BP Environmental Learning Center

The WETLANDS EDGE ENVIRONMENTAL CENTER (WEEC) is a partnership formed between bp and Decatur City Schools (DCS) in Decatur, Alabama. WEEC provides hands-on environmental educational opportunities across the K-12 curriculum to all DCS students. Located on bp's 500+ acres of award winning Certified Wildlife Habitat, WEEC offers a brand new opportunity to explore the natural world in a setting that combines native species and natural beauty.

The Center hosted its first class on February 22, 2002, offering programs in two classrooms/labs with numerous live displays, including two floor- touch tanks, a 1650-gallon marine tank, and a 780-gallon freshwater ecosystem. In addition, more than two miles of trails traverse the habitat enabling visitors to see several diverse ecosystems including a swamp, a marsh, a pond, bottomland hardwoods, upland species, young pines, and an old oak grove climax community.

The web site is intended to be a forum for communication. DCS students and teachers are sharing information, field data, and samples of their creative work. We invite you to contact us and participate! Please use the Main Menu to examine our possibilities.

Program Goals

• To create an understanding of the natural environment and the interrelationships among living things
• To promote sound stewardship and wise management of our natural resources for the welfare of man and all living things
• To create an awareness of global, national, and local environmental problems and foster sound decision making regarding their solutions
• To enrich, vitalize, extend, complement and culminate all content areas of the K-12 school curriculum by means of firsthand observation and direct experience outside the classroom
• To develop programs which are constructivist, meeting students where they are, inquiry based, and directly correlated to the National Science Standards, HASP, the Alabama Course of Study and High School Graduation Exam requirements
• To emphasize the concept of biodiversity, a global issue with far-reaching implications that encompasses sustainable development, corporate and social environmental accountability and relationships with local and indigenous communities.

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