San Juan Resilience Youth SUmmit
Overview
Middle and High School students from around the San Juans come together each March to share their projects and research related to environmental resilience. An authentic audience of peers and community members can choose from several breakout rooms of presentations and talk to students presenters during a poster symposium. After lunch students choose from a menu of on-campus activities to learn more about higher education at Fort Lewis College.
Mission
MSI offers experiences to schools, groups, and individuals across the San Juan Mountains. We focus on Animas/San Juan River Watershed communities, including Silverton, Durango, Bayfield, Pagosa Springs, and Aztec, NM. Through the San Juan Resilience Youth Summit (SJRYS), MSI provides students an opportunity present their work to an authentic audience of peers and community members. Students develop critical thinking skills about the interconnectedness of our ecosystems, accomplished by sharing information among schools from the top of the watershed in Silverton, to Durango, and downstream with students in northern New Mexico.
Students collect data, perform research, and develop projects throughout the year, then present their work at the SJRYS to an in person audience to help foster skills in communicating science, a necessary tool for the 21st century.
By creating the SJRYS, MSI ties together our youth from disperse communities to create a cohesive network across watersheds.
“It is because of MSI that I’m excited to be majoring in Environmental Studies and Economics (tentatively) in college, and that I’m able to speak confidently on the topics that I am so passionate about.”
