- Well good afternoon, my name is Becky Sapper
and I work for the University of Wisconsin-Extension
out of the Environmental Resources Center,
I've worked with Extension since about 2007
and prior to that I worked for the Nature Conservancy
for around 10 years.
I've been in the role of director
for the Wisconsin Master Naturalist Program
for about six months, almost exactly.
And so I'm still learning
a little bit more about the program,
although I have been an instructor
for the program since 2012.
And have done several courses
as a Master Naturalist instructor.
So I'm excited to talk to you today,
about the program, about our instructors,
and about our volunteers,
and about ways you can become involved
in the program as well.
And apparently I was clicker happy before,
which led it to, your biggest questions might be:
"What is a naturalist?" and "How to I become a Master?"
Well, the first question to that is easier to answer
than the second.
The first question, as far as a naturalist,
is really anyone who's really curious about nature.
Those who want to learn more about natural sciences
is students of natural resources,
the person who asks,
"Why does that plant grow down there
"in that wet area but not up on the hill?"
"And why is that species of mushroom
"only on this species of tree?"
or, "What is that bird that I keep hearing?"
"Wait a second, it's a red squirrel, not a bird."
Those folks that keep asking questions
and keep learning more.
And that's actually really how you become a Master.
It's by asking more questions
and continuing the lifelong learning process.
You're not going to become a Master
after taking a 40-hour training course,
but a Master Naturalist Program
and the volunteer training course
that's with it, helps to spark a little fire
that leads you to asking more questions
then becoming that Master by asking more questions
and learning more.
So the mission of the Wisconsin Master Naturalist Program
is really to promote awareness, understanding
and stewardship of our state's natural resources with
a network of well informed citizens that dedicate service
to Wisconsin's communities.
So that's the official words,
but really, what does that mean?
It means that we partner with instructors
that are trained to use our Wisconsin
Master Naturalist curriculum
and they teach the citizens of Wisconsin
about natural resources and the issues that affect them
based on our Master Naturalist curriculum.
Those volunteers then give back to Wisconsin
with volunteer service.
They also seek additional trainings
so that they can further their learning.
And Master Naturalists Program really builds
a network of volunteers, instructors
and organizations that support conservation
across the state.
We also track their efforts.
So we can recognize those volunteers and instructors.
And at the end of their year, if they meet
the requirements, then they get a little pin
with a wildlife on it.
Here's the last couple year's with a metal arc
and a slider and the otter,
To sort of give them a bit of recognition.
They also get a name badge to wear
while they're doing their service as well.
So Wisconsin Master Naturalist Volunteers
attend a 40-hour training course.
The training course costs 250 dollars.
There are scholarships that are available though.
So we don't ever want to see the cost
of the program actually becoming a hardship
for people to participate.
50 dollars of that cost goes back to the instructors
and their organizations.
The volunteers then annually perform
and record a minimum of 40 hours of service,
and receive eight hours of additional trainings.
The service areas that we like
to see volunteers provide service for
are in education, citizen science and stewardship.
And the big question in the community that comes up is,
"Oh, I wasn't able to meet my requirements"
"for the year and I've lost my certification.
"What do I need to do to get the certification back?"
And people do not lose certifications.
They may become inactive for a year
because there's those years when you
have those four out of state weddings,
or a job change, and you just don't
have the ability to volunteer.
You don't lose your certification.
Just the next year, you volunteer again.
You become active again. You record your hours.
And so you still maintain your status
as a Master Naturalist volunteer.
This isn't a new concept at all.
There's-- many of the states have Master Naturalist programs.
They might not always be called Master Naturalist programs.
Sometimes they're just called a naturalist program,
or a volunteer naturalist program,
or just even a volunteer service.
Texas has had theirs for nearly 20 years,
and Minnesota, their programs' been around
for at least 10 years.
And they've been very, very supportive
of Wisconsin's emergence as their program
has provided us a lot of support.
Last year I just had spoken to the director
at the Minnesota program and she told me in 2015
that their volunteers performed over 60,000 hours
of volunteer service.
That's a value of over 1.3 million dollars.
When you use a Bureau of Labor statistics amount.
There's also a umbrella organization.
And this is called the
Alliance of Natural Resource Outreach and Service Programs.
And this program helps to coordinate a yearly conference
for all the Master Naturalist programs across
the country, and provides monthly webinars.
Just a way to keep the programs networked
and able to learn from each other.
So Wisconsin, the idea's been around for a while,
but we're just now starting to kind of get
our feet underneath us.
There's lots of discussions from 2005 to 2009
about the program, about programs in other states and
the desire to have a program, a Master Naturalist program
in the state of Wisconsin.
And in 2009 those discussions became more serious.
And an advisory committee was formed,
curriculum was developed, two pilot courses occurred,
one in Ashland and one in Madison.
There was a pilot instructor's training
that happened and the website was launched.
And so in 2013 was when this program
was fully launched.
And so we're still relatively a new program.
So who exactly, is the Wisconsin
Master Naturalist Program, though?
I like to think of this as the proverbial
three-legged stool.
Because it couldn't exist without each of these legs.
Those legs are the staff for the program,
the instructors that perform
the volunteer training courses,
and then the volunteers themselves.
But this stool needs something also to stand on,
and we're lucky that Wisconsin to have the support of
the University of Wisconsin,
where the program is run through,
the Environmental Resources Center, which is actually
co-directed by University of Wisconsin-Extension
and University of Wisconsin-Madison
out of the College of Ag and Life Sciences.
We also have the support of host organizations,
that allow their employees
to become instructors, and to run the program
through their organizations.
And we're lucky enough to have the support of
Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin as well,
who helps us to promote our program,
promote the activities that we have,
and provide a fund for us so that
we can receive private donations that help support
the program as well, so thank you,
Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin.
So our staff, including myself,
we also have Astrid Newenhouse,
and Martha Martin, who are both
out of the Environmental Resources Center as well.
But between the three of us, we all have other job duties
as well, so if you total us together,
our time for Master Naturalist Program really totals
about one fulltime staff person.
We do have 63 instructors across the state,
we just finished a instructor training
in early February, and trained 19 new instructors.
And so we're happy to have these 63 instructors
across the state.
But you can see there are some gaps,
so we're still looking for more instructors
and would like to have more instructors trained
to give the volunteer training course.
But just to give you an idea
of who these instructors represent,
and I know you probably won't be able to read
this from the back of the room,
but just wanted to show you the breadth.
These include colleges and universities,
nature centers, friends organizations,
tribal entities, Department of Natural Resources,
just to name a few.
What we don't have up there
and what folks have been talking about today,
it would be great to have associations as part of this.
And I think there's a lot of potential
for us to involve the Lakes communities
as host organizations too.
So please, be an instructor.
By being an instructor you can help recruit volunteers
for your organization, you can provide consistent training,
for existing volunteers as well as the new volunteers coming
into your organization, you can receive program revenue,
at 50 dollars per person, so if you have
20 people take a course, then your organization
would receive a thousand dollars for doing that.
It's a way to participate in a statewide network,
and you can also create a local community
of volunteers in your area.
And let us, as Wisconsin Master Naturalist Program,
track your volunteer hours for you.
And you can use those volunteer hours
to help match grants, too.
So we're able to track those hours.
So I thought I'd give you a little bit more
of the nitty gritty of the volunteer training course.
A little bit of the nuances that happen
in the volunteer training course.
The course covers eight core topics.
There's required field experiences
that are part of the course.
There's resources including guest speakers,
hands-on activities, books and tools
that are part of the volunteer training course.
There's a required Capstone project
that each participant is required to complete,
and of course we have evaluations so that
we can continue to improve our program.
The curriculum, eight core topics include landscapes,
which is our geology, ecology, plant communities,
wildlife, interpretation education, water,
water life, and then human influences.
And you might note on this page
that the curriculum actually has a draft
on it-- it's a March 13 draft version.
It's one of the main things I'm looking
to doing in my first year here with the program,
is getting this curriculum from a draft stage
to a final stage.
And as I've been looking at that,
looking at the details we need to do
to complete that, I've also been thinking
that there's a couple chapters that might be missing in there
that we need to add in.
And that includes the service areas,
we're looking for people to volunteer,
we have interpretation education in there,
but we don't have a lot of information in there yet
about citizen science and stewardship.
We'd like to include that into the curriculum
as well and have a chapter on service areas
and talk about education, citizen science,
and stewardship.
In addition, at the end of each chapter,
there are sections on explore, teach, conserve,
and expand.
And these give examples of places to visit in Wisconsin,
in the Explore area,
they give examples of instructional activities
that volunteers can use.
They give-- In the conserve section, is information
about groups and organizations that could
use volunteers, so that Master Naturalists know
where to look to do the volunteer opportunities.
And then also there's an expanded section,
with more resources so the people can continue
their growth and learning.
Guest experts are encouraged to help
with the volunteer training course.
Because we can't expect instructors to be
the master of all these different chapters
that we're talking about.
So our guest experts are really important
and they provide more of a local context
for the materials within the chapter.
Our curriculum covers the entire state,
so it's pretty broad.
Minnesota's curriculum has different chapters,
or different curriculum, for different biomes
or different regions of their state.
They encouraged us not to go that route,
but instead to have one curriculum that covers
the entire state.
So by doing that, the curriculum's pretty broad.
And we worked with our instructors to bring
that broad level information down to where
it's locally relevant, depending on
where the course is being held in this state.
Field experiences are also
a really important part of the course.
It's required that at least 16 hours of the 40-hour course
is spent outdoors.
And that's a minimum.
A lot of our courses actually flip that
and spend less than 16 hours in the classroom
and more hours out in the field.
And this provides a way for the different learning styles
to actually grasp information, to actually be able
to do it hands-on, to learn it by seeing, by feeling.
And so it's not just sitting in a classroom
and listening to an instructor talk.
The Capstone Projects are pretty interesting.
This is an opportunity for those that are taking
the course to build their skills and confidence
in the areas in which they eventually want to volunteer.
So they do-- We encourage them to do this in a group
of two to three people, and they pick a project
and instructors help them to determine
what the project is, and who they're working with,
as an organization for volunteer opportunities
whether that be a citizen science project
or an education project or a stewardship project.
They do this Capstone Project over the time period
of the course, and then the last day of the course,
the class gets together and they talk about
their Capstone Projects and they present what they did
to their classmates, and there's a time for feedback,
for critiques of what they could do differently,
for opportunities to celebrate the things that went well.
This really does help to build their confidence
for the next step of going out and volunteering
within organizations on their own.
We like to do this with the groups
because it helps to demonstrate the relationships
that occur when you volunteer
because you rarely volunteer in a bubble by yourself,
you're usually volunteering for an organization
so there's relationships that need to be made
with the organizations and asking folks to do
their Capstone Projects as a group helps
to illustrate the benefits and sometimes the challenges
that happen as far as working with the groups.
The great thing, though, is that
three hours of time spent on Capstone Projects outside
of the course can be put towards the 40 hour
volunteer service hours for their first year.
One of the neat things about the Wisconsin Master
Naturalist Program is the flexibility
in the scheduling.
Not every course is run the same way.
It really depends on the needs of the instructor
and the host organizations and the type
of participants that they're looking for.
So some course are held in the evening,
once a week, over a 12-week period.
Some are held during the daytime,
for a half day, two days a week,
over a six-week period.
There are courses that are held for six straight days,
nine to five, some are held on the weekends,
Saturdays and Sundays,
some are held in evenings, some are held in the day,
so it really varies upon where the course
is being held and what's working best
for that organization, and the types of folks
they're actually looking to actually participate.
If they hold a course during the day they're not gonna get
professionals and the work force to be there,
but they're gonna attract a lot of the retirees.
And if that's who they're looking for,
then that's where they're probably going to hold a course.
If they're looking to help attract some of
the work force, then they're probably going to hold
the course in the evenings or on the weekends.
Program evaluation is really important for us.
We're lucky within the Environmental Resources Center
to have a really good evaluations department
and they've done a really good job helping
us create some pre-course and post course surveys.
We administer this online, so it can be taken through
a phone or iPad, or on a computer.
And we handle it all through the Master Naturalists
Program so that the instructors don't need
to worry abut that part of it at all.
The instructors do, do check ins and more informally,
during the course, just to be sure they're on target
for the needs of the class as well.
So why do we do the program evaluation?
We always wanna continue to improve the program.
This is still new so we're still learning.
We wanna hear back from people about what's going well
and what are some things that we can tweak.
We wanna be able to prioritize those areas
that we're working on and we're responsible
to our funders too and we have reporting that needs
to be done.
This helps us to tell our story,
to get the evaluations back from the participants.
It also helps the instructors.
Because they get to know their audience before the class starts.
The pre-course survey helps to tell them
who's actually coming in, what level of knowledge
do they coming in with, what's their education,
what's their experience, what are the demographics for age.
It helps them learn more about where these participants
want to volunteer when they're done.
What-- If they want to do education
or if they wanna do-- if there's more folks
that wanna do citizen science and they can help craft
how their course is structured.
It also helps to improve instruction based
on comments that we've received
from the post-course survey, because that's where
individuals are allowed to give feedback
of "Hey, this speaker was great."
"Make sure you get him back here the next time."
Or, "You might not want to have this guest speaker
next time," or "Probably not the best field trip,"
or, "We probably shouldn't be standing
"on the side of the road
"when we're looking at this feature."
It's great way to get feedback and improve
the course for the next time.
And it's also a very good source of quotes
that you can use for reporting.
Astrid does a lot of the evaluations for us
and she refers to these quotes as text candy.
Because they're so sweet.
It's really neat to see some of the things
people say about the courses.
This is just a screenshot of our webpage.
And there's lots of different faces to the webpage.
There's a public face that anyone can access
and learn more about the program
but once you become a volunteer,
then you get a log-in and you can't see it
but it's at the every top of the, very top of the webpage.
And volunteers can login here and this is
where they log their volunteer hours
and their additional training that they take.
There's more resources available to them
when they log in.
They can see more volunteer opportunities
that are posted on the page.
And the instructors also have another face
of the webpage where they can see even more information
and it gives them resources on how to actually teach
the course, too.
So they're several different levels of
layers into our website.
So volunteers. Volunteers are awesome.
You guys have been hearing this for the last couple days here.
It's amazing what volunteers do
and the impact that we have from volunteers.
Before I talk more about the Master Naturalist
volunteers, I wanted to show you a few stats
that are from the Corporation of National Community Service.
I looked these up last night because I was part
of a talk yesterday with Candace,
who's our volunteer coordinator, here at UW Stevens Point,
and she was sharing some good information
and I wanted to look up a little bit more
and see more about volunteers.
And nationwide we're going strong with volunteerism.
Almost 63 million Americans volunteer
and that estimated value of that volunteers
over 184 million, billion, I'm sorry, billion dollars.
Another fact is that volunteering benefits not just
those that are being served but the volunteers themselves.
Candace was talking some more about the physical
and mental benefits that volunteering brings
but there's also another aspect.
And that's the fact that volunteers
have higher odds of getting a job after,
after being out of work than non-volunteers.
And I can think of two examples already,
just off the top of my head of volunteers
who have taken a volunteer training course
begin volunteering for an organization
and within a year of being hired there,
because they're just doing such a good job.
Also, regardless of age, everyone can volunteer.
Nationally, Generation X, the 33 to 49 year olds
have the highest rate of volunteerism
but it's the older generation, the 75 plus
that actually volunteer the most hours.
And we see that in the Master Naturalist Program
quite a bit, our demographics are more toward
the higher end, and these are folks
that are very passionate about natural resources,
who weren't able maybe to make it a career
for themselves, and now that they're retired
are really excited about being out
in the natural world and volunteering.
Over the past 13 years, volunteers have made a huge impact.
So over, just under a 105 billion hours
have been volunteered in the last 13 years
in the United States.
That's the equivalent of over two trillion dollars.
And let's celebrate Wisconsin.
Wisconsin is number three in the country
for volunteering.
About 34 percent of Wisconsin citizens volunteer.
And that's an amazing figure.
Top two states, anybody wanna guess?
Minnesota's fourth.
Yeah, Idaho and Utah.
So Wisconsin, 1.58 million people volunteer.
And they volunteer 147.5 million hours
of service and that's over 3.4 billion dollars
worth of estimated service.
So we know that there are people who wanna volunteer,
there's people out there that are volunteering.
So the Master Naturalist Program can help link
these people up that want to volunteer
to the folks who have opportunities to volunteer.
There's lots of opportunities to volunteer.
We don't need to create opportunities
for people to volunteer, because in Wisconsin,
we have a big need for volunteers.
So how can you become a Master Naturalist volunteer?
You can if you're over 18 years old,
because we only have an adult program right now.
We don't have a youth program.
It's just for an adult audience.
You need to be curious about the natural world,
and want to learn more about it.
Support conservation,
and be willing to provide volunteer service.
That's all the requirements there are.
Master Naturalists, again, doesn't happen
in a 40-hour course.
This is just a stepping stone to that lifelong learning.
We do ask, though, that people abide
by a code of ethic.
If you can't see in the very back,
this is a person reading a No Ethics magazine
and at the top it says,
"Using Your Pet Cockroach to Eat Free in Restaurants."
So because people volunteer for the host organizations,
we ask that people do abide by a code of ethic
and basically, in a nutshell, that code of ethic says
you agree to be a decent human being.
That you're gonna represent the Master Naturalists Program,
the University, and the host organizations well.
So currently we have trained
over 400 Master Naturalists volunteers across the state.
These pins represent a zipcode, not an individual,
so some of those pins represent, you know,
up to 10 people and others represent individual folks.
But you an also tell where the holes are in the state
and those kind of parallel pretty well
to where the holes were for our instructors.
So as we gather more instructors across the state,
then they'll be able to track the volunteers
in those areas as well.
Another thing is that even though we've trained 400
Master Naturalists Volunteers, not everyone takes the course
because they want to volunteer.
Sometimes they take the course
just because they want to learn a little bit more
about Wisconsin, they want to learn a little bit more
about what those chapters are.
And that's okay. We encourage that as well.
Because it's a first step to social engagement
and behavior change to start that learning process.
So even though we've trained
over 400 Master Naturalist Volunteers,
in 2015 we had about 150 that were really active.
And those are the ones that are recording hours.
And I still think that's a pretty good number.
2012 was our pilot year and some of those pilot courses
did not occur until October, November,
so we didn't expect to see too many hours in 2012.
But in 2013 and up, you can see the trajectory
that we have here on this line and we're really excited by that
and we hoping it continues on that path.
So for our Master Naturalist service hours,
you can see that consistently,
as the years have gone on, the bottom orange,
I think the color is showing up here,
is education, the blue is citizen science,
and the green is stewardship hours.
And a good half is education, the other half
is split pretty equally between citizen science activities
and the stewardship activities.
And in 2015 there was just a little over 9,000 hours
from those 150 volunteers that were given to Wisconsin.
Considering the program is three years old,
that's a pretty good number for us.
Yeah?
Sure, the question was can I explain
the difference between citizen science
and stewardship?
Citizen science, we're classifying more
as a monitoring and collecting data,
where stewardship we're talking more about on the ground,
hands-on land management activities.
So total volunteer hours for the program
between 2012 and 2015
has been over 17,000 volunteer service hours.
And, so a little over 9,000 in education,
over 3700 hours in stewardship,
and over 4200 hours in citizen science.
And for Wisconsin then, that brings,
when we're using that Bureau of Labor statistics,
the value for volunteer service,
that for Wisconsin has already brought
in over 385 thousand dollars worth of service
to the state.
I just wanted to also talk about the additional training hours
that volunteers do.
You know they're required to do the 8 hours per year,
but when we do the math, they're averaging
more about 14 hours per year.
People just want to learn and wanna continue
their growth, so meeting that eight hours of minimum,
additional training isn't a problem for volunteers.
So I put a blank slide here because I have
to apologize for the next three slides.
Because I threw the best practice for using PowerPoints
out the window for the next three slides
because I just want to brag about the type
of work our volunteers are doing
and they're so many words in here
because I had to pick from 150 people
doing volunteer service,
I wanted to give some examples of what they were doing.
It's very hard to limit those examples.
So here are examples in the citizen science realm,
the over 2300 hours of volunteer service,
the type of volunteer activities
that happened in citizen science.
They helped to monitor bats, loons, salamanders,
pollinators, deer, wolves, damsel and dragonflies,
plants, small mammals, birds, owls, frogs and toads,
earthworms, waterfowl bag surveys, water quality
in the many different ways, invasive plant surveys
and bluebirds.
And you can tell by the different organizations
and different programs that they volunteer
for here, like I said, we don't have
to create opportunities for people to volunteer.
There's a lot of existing needs
out there already and people are finding them.
So that's just citizen science.
In education interpretation, just to highlight quickly,
I'm not gonna read through all the words on here but,
some activities that happened in the 4800 hours
that were done in 2015
included leading a tour of a collection crawl
at the Museum of Natural History at UW Stevens Point,
updating social media, demonstrating urban preserves
to city management in the Shioc River,
greeting visitors, helping out at a nest box seminar
in Horicon Marsh,
leading a wild cranberry treasure hunt
that included tasting the difference
between wild cranberries and commercial cranberries,
an after school program with a science club,
creating an interpretive trail map,
both in English and in Spanish for a school.
And also producing a radio segment
called Kids Naturally.
So just some of the educational activities that happened.
And for stewardship activities,
so this is more on the ground work,
so removing invasive plants, looking at habitat
for showy lady slippers, restoring prairies,
mowing trails, doing a cleanup for Earth Days,
creating pollinator habitat, building woodpecker houses,
burning sections of prairies,
lots of neat on the ground activities.
The thing that you're gonna see in common here
and that is required is that the volunteer service
is actually done within an organization
or an entity.
Somebody just wants to go pick up litter
on the beach, that doesn't count as volunteer service.
But if they wanna go pick up litter
on the beach with the volunteer cleanup day
with a certain organization, then those hours count.
And that helps just prevent hours
of folks weeding their native garden
in their own backyard and calling that volunteer service.
Although you can do bird feeder watches
as long as it's part of the bird feeder watch programs.
So join us. Become a volunteer.
Become an instructor.
And host volunteer trainings.
Help us to provide additional training opportunities
to our Master Naturalist Volunteers.
In 2016, we already have nine courses listed
on our website across the state
and we're hoping that we'll probably double that amount
in the next month or so as instructors start
to post their courses.
We're also looking to have a instructor training
in the La Crosse area sometime this fall,
so if you're interested in that, please let me know.
And so I've been asked, in the first six months
in this position, what do I think about
the Wisconsin Master Naturalist Program
and I have to say I've totally bought in
to the idea of this lifelong learning.
I really enjoy the aspect that we're continually
to ask questions, that we're continually trying
to learn and better ourselves
for the communities here of Wisconsin.
I also like the networking,
whether it's providing connections
between the organizations,
whether it's providing connections
as an instructor as I'm working with guest resource speakers
in my area, whether it's making the connections
with the volunteers.
Any time there's a conversation there's connections made,
it's gonna lead to good things.
So I really like that networking side of things.
That and it's really inspiring.
Working with volunteers just motivates someone.
And the other part of my job I work
with natural resource agencies and organizations
and those folks are very passionate too.
They have to be passionate to work
in this natural resources world.
We certainly don't get paid to do it, right.
But they live with it every day.
And when you turn in your work with volunteers,
they get so excited about the activities
that they're doing and it does leave an impression.
And just as an example, yesterday,
when I came and I picked up my name tag
at the registration desk the person
who handed me my name tag said,
"Oh, you're with Master Naturalist Program."
And she said, "I took the Master Naturalist Program
"in Minnesota."
She said it was a life changing event.
And I kind of smiled, "A life changing event?"
And she said "No, really."
"It's the reason why I'm doing what I'm doing now."
"Because I took that course."
And stories like that, it means so much.
Because the experiences people have during
this process of the training course,
I think, are really meaningful.
And in the famous words of Dr. Seuss,
"There's fun to be done."
Because this is really fun.
I'm having a great time in my job
with the Master Naturalist Program.
It's a lot of fun.
And so, that is the end of my talk.
Do we have time for questions?
(applause)
Thanks.