§5507 Environmental education awards

Summary

The Administrator must set up national awards to honor people and groups that make outstanding contributions to environmental education. The program must include four named awards: the Theodore Roosevelt Award for a great career in environmental teaching or leadership, the Henry David Thoreau Award for notable writing about nature and pollution, the Rachael Carson Award for strong public education through print, film, or broadcast media, and the Gifford Pinchot Award for work in forestry and natural resource training. Nominees for these awards must be put forward by the Environmental Education Advisory Council. The Administrator may also offer the “President’s Environmental Youth Awards” for K–12 students with excellent local projects. The Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality, for the President, can run a separate teacher awards program that picks one teacher and that teacher’s local education agency from each State, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. Each selected teacher may receive up to $2,500 for professional development in environmental education, and each local education agency may receive up to $2,500 to support environmental education programs. Those agency funds cannot be used for building work, routine operating costs, staff pay or bonuses, or other administrative expenses.