Cam Mackenzie - Winner of the Australian Association for Environmental Education's Educator of the Year 2011

Cam Mackenzie, 2011 National Australian Environmental Educator of the Year Award winner.

A founding member of the Australian Association for Environmental Education (AAEE), Cam has made a substantial contribution to environmental education making an impact at the local, state, national and international levels.

As a principal of three environmental education centres for twenty four years, Cam designed and delivered hundreds of environmental educational programs for thousands of students. Cam helped the students, their teachers and families learn more about ecological systems, their management and how our everyday decisions and choices can have an impact on the environment.

In 2003 Cam moved to head office of the Department of Education and Training, or what he calls “the Big Shed”, working as a Principal Advisor (Environmental Sustainability), enabling him the opportunity of sharing his experience.  Cam used the opportunity to establish
the Queensland Environmentally Sustainable Schools Initiative (QESSI) which is
an alliance of government, non-government and businesses that focus on collaboratively supporting schools to become more environmentally sustainable.  QESSI hubs are actively involved in the delivery of the Earth Smart Science Initiative today, helping 1000 Queensland State Primary Schools to become more sustainable.  During 2010, Cam managed the Year of Environmental Sustainability for all Queensland Schools.

Cam is recognized as an authority in environmental education, has been invited to guest lecture at universities, is in demand to participate on judging panels including the prestigious Banksia Environmental Awards, was appointed by the Premier as Education Queensland’s representative on the Brisbane Forest Park Advisory Board, and nominated as Education Queensland’s representative on the National Environmental Education Network (NEEN).  During his work with NEEN Cam was significantly involved in the development of the National Environmental Education Statement for Australian Schools – Educating of a Sustainable Future.

As a member of the National Council of Education for Sustainability (NCES), that advised the Federal Minister for the Environment, Cam was involved in the negotiations with the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) around the transfer of the Melbourne Declaration’s reference to embedding the concept of environmental sustainability into the Australian curriculum. This ultimately resulted in establishing sustainability as a cross curriculum priority in all learning areas of the new Australia curriculum, underlining the importance of the environmental education.

Whilst the Australian representative on the international Environment and School Initiatives (ENSI) network, Cam was able to illustrate to an international audience the quality environmental education curriculum and sustainable schools concepts that Australia has achieved over the past decade. In addition, Cam was able to investigate best practice curriculum, teaching and learning processes from around the world and present these to the Australian educational community, both government and non-government.

As a leader in environmental education, Cam has held a range of roles in government and non governmentorganisations, and is currently Vice President of AAEE, and was Co-host of the recent World Environmental Education Congress held in Brisbane earlier this year.

Cam’s contribution has been recognized not only by his peers at AAEE as the 2011 Environmental Educator of the Year but Cam was also awarded the 2011 Australia Day Achievement Medal for “Outstanding service to the government andcommunity of Queensland in the area of Environmental Education and Sustainability”, andthe Greening the Boardroom Award by the United Nations Association of Australiafor “Service to strategic approaches to environmental education in the Queensland Government” presented by the Governor of Queensland, Quentin Bryce in 2006.

           

With a career spanning 30 years Cam has put to work his background in Applied Science and Education to make a difference to Queensland’s environment through educating students, teachers and the community about managing our natural resources wisely and how sustainability can simply mean, “enough, for all, for ever”.


Australian Association for Environmental Educators Members are invited to join Cam to celebrate his career, our recent World Environmental Education Congress hosted in Brisbane, and the great work of our members on the weekend of Nov18th - 20th November.
For more details, contact qldchapter@aaee.org.au