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Focus of Your 3-Year Plan for Community Engagement

Brief description of the stages in 3-year plan.

After the impacts of COVID-19 on our K-12 students and their access to education, local schools are in need of curriculum support more than ever. The Department of Biological Sciences has a wide range of resources that can be utilized to serve K-12 students and supplement their standardized education. The Department provides tours but there is no standardized process for application for a tour and there are limited staff resources. In Year 1, I would like to formalize the tour application process, as well as hire student assistants to help provide tours for school groups. This would make scheduling and running tours easier. In Year 2, I would like to expand the offerings by partnering with other departments and creating a website that allows schools to apply for access to multiple departments at one time. This will decrease the work the school has to do, will make the most of the money and time spent getting to campus, and will facilitate offering tours to larger-sized groups that cannot be accommodated in Biological Sciences alone. In Year 3, I would like to add to our offerings by creating a group of students that are trained to go out to the schools and provide hands-on educational experiences in the classrooms. This will allow for schools that cannot afford buses to still have access to supplemental experiences.
Overall, this plan will assist Sacramento State in better serving our community by having an organized way for providing access to educational resources to K-12 students. It will provide training opportunities and paid employment for students. It serves to support the RTP files of faculty, by providing ways to get involved in community service on campus and in the K-12 classroom. Finally, it organizes the tour process which will make it easier for staff to support educational outreach while still managing the other demands of their positions. Ideally, I would like to identify 1-2 local area schools that are most in need of educational support and work with them to build the program and utilize their students in pilot trials
of the different components of scheduling and curriculum.

Reflection on PLC:

This community engagement Professional Learning Community has provided a space for those on campus interested in developing and expanding their involvement and support of the Sacramento community through their positions on campus to come together to brainstorm, plan and encourage each other.

While I have been involved in supporting Pre K-12 education for many years through the Vertebrate Museum, this PLC has offered me the challenge to take a more planned and programmatic approach to developing outreach curriculum. Moving forward, my three year plan includes specific goals for partnering with local schools, most in need of supplemental programming, facilitate their access to campus through bus reimbursements, on-site visits to the schools, and more complete and impactful tours, which make the best use of students' time on campus. One the things that I have taken away from this PLC is the importance of reciprocity in anchor efforts, and I have made sure to keep that in mind. The new school tour program will not only support local schools, but will provide meaningful learning and work experience for our Sacramento State students as well. In this way, both our community schools and Sac State will be advantaged through the efforts.

In the hiring of the students that will support outreach through the museum, I hope to attract a diverse group of educators which represent various backgrounds, learning styles and interests. This group will help to inform an accessible and inclusive curriculum that will appeal to the wide range of youth that come to the museum for education. Providing students with the opportunity to be creative in their teaching and focus on their strengths will facilitate learning, not just for our visitors but also will encourage retention of the material in our own students as they take ownership of the materials they create.

**Evidence**
Stage 1 will begin with partnering with 2 local area schools to support biology education.	Stage 2 will require partnering with other departments, developing a tour schedule and formalizing curriculum.	Stage 3 will expand our outreach to new school partners and will facilitate the delivering of outreach in the schools as well as on campus.

Documentation: upload and create a link to your deliverable:

Roseberry3YearPlan.pdf

Faculty Photo and Short Bio:

Merrill

Merrill Roseberry is an Instructional Support Technician in Biological Sciences. She supports the University's anchor efforts by providing hands-on PreK-12 educational experiences to local schools, home school groups, and youth programs through the Vertebrate Museum in Sequoia Hall. Merrill is also an active community volunteer, working on a variety of projects that support the needs of Sacramento's foster youth, unhoused individuals, the formerly incarcerated, LGBTQ+, and animal welfare.