Congratulations to Lisseth Rojas Pelayo and Carolina Simon-Pardo on receiving the 2026 TESI Education and Outreach Grant!
The grant program supports UF undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral associates in designing and implementing outreach projects that communicate Earth systems science (air, water, land, and life).
Supported by the MacFadden Endowment, which funds education and broader societal impacts of science, the program allows projects to engage any audience, in any location.
Congratulations Lisseth & Carolina!
Lisseth Rojas Pelayo
Where are you from?
Invisible Maps and How Landscapes Travel with Us
Lisseth, a Ph.D. student in Anthropology, studies “how people reorganized their relationships with animals, landscapes, and resources during periods of transition.” Her work draws on “isotopic analysis, especially strontium, carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, to study mobility and animal management.” While the connection between isotopes and human mobility is known to the scientific community, broader audiences aren’t as aware. Lisseth’s winning proposal takes on that challenge directly.
Through a hands-on workshop in her native Peru at Chavín de Huántar, Lisseth aims to make these concepts tangible and relevant. She explains that her goal is to show participants that “landscapes leave traces in our bodies, and that movement has long shaped how people relate to place.” By guiding participants in mapping their own journeys to Chavín, the workshop will connect personal experiences of movement to larger historical and environmental patterns.
Carolina Simon-Pardo
Youth-Led Community Science for Earth Systems Learning
in Amazonian Schools
Carolina, a Ph.D. candidate in Interdisciplinary Ecology, examines “the intersection of environmental education and biocultural conservation,” using a “participatory approach that values both local knowledge and ecological inquiry.” Drawing on her experience as an educator and filmmaker in the Colombian Amazon, she strives to reconnect Indigenous knowledge with classroom education.
Her project is “a collaborative research process with Indigenous teachers, youth, and community members in La Chorrera, Colombia. Together, we are co-designing a model of community-based environmental education centered on youth’s experiences of nature and their role in cultural transmission.” By creating space for dialogue between conservation biology and local knowledge systems, she aims to develop educational models that foster both youth engagement in conservation and the continuity of cultural knowledge. Carolina’s work suggests that lasting conservation depends as much on sustaining cultural knowledge and community involvement as it does on scientific research.
header image provided by Carolina Simon-Pardo