Expanding educational programs, including those that
will improve students’ competence in science and technology.

• $100,000+ to greatly expand the park’s Environmental Education program.  This project would substantially increase in funding to hire additional park rangers to provide additional environmental education opportunities for Kentucky’s school children.  With one permanent park ranger and five seasonal rangers, the park serves approximately 23,500 students each year.  Yet there is significant additional demand.
  
  Every school child in Kentucky should be provided the opportunity to visit or learn about the state’s only World Heritage Site and to see and learn about the largest cave system in the world.
  
  As is eloquently described in the book, “Last Child in the Woods,” there is a tremendous need to address the “nature deficit” that is pervasive among today’s youth.
  
  The goal of this project would be to more than double the number of students who participate in environmental education programs at Mammoth Cave National Park along with the development and implementation of a distance learning program.

• $30,000 for two seasonal park rangers to conduct environmental education programs for an additional 5,000 students.  Presently, about 23,500 students each year attend a Mammoth Cave National Park-sponsored environmental education program.  Over 70% of these students are from the 10-county BRADD area.  Teachers and students either visit Mammoth Cave National Park or a park ranger makes a visit to the school classroom.  This project would increase environmental education participation by over 20%.  The demand for environmental education is rising, and sometimes schools need to plan ahead at least six months to schedule an open time slot.  This project would provide a greater volume of “available slots” for interested schools.   The cost for implementation of this program is for one year.

• $6,000 to revise and upgrade the Junior Ranger program and provide 4,800 booklets free of charge to park visitors (a two-year supply).

• $12,000 to develop an on-line state curriculum-aligned teacher’s guide using the planned Visitor Center exhibit as an additional learning tool for the classes visiting the park and touring the cave. 

• $76,000-$85,000 to develop and implement a palm pilot education program to provide an expanded number of classes with a non-personal service, on-site, surface resource educational program and support for the operation of the attended-station in-cave experience in the Discovery Tour route. This program could serve 10 classes per day (300 students with one PDA for every 3 students)  for two days a week (Thurs. and Fri. ) for the six weeks of mid April to the end of May and six weeks for mid Sept through Oct with a GPS capable PDA.  The project involves purchasing 100 PDA’s at $500 each along with staff time to develop and implement the program.  If operated at full capacity this program would result in 7,200 additional educational contacts.  

• $30,000 to hire a consultant to prepare a Distance Learning Implementation Strategy for Mammoth Cave National Park.  Every school child in Kentucky should be provided the opportunity to visit the state’s only World Heritage Site to see and learn about the largest cave system in the world.  Since not all school groups will be able to visit Mammoth Cave National Park, a distance learning program can effectively provide an experience that is the next best thing to visiting the park.  A variety of approaches to distance learning are available, and this project would result in the development of a strategic implementation plan.  This project would find the best approach to achieve the project goal of providing an opportunity to every child in Kentucky to learn about Mammoth Cave National Park.

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