A science education center in Monona, funded in part with a $500,000 taxpayer grant slipped into the state budget with little scrutiny, could serve as a national model for teaching young people about climate change, organizers said.

"Climate change is the single biggest issue that’s going to affect our lives, and it’s not just global warming,” said Terry Kelly, chairman of the Aldo Leopold Nature Center, which is developing the $2.7 million, 4,000-square-foot classroom addition and interactive laboratory on its campus.

“It affects food growing. It affects the spread of disease. It affects our coasts and oceans. It just has a massive impact on life, not to mention energy policy.”

The “green” classroom and lab, complete with solar energy and heating, would feature cutting-edge technology that adapts exhibits and programs to the education levels of its visitors, which environmental education experts said could be unique in the country. That would be combined with a curriculum and research opportunities for students.

But the project has come under criticism from some as emblematic of wasteful state spending during difficult economic times.

“It’s part of a slew of earmarks (and) pork that have been inserted in the budget at the last minute at a time when we have a $6.6 billion deficit,” said Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, the top Senate Republican on the Legislature’s budget committee.

In addition to the climate classroom and lab, lawmakers added dozens of earmarks to the two versions of the 2009-11 budget, including $6.6 million for the Dane County Yahara River Watershed Project, $50,000 for a public shooting range in Eau Claire and $46,000 for recycling bins in Wrightstown.

The Nature Center has been quietly laying the groundwork for the climate change classroom and lab over the past six months, lining up partnerships with the Aldo Leopold Foundation, academic departments at UW-Madison, the Madison schools and the state departments of Natural Resources and Public Instruction.

But the project remained under wraps until two Democratic legislators, Rep. Mark Pocan of Madison and Sen. Mark Miller of Monona, inserted a $500,000 state grant in the 2009-11 budget plan issued by the powerful Joint Finance Committee, which the men co-chair.

The Assembly and the Senate kept the grant in their versions of the budget, passed earlier this year, so there’s a good chance it will remain in the final version agreed to by the two chambers. Gov. Jim Doyle also supports the project, said spokesman Lee Sensenbrenner.

Kelly said the state money — and support from Doyle and state agencies  — will allow the group to raise the additional money, about $2.2 million, needed to build the center, develop programming and curriculum and pay for initial operations, Kelly said. A fundraising announcement could come next month, he said.

Kelly also rejected the criticism over the earmark and said the project is “fiscally responsible.”

He said the spending will lead to construction jobs and other employment at the center, the creation of climate-change curriculum that the Nature Center can sell across the county and the climate classroom and lab becoming a regional destination for students from pre-school to high school.

The climate classroom and lab could also be a model that can be replicated across the county, he said.
“It can bring the state regional and national leadership,” Kelly said.

The most unusual element of the classroom and lab will be its ability to change exhibits and programs to match the educational level of visitors, Kelly said.

“It’s an incredibly audacious goal, but we are intending to design the interactive systems so that a teacher can enter the building and push a button” to change the programming, he said.

Climate change has generated interest as a school subject recently. The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday issued a middle school “toolkit” on the subject and NASA this month asked for proposals on creating teaching materials on climate change as part of a $14 million initiative.

But Elaine Andrews, director of the Environmental Resources Center at UW-Madison and a national leader in environmental education, said the new Nature Center project is one of the “most comprehensive” youth science programs she’s aware of.

“Their proposal is state-of-the-art and certainly addresses a need for the Great Lakes region,” Andrews said.
Dan Seligson, a spokesman for the National Environmental Education Foundation, said the climate classroom and lab is “fairly unique.”

The Nature Center serves 30,000 youths annually, and Kelly said the climate classroom and lab could serve as a second destination point for Wisconsin schoolchildren who visit the Capitol.

Preliminary design work is underway on the building, and the group is lining up “a very interesting and exciting architect,” Kelly said.

Construction could start as early as this fall, he said.