being mine for trends, guidance, and information on how to better support and build the field of environmental education. Take a look at the latest research and analysis from Erin Waddell.

Interested in doing your own research? Contact director@kaee.org.