The Rhode Island Marine and Environmental (RIME) GK-12 project is a collaboration between the University of Rhode Island's (URI) Graduate School of Oceanography (GSO) and Office of Marine Programs (OMP) and four Rhode Island school districts. RIME GK-12 program places graduate students from ocean and environmental sciences into Rhode Island K-12 classrooms. We place 12 Fellows each year in K-12 classrooms where they spend a minimum of 10 hrs per week engaged in classroom activities. The project introduces Fellows and Teacher Partners to a wide range of innovative pedagogy and trains the Fellows to translate their content knowledge into inquiry based activities for students. It also empowers teachers to become confident in conducting inquiry activities and taking groups of students out into the field independently. The project also seeks to enrich the quality of students' lives by providing role models, improving their science literacy, and motivating them with knowledge of global issues.

The RIME GK-12 project accomplishes these goals by immersing the Fellows for 3 weeks in science education pedagogy. Then the Teacher Partners attend a 3 week summer institute where the Fellows deliver ocean and environmental science content and lead field exercises involving coastal, estuarine, and fresh water ecosystems. During the institute, the Teacher Partners instruct the Fellows in classroom management, student assessment, and curriculum implementation. The teams produce academic plans for integrating the Fellows and relevant science content into the school year. A URI faculty member mentors each Fellow and makes two visits each year to their Fellow's K-12 classroom. The Faculty Mentors, Fellows, and Teacher Partners convene for a mini-institute each April to build partnerships, assess the goals of the project, and investigate national and state science education and instruction standards and inquiry based pedagogy.