(New York, N.Y. – August 12, 2014) Darelis Flores, an elementary school teacher at The School of San Juan in San Juan, Puerto Rico, was honored today at a White House ceremony for winning the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Presidential Innovation Award for Environmental Educators which recognizes outstanding academic approaches to environmental education.

In a study published in Critical Inquiry in Language Studies scientists at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayagüez looked at bilingual literacy in Puerto Rico, a country where instruction is predominantly in Spanish and science teaching at the college level often involves the use of both English and Spanish. The authors found professors used three main strategies: using mostly Spanish and English when referring to technical terms; using bilingual teaching materials and diagrams; and assigning English-language readings but discussed them in Spanish.

Dr. Mónica Feliú-Mójer didn’t know she could be a scientist until she was in college. Born and raised in the small town of Vega Alta in Puerto Rico, Feliú-Mójer was passionate about exploring the natural world as a girl, but her K-12 science classes did not make direct links between her local environs and the scientific concepts covered. It wasn’t until she met her first real scientist, biology professor Dr. Agnes Martínez Lahoz at the University of Puerto Rico in Bayamón, that her idea about what she could do in the world changed.