YouthCaN is a youth-led organization that uses technology to inspire, connect, and educate people worldwide about environmental issues. Through a network of conferences, activities and events, the organization unites environmentally active youth. Participants facilitate an exchange of ideas about the environment and empower others to make a difference in their own communities. The Museum hosts the NYC YouthCaN chapter, and an annual conference brings hundreds of students together at the Museum to share their work and passion for conservation.

Building on Theodore Roosevelt’s legacy of bringing together a variety of New York institutions around a single cause, Urban Advantage creates a consortium of informal science institutions that are helping to improve science literacy in schools. Urban Advantage is a standards-based partnership program designed to improve students' understanding of scientific inquiry through collaborations between urban public school systems and science cultural institutions.

Birds were an enduring passion for Theodore Roosevelt. Families can share the wonder of observing birds by joining a Museum naturalist for a bird walk in Central Park. Young explorers and their parents will learn how to find and identify the many bird species and habitats found in our own back yard. (Binoculars and bird guides included.)

Share Theodore Roosevelt’s passion for birds by joining a Museum bird walk! Observe the vibrant migration of birds in Central Park with Museum naturalists. Learn how to use field marks, habitat, behavior, and song as aids in identification. Bird field cards included.

The Science Research Mentoring Program (SRMP) offers high school students a one-year research opportunity with a Museum scientist.  Participants will also take part in a mandatory laboratory skills course in the summer of 2013 and advisory sessions throughout the year.

“The farther one gets into the wilderness, the greater is the attraction of its lonely freedom.”  
 —Theodore Roosevelt

This five-session creative writing class will focus on the natural world, with each session held in a different Museum hall. Read excerpts from Theodore Roosevelt’s notebooks and from the works of other great nature writers, and draw on the exhibits for onsite writing exercises and prompts. Learn the basics of nature writing as well as tips on description, structure, research, setting, and theme to complete your own writing projects. This class is open to beginners, as well as to any writer looking to take their work to the next level.

Roosevelt created his own museum as a child—you can learn to curate your own collection, too! Bring in your treasures and learn the art of creating a museum collection. Work with scientists to identify rocks and minerals, then categorize and curate a collection display you can take home.

In the spirit of Roosevelt’s passion for the natural world, authors James Gould and Carol Gould discuss their latest book, Nature’s Compass. They share the various ways animals navigate around the world – invisible sensitivities, mysterious focuses, and incredible mental abilities – and explore the many factors that are endangering animal navigation in today’s climate. Their goal is to answer the question of whether the disruption of migratory paths because of habitat destruction and global warming affects or endangers animal species.

The Young Naturalist Awards is a science competition for students in grades 7 through 12 that carries on the legacy of Theodore Roosevelt by recognizing students who have investigated questions in the areas of biology, Earth science, ecology, and astronomy.

A native New Yorker, Theodore Roosevelt was adept at discovering wildlife in the middle of the city. Set out on an urban-wildlife exploration of your own by joining a Museum bat walk! At dusk, bats leave the warm spaces under city roofs to feed on flying insects. Brad Klein, Danielle Gustafson, and other members of the New York City Bat Group will lead a walk through Central Park.  Aided by a detector that amplifies the bats’ otherwise inaudible high-frequency chirps, bat watchers monitor and catalogue species that call the city home.

David Haskell recently completed a project in which he studied 1 square meter of old growth forest for a year: an exploration at the smallest scale possible, but one that took him to the edges of biological knowledge. He describes this journey in his forthcoming book.

Theodore Roosevelt articulated a vision of America that emphasized natural places as elements that define a nation's character and that are foundational to the individual's rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  For citizens today, those notions may be controversial, if not completely remote, from contemporary ideas of America.  Experts in science, conservation, humanities and democratic principles will illuminate the 21st century imperatives that can contribute to reconstructing and expanding an American identity forged in an intimate relationship to its natural history.

HOST AND MODERATOR
Tom Brokaw, an American television journalist and author best known as the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News from 1982 to 2004.  He now serves as a Special Correspondent for NBC News and works on documentaries for other outlets.

PARTICIPANTS
Douglas Brinkley, Presidential Historian and fellow in history at the Baker Inistitue and a professor of history at Rice University.  Brinkley's most recent publications include The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America.

Lisa Graumlich, Dean of the University of Washington's College of the Environment.  A scientist known internationally for research on climate and ecosystems - and who as a track record of getting wide-ranging groups of experts to focus on environmental issues.

Michael Novacek, Senior Vice President and Provost of Science at the American Museum of Natural History.  Dr. Novacek was instrumental in establishing the Museum's Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, Institute for Comparative Genomics, and the new research program in astrophysics.

Rick Ridgeway, is Patagoina's Vice President of Environmental Initatives where he implements the secodn two of the company's three-part mission statement to make the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis. 

This program is part of the celebration of the reopening of the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial at the American Museum of Natural History.

Draw on Theodore Roosevelt’s passion for nature by learning how to sketch the wildlife depicted in Museum dioramas. The celebrated dioramas, skeletons and other distinctive features of the Museum serve as the setting for an intensive after-hours drawing course with Stephen C. Quinn, author of Windows on Nature: The Great Habitat Dioramas of the American Museum of Natural History. Learn about the gifted artists who created the world-class dioramas as you sketch subjects in their “natural” environments.

This year, 5th-grade students will be chosen to become part of an exciting multi-year educational program with the Museum. These students will experience the Museum through classes incorporating hands-on exploration, behind-the-scenes adventures, and content-rich programming that focuses on biology, anthropology, and physical sciences (astronomy and Earth science).
The program begins with a three-week summer program based at the Museum and continues into the school year with meetings that take place on two Saturdays each month. This alternating summer-school year cycle continues until the program’s conclusion, which coincides with the students’ graduation from high school.

Drawing on Theodore Roosevelt’s passion for collecting and identifying, the Museum hosts an annual Identification Day event. Bring your shells, rocks, insects, feathers, bones and artifacts to the Museum. Scientists will attempt to identify your discoveries while displaying some specimens from the Museum's collections. Items identified in previous years include a whale jawbone, a green beetle bracelet from Brazil and a 5,000-year-old stone spear point from Morocco.

Discover new ways to “capture” nature! In the spirit of Theodore Roosevelt’s excitement about discovering nature and collecting specimens, the Museum offers Conservation Biology courses for high school students.  Students document the data they collect digitally, using open-source digital tools, such as the app “Leaf Snap.”

The Museum is transformed into a living example of a hydroponic food garden more than 20 feet high and 30 feet wide.

This vertical garden will hang from a large glass wall in the Museum’s west-facing Weston Pavilion entrance. Part of the major exhibition Our Global Kitchen: Food, Nature, Culture and built by a Brooklyn-based company called Windowfarms, this garden will grow about 250 edible plants.

This online environmental studies course for teachers focuses on water. Learn how water shapes our planet on every level, from the chemical properties of the H2O molecule to the central role of water in global climate. You will examine why water is such a critical resource, the impact of human consumption on ecosystems, and the implications of water management.

Find out about Earth’s climate, why it’s changing, and what we all can do to help conserve energy. Climate Change OLogy, a website for kids of all ages, presents over a dozen activities that explain the difference between weather and climate, give instructions for building your own terrarium, and explore the connections between human activity and rising atmospheric carbon dioxide.  For more information, visit amnh.org. 

This online course for teachers explores the science of climate change. Learn how the climate system works; what factors cause climate to change across different time scales; how scientists use models, observations and theory to make predictions about future climate; and the possible consequences of climate change for our planet.  For more information, please visit amnh.org.

Find out why biodiversity matters--and what you can do about it--on OLogy, the Museum’s website for kids of all ages. Play an endangered species game, learn how to create scientific illustrations by observing animals in your backyard, or join scientists as the travel around the world saving species, and much more.  For more information, please visit amnh.org.

Visit the Hall of Biodiverstiy for the latest in biodiversity research and conservation. The large screen near the entrance to the Hall of North American Forests shows a continuous loop of documentaries about scientists at work around the globe, and regular Snapshots of Earth from above that highlight natural ecosystems and the human footprint on the landscape.  For more information, please visit amnh.org.

To honor Theodore Roosevelt’s passion for nature and his conservation legacy, the American Museum of Natural History is teaming up with iNaturalist.org on New York is Wild!  Join this project to use your observation skills to identify New York City invertebrates, share your findings, and learn how to protect these exceptional species. 

Visit amnh.org/Roosevelt or www.inaturalist.org and look for the project NEW YORK IS WILD! to find out more about how YOU can get involved.