Meeting the UC ANR Mission

The California Naturalist Program is a new ANR program that directly addresses the need to improve science literacy – a priority topic for both the Healthy Families and Communities and Sustainable Natural Ecosystems Initiatives. This program is now being offered in Southern and Northern California and has already received State support and received encouraging feedback from NSF for future funding to a citizen science component. This new direction and funding will allow more interaction from campus scientists and allow us to measure how participatory research increases science literacy. Therefore, there is great potential to both recruit paying participants in the Naturalist Program, making our course self-sustaining, and receive federal funding to advance the program’s impact on science literacy for adults and youth.