Wen-Feng Chang, Taiwan EPA

Wen-Feng Chang

Department of Comprehensive Planning, Environmental Protection Administration, ROC (Taiwan)

Wen-Feng serves as a coordinator in environmental education at the Department of Comprehensive Planning, EPA Taiwan.  She was the main contact coordinator for IEP environmental education programs from 2014 to May 2019, including GEEP and KMS programs. Also she was in charge of the US-Taiwan Eco-Campus Partnership Program from 2014 to June 2022.

She is now in charge of the Demark-Taiwan environmental education partnership & environmental caring designs competition program.  Wen-Feng is also responsible for a national environmental volunteer contest planning and statistics, collaboration EE programs with other government sectors, and EE programs of Taiwan local governments.

 

Ya-Ling Chang

Environmental Project Manager, Global Environmental Enhancement Incorporation

Ya-Ling is a passionate and dedicated environmental educator with a marine ecology and environmental management background. She is also a well-trained instructor for the global and native overfishing teaching module (for middle and elementary school students) in Taiwan. Recently, her animal artwork has been exhibited as part of a large EE campaign in October 2017 in Taiwan.

Ya-Ling has conducted ecological investigations in mangrove forests and witnessed serious water pollution. She realized how the animal population changes in various polluted regions from the river to the ocean. With this experience, her concern for the environment and what she learned from the lab made her start to emphasize the importance of knowledge transfer from scientists to the public. She began trying to solve environmental problems by understanding more about environmental communications to people and society.

After graduating from University of Queensland with her MS of Environmental Management, she worked in a lab focused on the health of coral reef and coastal impacts. In addition, she helped train students as “Coral Ambassadors” to represent Taiwan and to visit the U.S. as part of an exchange program for middle school students. Her great achievement was conducting the application work for the National Environmental Education Award and helping the National Marine Museum earn the top honor. She believes that carrying out quality EE and promoting people’s awareness of marine biodiversity are the keys to success in environmental conservation.

Ya-Ling's work is now focused on EE policy and strategy for the Ministry of Education (MOE). In this role, she has brought a selected team of top EE promoters (principals and teachers) from Taiwan, as representatives of the Ministry of Education, to go abroad to Korea as part of an exchange program with Korean principals, teachers, and nature centers. In addition, she is part of an initiative to promote EE in schools by systematically linking it to the National Curriculum, and to extend the insights of EE teaching in regard to social, economic, political aspects for different learning stages of school children. Since the mechanism and law for school EE already exists, she aims to upgrade the strategy for designing basic through advanced levels of EE and to help all the counties and cities build their recognition of their land and environment.

David Chang

Environmental Health Coordinator, WE ACT for Environmental Justice

A native to San Francisco's southeast region, David first became exposed to environmental injustice in parks closest to his home. Unlike the parks he would frequent for soccer tournaments or weekend picnics in the city's northwest, David found himself a victim of crime across several parks just blocks from his house. These parks were unsafe, lacked maintenance, and too often seemed disregarded. In 2004, David joined the Inspiring Young Emerging Leaders Program at the Crissy Field Center where he laid down roots in environmental education, stewardship, and environmental justice.

Ten plus years later, David continues to follow in the steps of his mentors at the Crissy Field Center. His passion is to empower those he works with to speak up about issues they are facing and to ensure that their voices are heard. He has developed multilingual environmental education programs, incorporated advocacy/political education components into said programs, set up town hall meetings and events with elected officials, and used citizen science/community based participatory research to strengthen campaigns. As the Environmental Health Coordinator at WE ACT for Environmental Justice, David manages a ten week educational course titled the Environmental Health and Justice Leadership Training Program, liaises between WE ACT and its academic partners to translate environmental health research back to the community, and organizes the Healthy Homes Campaign where he sits on steering committees for two coalitions: Asthma Free Homes and Stand for Tenant Safety. With WE ACT, David also served as a judge for the National Environmental Health Association Innovating for Environmental Health App Challenge and is currently a member of the American Public Health Association's - Environmental Health Coalition.

Prior to working at WE ACT, David collected qualitative data around park usage as a social assessment field researcher for the NYC Urban Field Station. He also led environmental education and stewardship programs for the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department as well as the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. As a result of these programs, the parks he once found to be unsafe and underserved are now in the hands of various volunteer groups and youth who share a role in helping to improve the parks on weekends and on monthly cleanup days. David holds a BA in Environmental Studies/Biology from UC Santa Cruz and an MA in Environmental Conservation Education from NYU

Kevin Chang

Tzu-Chau Chang

Tzu-Chau (T.C.) Chang

Professor Chang Tzu-Chau got his PhD in Science Education from Cornell University, and served as the executive secretary of the Environmental Protection Division of the Ministry of Education of Taiwan to coordinate national environmental education programs in 2008-2012. He is a professor at Graduate Institute of Environmental Education of National Taiwan Normal University and his research focuses on the infusion of Environmental Education into the national curriculum framework, and the implementation and impact of Taiwan Environmental Education Act. He also serves as the director of the Chinese Society of Environmental Education, and works with the government on developing environmental education teaching materials and promoting Education for Sustainable Development. Professor Chang participated in GEEP meetings in 2015, 2016, and 2018.