Hitchcock Center for the Environment

Our mission is to educate and to inspire action for a healthy planet.

We envision a world where people, communities and ecosystems thrive.

Goal One: Build greater internal capacity to deliver high-quality climate change, sustainability, and environmental justice education in school and community settings.

Goal Two: Leverage the Center’s building and grounds as a resource for learning in and from nature.

Goal Three: Build a more diverse, equitable and inclusive organization.

We strive to recruit and retain a diverse staff and build a strong culture of inclusion. We have recently convened a Task Force to develop and implement a comprehensive and ongoing DEI strategy for programs, staff training, operations, HR practices, communication, and governance. We are increasing professional development opportunities for staff so that they can perform with the highest level of knowledge and expertise.

On March 13, 2020, the Hitchcock Center temporarily cancelled over 100 programs and closed its doors to the public due to the pandemic. In the hectic weeks that followed, our extraordinary Board and staff were determined that we would find new ways to educate and to inspire action for a healthy planet in the midst of a pandemic. Thanks to the support or our community, in the spring we were able to pilot four newly developed virtual school field trips with nine classrooms in western Massachusetts. These field trips will continue to be an essential resource for elementary schools seeking to maintain high quality standards-based STEM education for their students in the academic year. And in the summer, we began offering over 50 all-outdoor, in-person, small-group programs that serve children and families members. Given the economic strain that so many are facing, we created a new sliding scale fee structure that is sensitive to our families in financial needs. In the fall we began to help schools with their reopening plans. We are provided workshops for teachers in the best practices of using their schoolyard for improved outdoor STEM education. We planned a variety of programs for children—some in-person and some virtual—to support their education and social-emotional development. We developed a comprehensive fall environmental and outdoor program plan to help families fill the gaps of the new online and hybrid school models that districts across the state adopted.