Nature Center at Shaker Lakes

The Nature Center has long been a leader in providing excellent environmental education for individuals of all ages. Particularly well- known for its early childhood curricula for head starts and other preschools in the area, the Nature Center provides environmental education programs and camps for thousands of children per year in its classrooms as well as on its trails and habitats which serve as its outdoor classroom. The Center regularly evaluates and modifies its curricula to ensure that it fully meets all Ohio academic content standards. This year the Center successfully completed its tenth year of the applied science for kids (ask) program for the cleveland metropolitan school district (cmsd), designed at the district's request to provide science education and unique hands-on field experiences for all preschool, kindergarten, and 1st grade students in the district. This year, the Nature Center served 3,639 children with the ask program. Ncsl's other partnership with cmsd, the environmental educator in residence (eer) program, serves 4 classrooms of 4th and 5th graders, each of which receives 20 classroom visits and 2 field trips throughout the year. Eer also serves 5 classrooms of prek/k students who each receive 12 classroom visits and 2 field trips throughout the year. Professional development was provided to 76 teachers. The Nature Center also served 278 head start students and 19 head start teachers. In addition, the Nature Center served over 6,970 students from the cleveland heights-university heights and Shaker heights school districts as well as other local schools and districts. In addition to visiting students and program attendees, we had over 140,000 recreational visits to our trails. The Nature Center welcomed nearly 28,500 visitors into our building. -served 5,368 people through family and adult programming and events. -served 441 campers through our outdoor adventure camp summer program and 115 through our outdoor adventure camp spring break program. -special events were highly successful. The annual summer benefit had over 500 attendees and generated over 111,600 in net revenues for the organization. -over 824 volunteers, interns and service-learning groups provided more than 11,556 hours of volunteer assistance in land management, education, events and administration for the equivalent of over 5 full-time staff members, or 367,480 worth of service. -volunteer programs at the Nature Center contributed to youth development (job skills) and opportunities. Volunteers assist the Nature Center in achieving the goals of conserving the land, connecting people to Nature and inspiring environmental stewardship. Volunteers are welcome at all levels of participation to support programming and other activities. Our volunteers are involved in pulling invasive species and planting native species, demonstration garden maintenance, outdoor adventure camps, education classes, welcome desk assistance, special events assistance, and office work. The volunteer program works with adult individuals, youth (13 and older), high school senior project candidates, school groups (both college and younger), and corporate groups to provide meaningful experiences at the Nature Center. -in september 2017, the Nature Center launched the enhancing your outdoor classroom campaign - a multi-year, 6.1 million capital campaign to restore and enhance its trails and habitats that serve thousands of visitors and school children annually. Capital projects completed between 2018-2021 included: the new ada-accessible lavelle family outdoor amphitheater; the new all people's trail boardwalk, a universally-designed, elevated boardwalk that immerses visitors in marsh and forested stream habitat and includes the rose foundation gazebo and other expanded gathering spaces that allow classes to spend more time outdoors and in discussion and observation of Nature; reconstruction of boardwalks, two bridges, and the addition of an ada-accessible entrance and Nature play area, as well as a new wetland observation deck on the stearns trail; and an ada-accessible treehouse, community trailhead entrances, parking lot renovations, and a new sustainability hub to house our land management equipment. Over the last five years, we have undertaken a comprehensive restoration initiative to remove invasive plant species and foster biodiversity on our site. We have now cleared over 8 acres of invasive species and planted nearly 9,000 native trees, shrubs and perennials, and erected extensive deer fencing to help protect this investment in our natural history and future. Continuing to build off our previous work, fiscal year 2023 was a successful year in furthering our mission to conserve a natural area, connect people with Nature, and inspire environmental stewardship.