The NASA Innovations in Climate Education (NICE) program currently supports seventy one educational projects and is supported by the Virginia Space Grant Consortium (VSGC) which provides program incorporation by building a community of climate educators. VSGC also provides access to NASA educational resources and data.
The NASA NICE program awarded fourteen new projects this year under the MUREP/IGGCE with the goal of increasing the number of underrepresented/underserved college students who are:

• Prepared to teach climate change content
• Prepared for employment and/or to enter graduate school in technical fields relevant to global climate change
• Able to advance the understanding of how to effectively teach global climate change concepts

A one day workshop was conducted by VSGC in Raleigh, North Carolina on October 12th, 2011 to assist this new set of PI’s. This was a time for introductions between the NASA and VSGC management teams and the PI’s. During this workshop subjects such as project recording, evaluations requirements, product review process, and website usage were covered.

As a new PI with this program, Dr. Linda Hayden, Director of the Center of Excellence in Remote Sensing Education and Research (CERSER) at ECSU, attended this workshop. ECSU has joined with the University of New Hampshire for a project titled: "Engaging Minority University STEM Education Professionals in the Science of Climate Change." This program seeks to empower faculty of education programs at Minority Serving Institutions to better engage their pre-service teachers in teaching and learning about global climate change through the use of NASA Earth observation sets.