Tanya Cienfuegos-Baca

Because Colorado is highly dependent on its mountain streams, Cienfuegos-Baca has developed a science and social studies-based program, "Establishing Environments", to teach her 45 sixth-grade students how stream flow creates rivers and to help the students understand erosion, deposition, and the effect of flooding and a dam on floodplains. They will also spend time at Colorado State University's Pingree Park Campus in the Rocky Mountains where they will learn first-hand about watershed, understanding the changes and effects on the ecosystem due to water flow, discharge, dams, canyons, valleys, tributaries, animal and human affect. Students will be expected to, at the conclusion of the program, design a project that demonstrates the impact the environment has on its local culture and also demonstrate an understanding of how the local community and agriculture depends on the environment. The students will ultimately be able to explain how and why civilizations chose specific locations to settle and how humans have impacted these environments. Cienfuegos-Baca lives in Wellington.