Once again, our nation has a powerful need for a revolution devoted to creating scientists. As we face the challenges of climate change, global competitiveness, biodiversity loss, energy needs, and dwindling food supplies, we ?nd ourselves in a period where both scienti?c literacy and the pool of next-generation scientists are dwindling. To solve these complex issues and maintain our own national security, we have to rebuild a national ethos based on sound science education for all, from which a new generation of scientists will emerge. The challenge is how to create this transformation. Those shaping national policy today, in 2009, need look no further than what worked a half-century ago. In1957,SputnikcircledandsentaclarioncallforAmericatobecometheworld’s most technologically advanced nation. In 1958, Congress passed the National Defense Education Act, which focused the national will and called for scholars and teachers to successfully educate our youth in science, math, and engineering. It was during this time period that Paul F. Brandwein emerged as a national science e- cation leader to lay the foundation for the changes needed in American education to create the future scientists essential to the nation’s well-being.

President John F. Kennedy officially dedicated the Pinchot Institute for Conservation Studies on September 24, 1963 to further the legacy and activism of conservationist Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946). Pinchot was the first chief of the United States Forest Service, appointed by Theodore Roosevelt in 1905. During his five-year term, he more than tripled the national forest reserves to 172 million acres. A pioneer in his field, Pinchot is widely regarded as one of the architects of American conservation and an adamant steward of natural resources for future generations. Author Char Miller highlights many of the important contributions of the Pinchot Institute through its first fifty years of operation. As a union of the United States Forest Service and the Conservation Foundation, a private New York-based think tank, the institute was created to formulate policy and develop conservation education programs. Miller chronicles the institution's founding, a donation of the Pinchot family, at its Grey Towers estate in Milford, Pennsylvania. He views the contributions of Pinchot family members, from the institute's initial conception by Pinchot's son, Gifford Bryce Pinchot, through the family's ongoing participation in current conservation programming. Miller describes the institute's unique fusion of policy makers, scientists, politicians, and activists to increase our understanding of and responses to urban and rural forestry, water quality, soil erosion, air pollution, endangered species, land management and planning, and hydraulic franking. Miller explores such innovative programs as Common Waters, which works to protect the local Delaware River Basin as a drinking water source for millions; EcoMadera, which trains the residents of Cristobal Col—n in Ecuador in conservation land management and sustainable wood processing; and the Forest Health-Human Health Initiative, which offers health-care credits to rural American landowners who maintain their carbon-capturing forestlands. Many of these individuals are age sixty-five or older and face daunting medical expenses that may force them to sell their land for timber. Through these and countless other collaborative endeavors, the Pinchot Institute has continued to advance its namesake's ambition to protect ecosystems for future generations and provide vital environmental services in an age of a burgeoning population and a disruptive climate.

In this collection of 15 essays, educators describe successful programs they've developed to fulfill the US National Science Education Standards' vision for the reform of teaching assessment, professional development, and content at the high school level. All the visions correspond with the Less Emphasis and More Emphasis conditions that conclude each section of the Standards, characterizing what most teachers and programs should do less of as well as describing the changes needed if real reform is to occur. Essay titles reveal the range of programs, and creativity, this book encompasses. Among the titles are: "Technology and Cooperative Learning: The IIT Model for Teaching Authentic Chemistry Curriculum," "Modeling: Changes in Traditional Physics Instruction," "Guided by the Standards: Inquiry and Assessment in Two Rural and Urban Schools," and even "Sing and Dance Your Way to Science Success." The book ends with a summary chapter by editor Robert Yager on successes and continuing challenges in meeting the Standards' visions for improving high school science. As Yager notes, "The exemplary programs described in this monograph give inspiration while also providing evidence that the new directions are feasible and worth the energy and effort needed for others to implement changes.