Third TRKE cohort kicks off in Seedskadee
Published September 18, 2025
TRKE participants at work exploring community vulnerability in the FEMA National Risk Index, part of a session facilitated by Jake Hawes (UW). Photo: Emma Carlson
The Science and Math Teaching Center’s science professional learning team kicked off the third Teacher Researcher Knowledge Exchange (TRKE) cohort in July 2025.
The TRKE program is an annual open-enrollment offering that brings together science researchers and K-12 educators from around Wyoming to learn about and collaborate around Wyoming’s changing water and its impacts on our communities. Each year starts with a five-day in-person Institute, followed by a year of virtual collaboration and continued learning. Cohort 1 focused on Jackson and the Snake River Basin, while Cohorts 2 (Pinedale) and 3 (Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge) both focused on the Upper Green River Basin.
This year’s Seeedskadee Kickoff Institute included time exploring the ecology, hydrology, and social-environmental systems on and around the Green River. Participants connected to the basin through a morning of birding with Wyoming Game & Fish, daily art-science reflections with Science Loves Art, field excursions to visit the Green River, its tributaries, and some connected agricultural and dam sites, and the perspectives a wide range of water-connected people in the basin shared with our group.
These experiences were paired with times to dig into emergent WyACT data, share pedagogical expertise, and collaboratively envision the ways that participants will bring their learning into their classrooms, labs, and science communication efforts.
TRKE participants on a field excursion in the Upper Green River Basin, learning about irrigation experiments from Joe Cook (UW), Ginger Paige (UW), and Hillary Walrath (Trout Unlimited). Photo: Clare Gunshenan
WY-Adapt’s educational resource page is constantly expanded to share the wide range of curricular and science communication resources that participants and facilitators have developed in the three years of this program, ranging from storymap-based activities to those that engage learners in big, messy, and complex data from WyACT.
TRKE’s fourth cohort will kick off in summer/fall 2026 and focus on the Wind-Bighorn River Basin. K-12 educators interested in the program: please email smtcpd@uwyo.edu to join the TRKE mailing list and find out when enrollment opens.
