We Own Adventure

Scouting News for the DC Metro Area

The Scouter Digest Staff

Distinguished Conservation Service Award: NCAC Examples

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As the Distinguished Conservation Service Award (DCSA) program gains traction in the National Capital Area Council (NCAC) and as youth become interested in pursuing Boy Scouts of America’s most prestigious conservation award, we thought the following examples from NCAC would help youth, their DCSA Advisors, their Conservation Advisors, and their unit leaders better understand the DCSA program and requirements.

DCSA project categories

  • Energy conservation
  • Soil and water conservation
  • Fish and wildlife management
  • Forestry and range management
  • Air and water pollution control
  • Resource recovery (recycling)
  • Hazardous material disposal and management
  • Invasive species control
  • Pollinator Habitat Conservation

To date, NCAC youth have not identified a conservation issue or need in all nine of these categories, so we do not have NCAC examples in every category. As the DCSA program becomes more popular in our council, we hope to have examples in all nine categories. Some blogs below refer to the Hornaday Award, which predates the current DCSA program.

Soil & Water Conservation
Scout Restores Ravine in Potomac Overlook Park 

Forestry and Range Management
DCSA Forest Restoration for Tomorrow

Fish & Wildlife Conservation
Distinguished Conservation Service Award Projects 

Resource Recovery (recycling)
Match Point for Sustainability 
Reel-In and Recycle!

Invasive Species Control
Hornaday Project Earns Eagle Scout the County’s Most Prestigious Environmental Award 
Hornaday/Eagle Project: Stopping the Invasive Plant Invasion 
Hornaday Badge Project “Evicting the Invaders”
Boo Berry Yay Fern: A project to save our native plants 

Pollinator Habitat Conservation
Life Scout Builds Half-Acre Monarch Pollinator Habitat in Poolesville, MD 
Poolesville Scout Awarded a National Conservation Medal 

Some helpful reminders:

  • Identify a DCSA Advisor
  • The young person must follow the scientific approach by beginning with the identification of a conservation issue or need in the local area. Do not start with a project idea, start with a problem or need.
  • The young person will compile or collect data and/or observations to better understand the conservation issue or need
  • The young person will research the issue to identify ‘alternatives’, one of which will become the project
  • Projects must be based on sound scientific principles and practices
  • Projects must contribute to sound conservation and environmental improvement
  • The young person will provide comprehensive observations showing the effect of the project on the identified conservation issue.
  • The young person will demonstrate clearly outstanding efforts in planning, leadership, execution of plans, and involvement of others beyond the BSA unit
  • The young person must provide opportunities to help others learn about natural resource conservation and environmental improvement
  • In most cases, implementation of a traditional service project will not meet the requirements for the DCSA program
  • The BSA training for a DCSA adviser is a great resource for interested youth, leaders and parents to get a better idea of the size, scope and time required for a single DCSA project

DCSA resources:
BSA Distinguished Conservation Service Award Program 
BSA Distinguished Conservation Service Award Project Workbook
Executive Summary Template
Complete list of award requirements

One cold weather Eagle for Potomac District

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This is the Potomac District January 2024 cold weather Eagle BOR for Yoi. Thanks for all your contributions to Scouting!

After getting the Eagle rank don’t forget to join The Association of Top Achiever Scouts (ATAS) for free and you can work on the NCAC Duke of Edinburgh Award till you are 26 years old.
ATAS is a worldwide Scouting fellowship group of Scouts and Scouters who have achieved the highest rank as a youth in their Scout associations such as King’s Scout, Queen’s Scout, President’s Scout, Fuji Scout, Eagle Scout, etc.
https://www.atasapr.org/
https://www.facebook.com/NCACInternational

Robotics for everyone

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Color-Coding Robotics in Elementary STEM Scouts
Specific steps. Patience. Innovation. Thanks to coding, we are able to live our lives in a more convenient and revolutionized way! Throughout this module, Scouts use color-coding robots in a variety of ways to boost their familiarity with robotics, coding, problem-solving, and design-thinking. Starting with color codes, Scouts become comfortable with the idea of inputs and outputs and will then move on to block-coding with an online programming language.

STEM Scouts also focus on integrating art into STEM by creating various designs while
also learning about real-world concepts like data collection, Venn diagrams, and blueprints. Those who code hold the world’s technological future in their hands, and the opportunities are unlimited!

Soft Robotics in Middle School
The middle schoolers’ STEM Scouts robotics module delves into an exciting and newly developing branch of robotics—soft or flexible robotic structures. When you look at an elephant’s trunk or an octopus’s arm, you can see natural examples of flexible structures used to grasp and manipulate objects. There are many tasks in our world that a rigid structure just does not perform well. Soft Robotics explores the development of flexible structures to work in these areas. In this module, Scouts will explore the concept of soft robots and learn how flexible structures move and how they can be programmed to perform useful tasks. This module was developed by the REACH Lab at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

High School Robotics in a STEM Exploring Post
Botball Educational Robotics requires the students to build, program, test and document two robots to autonomously complete scoring challenges. The robots are built out of kits provided by KISS Institute for Practical Robotics (KIPR).  Photographed below are members of Explorer Post 1010 working with the PVC pipe as they prepare for a Botball competition.

Innovation with STEM Scouts

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One of our recently developed STEM Scouts modules takes elementary schoolers on the journey of innovation. During their first meeting, scouts were handed individual kits and given basic instructions to assemble a simple yet entertaining wiggle bot. Wiggle bots are simple bots, that use a nonconcentric weight to generate some movement. As soon as the bots power on, typically they move in abysmal patterns, causing much amusement and giggles. The came the challenge: scouts were tasked to control their bots and make them “move in a straight line.”

This seemingly lighthearted challenge became a serious exercise in stamina and iteration for the scouts, immersing them in the hands-on intricacies of the engineering design process—a skill closely intertwined with the art of inventing.

Subsequent sessions delved into crucial aspects of inventing, including marketing, selling, and establishing a business. Scouts engaged in a brand awareness game, testing their knowledge of various logos. They also explored the significance of patents, examining patented products from our Council box of Inventions—among them, the crowd favorite LifeStraw. In an engaging twist, scouts were prompted to brainstorm improvements for the LifeStraw, sparking creativity and critical thinking.

A hallmark of STEM Scouts is providing career exploration; we are fortunate that this module lent well to two local field trips that enhance our STEM Scouts’ appreciation of inventing.

The National Inventors Hall of Fame museum resides in the USPTO HQ in Alexandria, VA. There scouts are able to explore exhibits such as “What is a counterfeit” and see the crowd favorite “50 years of innovation mustang”.

The Draper Spark! Lab at the National Museum of American History offers scouts interactive exhibits to try their hand at inventing – creating circuits, constructing pinball machines, designing costumes, etc. In fact, the Spark! Lab has an excellent bite size “inventing process” that helped guide scouts through the ideating process. All scouts walked out of our third meeting with sketches and an early model of their inventions made with supplies we had in lab (clay, pipe cleaners, recyclables). A few came back to their subsequent meetings with elaborate working models! We can’t wait to see these STEM Scouts’ future as inventors!