Provide interpretive public tours for visitors of all ages, K-12 & college field trip tours, nature-based afterschool club programs
Host outreach events: Creek Critters for 3-12yo (including preschool and elementary field trips); Science on Tap/Science Cafe after-hours community events, tabling at community festivals and fairs (e.g. Sioux Empire Water Festival, Sioux Falls Mayor’s Water Summit, Sioux Falls Riverfest, Yankton Riverboat Days, Pierre Oahe Days
Collaborate with SD Outdoor Campus, Great Plains Zoo & Aquarium
Online outreach via social media – Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, Tiktok, etc.
Cultivating a Freshwater Ethic via Community Building
Host local fishing meetups with NANFA and local angling/microfishing groups
Freshwater-inspired art classes & community art programs
First Fridays Freshwater Art (FART) nights
Hosting benefit concerts and live music nights
Monday Night Mussel Jams
Serving as a community hub for mutual aid & fundraising efforts in the event of natural disasters or community tragedies
Mentoring and Hands-On Training of Student & Early-Career Researchers & Fisheries Professionals
Training and mentoring of student and early-career freshwater ecologists and natural resource professionals, with an emphasis on providing education and training opportunities to historically-excluded, underrepresented groups in STEM
Indigenous student mentorship programs via partnerships with local Tribal schools and Tribal fish & wildlife management agencies; Native American Fish and Wildlife Society; BIA schools
Mentoring students through the AFS Hutton Junior Fisheries Biology Program; 2S+TBLGIA+ students; women and non-binary students
Student internships and research experience/apprenticeship training (K-12 field trip tours and classes/afterschool programs; HS science fair/FFA agriscience fair experiments; graduate dissertation & thesis research
Society for Freshwater Science instars mentoring program, create our own equivalent of an NSF-REU program
Documenting, Indexing and Advancing the Citation of Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Aquatic Ecology
Support the development of a sovereign data repository/database outlet for Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains to catalog and contribute Traditional Ecological Knowledge, Indigenous names, basic life history information for native Great Plains aquatic & riparian flora & fauna, recipes, phenological information, species monitoring programs, gray literature database
Long-term data archiving and facilitating the collaboration of Indigenous partners to centralize, write down, and allow for citation and legal reference to Indigenous names and lifeways for freshwater bodies and freshwater organisms
