Training Naturalists Behind Prison Walls
Article by Kate Washington, UC Davis Magazine
A kestrel swoops to grab a smaller bird on the wing and eats it, right in front of a group of men in the garden at California Health Care Facility, or CHCF, a prison in Stockton, where the garden has become both a thriving ecosystem and a science classroom for people incarcerated there. As the feathers fly, UC Davis researcher Laci Gerhart pulls out a bird guide and shows the incarcerated men how to identify the bird by its size and coloration, noting that kestrels are North America’s smallest raptor and one of the few that are sexually dimorphic.
That’s just one example of how the prison yard has become surprisingly fertile ground for scientific learning, thanks to a collaborative effort between the School of Education and the College of Biological Sciences at UC Davis.
The collaboration — among Heidi Ballard, a professor in the School of Education and the founder and faculty director of the Center for Community and Citizen Science, or CCCS; Ryan Meyer, the executive director of the center; and Gerhart, an associate professor of teaching in the Department of Evolution and Ecology — recently won a $1.9 million federal National Science Foundation grant to teach participatory science in California’s prison system in partnership with the nonprofit Land Together. They aim to foster lifelong learning and environmental stewardship in one of California’s most marginalized populations: incarcerated people.
