Click this image to explore Rick's community connections

One of the hallmarks of working with COSEE Ocean Learning Communities (OLC) for Rick Keil has been the opportunity to stretch out and try new things. "It comes from the COSEE team's encouragement to really find a way for my science to fit in to our educational mission," says Rick. "We would never have started something like SoundCitizen if we didn't have the intellectual capital of COSEE behind us and encouraging us to move forward and try this big experiment."

The big experiment has paid off in several successful collaborations, all of which are inter-connected. Rick's most publicly visible collaborative project is SoundCitizen, a sampling project involving citizen volunteers that incorporates Rick's laboratory facilities. SoundCitizen has already spawned another collaboration, the SoundCitizen Science Apprenticeships (SCSA), in which local non-profits, UW grad students and Rick's lab join forces to provide a group of Seattle students the opportunity to create their own research projects.

The SCSA teens participated in a day of hands-on learning about oceanography in the field through the Ocean Inquiry Project, which also collects samples for SoundCitizen. The Ocean and Coastal Interdisciplinary Sciences GK-12 project (OACIS) also connects to SoundCitzen and COSEE OLC, through its development of place-based curriculum developed by COSEE OLC PI Dr. Phil Bell and others in the UW College of Education.

COSEE OLC itself is a collaboration between two colleges at the University of Washington and the Seattle Aquarium. (The Seattle Aquarium and COSEE OLC jointly sponsor Sound Conversations.) Being engaged in multiple projects simultaneously means COSEE OLC team members are pulled in many directions at once, resulting in pressure to find the time, funds and energy to do it all. Yet Rick sees this as an advantage. "The positive part about that is that it forces us to be really integrative and collaborative," he says. "We work with our partners to best leverage all of the things we do together."

"The pressure forces us to be really integrative and collaborative. We work with our partners to best leverage all of the things we do together."

Rick's Education and Outreach Collaborations

• COSEE Ocean Learning Communities, courage to take risks
• SoundCitizen, students and citizens working together to conduct significant research
• SoundCitizen Science Apprenticeships, involvement in every step of the scientific process
• Ocean and Coastal Interdisciplinary Science GK-12, a multi-directional exchange between grad students, teachers and high school students
• Ocean Inquiry Project, oceanography in a day
• Sound Conversations, serving the community