People

Lover of the outdoors, summer sun, and lettuce.

Rocco cultivates leadership in environmental education among SFI’s Network. His work advances SFI’s mission by enhancing existing relationships and seeking new partnerships that increase understanding and appreciation of forests and sustainability.

Nicole Ardoin is an associate professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University. She is also Stanford's lead researcher on the eeWORKS initiative in partnership with NAAEE. Professor Ardoin´s research focuses on environmental behavior as influenced by environmental learning and motivated by place-based connections. In particular, she is interested in considerations of geographic scale, which is an understudied yet crucial aspect of people-place relationships in a rapidly globalizing, urbanizing world. Professor Ardoin has current studies on the use of education, communications, and other social strategies in informal and community-based settings, including nature-based tourism programs, to engage individuals and communities in deliberate dialogue, environmental decision-making, and informed conservation behavior.

Professor Ardoin also researches the effectiveness of a range of environmental education and social science endeavors in achieving measurable and meaningful conservation results. To this end, she conducts evaluations with informal organizations, including museums, zoos/aquariums, parks, and residential environmental education programs, with an emphasis on using innovative, non-traditional metrics and adaptive management approaches. She is also interested in philanthropic support of environmental education and emergent trends in the field of environmental education research.

I am a former intermediate school teacher. Currently I teach in a faculty of education educating and training future science and environmental education teachers. I am married and a father of four children. We live in rural Ontario. I enjoy hiking, cycling, art, music, philosophy, and gardening.