Under our partnership agreement with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, principal investigators may use The Zephyr Education Foundation to address the 'broader impact' and public outreach requirements of NSF (and other) research grants.

Our staff meets with scientists, typically during the proposal stage, to discuss how our program can be used for their project. We have prepared a boilerplate that can be used, with little modification, in their grant proposal. During the project, we meet again briefly to design an educational unit that we can deliver to classes on the boat, in the lab, on the beach, dock, salt marsh, or other locations. We present the questions, techniques, research and relevance of the project to hundreds of students per year.

Where appropriate, each class makes measurements that can be posted to our website. This allows classes to access similar measurements made by other classes at different times of year and under different conditions. Classes can then observe and understand seasonal and yearly change in the environment as the database grows.

We also maintain a record of student feedback forms that document the effectiveness of the program.

Scientists from other institutions are encouraged to contact us to broaden the impact of their work as well.

The advantages of this program are four-fold:

1. It makes for a strong grant proposal.

2. It minimizes the time requirement for PIs.

3. It provides significant outreach to hundreds of    students

4. It gives the PI's institution a compelling talking point on public and community outreach.