Across Connecticut, the Natural Resources Conservation Academy’s (NRCA) Eco-Digital Storyteller (EDS; https://nrca.uconn.edu/eds/) program is reshaping how teachers approach learning—helping schools integrate environmental science, geospatial technology, digital media arts and youth-centered storytelling into everyday instruction. Despite the cancellation of federal funding, this work is continuing thanks to essential support from UConn’s EMERGE program, which has enabled the NRCA to continue collaborating with educators and expanding opportunities for students.
The need is urgent: E-STEAM career fields are growing rapidly, yet historically excluded groups remain underrepresented. Research shows that diverse teams produce more innovative solutions, underscoring the importance of creating accessible, interdisciplinary pathways for all youth. EDS meets this need through a multi-layered model that brings together high school students, teachers, community partners, UConn faculty, and undergraduates to co-develop digital environmental storytelling projects that advocate for local solutions and envision just and sustainable futures.
In just a few years, the NRCA’s EDS team has trained more than 155 teachers, students, and undergraduates, supporting 15 environmental storytelling projects shared with public and professional audiences. This intensive mentoring—paired with hands-on workshops at UConn, curriculum design support, and classroom-based support—has been pivotal in helping teachers adopt high-quality project-based learning (PBL), geospatial inquiry, and interdisciplinary creative practice.
Nowhere is this shift more visible than at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts (GHAA). Rooted in the statewide EDS model, GHAA teachers have worked closely with NRCA to design an ambitious new approach for 2025–26: a dual-enrollment, 2.5-hour interdisciplinary block pairing UConn ECE Foundations of Digital Media with Environmental Science. With NRCA support, teachers are facilitating deep problem-scoping, field inquiry, collaborative StoryMaps, expert feedback loops, and 6–8 week project cycles that position students to “think like” scientists, artists, and storytellers.
These NRCA-supported shifts are transforming GHAA into a flagship site for creative, community-rooted, youth-driven E-STEAM education—and demonstrating the powerful impact of Eco-Digital Storytellers across Connecticut.
