FIRE Up for Summer is a Field Inquiry Research Experience for high school students. The current model is a three week summer course that works on assigned tasks given by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the sponsoring agency. BLM determines what will be valued and used by them.
FIRE Up is in its sixth year of a working partnership. The partnership with BLM, Northwest Nazarene University (NNU), and the Joint Meridian School District #2 provides exemplar learning-doing experience for students. BLM provides the necessary resources to produce the work that the agency will value and use. NNU is the fiscal agent, provides 4 concurrent credits, and outreach. The Joint Meridian School District #2 provides facilities, computers, and allows the course to recruit students from its high schools. The school board approved course offers students an elective 2 science lab credits for successful participation. Recently the Boise School District has allowed recruitment of their high school students. The course is managed and taught by certified Idaho science, technology and math teachers.
FIRE Up Students, in their first week, learn to use GPS, Radio, Digital Camera, software such as Fire-Mon GIS and RedZone. Students learn plants and plant identification techniques. Student teams are formed, work-ready for the second week. During the second week, students are taken into the field to gather necessary data to complete assigned tasks. Student teams are equipped to work in small independent teams. The teachers work with these small groups and keep track of the whole class with use of the technology provided. The data is gathered, analyzed, and used in the third week to produce GIS products, complete personnel research projects, and produce required products to be valued and used by the BLM. A Student Showcase is the culminating event where students present their GIS research projects to parents, family members, BLM, Meridian School District, and NNU personnel.
FIRE Up is a model that can be implemented by any sponsoring agency or organization. Implementation requires a sponsor that will provide tasks that will be valued and used. The task can occur wherever the work needs to be completed. A first step is to form a partnership with a sponsoring agency, school district(s), and University/College. A teacher team is established and trained working with the sponsoring agency to determine procedures for the task(s) to be completed that are value and used. Trained teacher teams then can recruit students and the course implemented.
Students surveyed and produced reports on homes and structures in Silver City, Garden Valley, Pine-Featherville, Oasisis/Tipanuk, and City of Boise
Survey of forest conditions surrounding community of Silver City, Garden Valley, Pine-Featherville, and City of Boise.
Homestead Project
Pixley Basin and West Antelope of Owyhee Mountains
Dry Creek of Owyhee Mountains
City of Boise- Nearly 4,000 acres of occluded space (area of vacant land surrounded by homes, within the city limits), surveyed and ranked for fuel mitigation work. The Oregon Trail fire of August 2008 was in an occluded space.