This year’s Student GREEN Congress will be held Thursday, March 19th 2026 at The Evergreen State College! Information will be emailed soon about how to register, additional important dates, and more!
Student GREEN Congress is held every spring at The Evergreen State College in partnership with South Sound GREEN and the Chehalis Basin Education Consortium. This is an incredible opportunity for students to present their own scientific data, explore a college campus, and learn from natural resource professionals in the community. This event is the culmination of two water quality monitoring days where students are able to compare data collected and brainstorm ways to improve their local rivers and streams. Each class that participates in water quality monitoring is eligible to send 8 delegates to Congress.
Preparing Your Students for Congress
Here are some materials you can use to prepare your students for their Congress presentations. These presentations should be 3-5 minutes long and should cover the information found in the Student Delegate Prep Sheet (see below). We will email you a personalized presentation template link once you have registered. If you would like assistance in getting your students ready, please just give us a call! We can help!
- Student Prep Sheet: This sheet helps students gather all the necessary info to create their presentation for their State of the Rivers Session. It corresponds slide-by-slide to the template we will send you once registered.
- Map of water monitoring sites: This map shows all of our testing locations and data from previous years.
- October’s WQ Data (Note: at sites where we had multiple groups testing, we used an average. If your class’s data is slightly different, feel free to use whichever dataset you prefer!)
- February’s WQ Data (Note: at sites where we had multiple groups testing, we used an average. If your class’s data is slightly different, feel free to use whichever dataset you prefer!)
Past Congresses
The 32nd Annual Student GREEN Congress was on March 20th, 2025 at The Evergreen State College. The keynote presentation this year was John “The Falconer” who brought his amazing animal ambassadors to meet the students. 449 students from 33 different schools were in attendance. Workshops from this year including designing your own water filter, investigating oysters, and much more!
The 31st Annual Student GREEN Congress was held on March 25th at The Evergreen State College. This year’s keynote was Dana Lyons, an incredible environmental songwriter! After the show, the 400+ students divided into State of the Rivers sessions to discuss their water quality findings with their peers. This year’s workshops included watercolor scientific illustration, composting with worms, and more!
The 30th Annual Student GREEN Congress took place on March 23, 2023 at The Evergreen State College and featured an incredible keynote performance from Luz Gaxiola! You can watch a recording of the keynote here. 429 students from 23 different schools were in attendance. Workshops from this year included investigating the medicinal properties of native plants, practicing surgery on a banana, and many more!
Our 29th Annual Student GREEN Congress was our first Congress to include a third watershed- the Chehalis Basin! Virtual events took place over the week of March 14th, and included a digital StoryMap and printable journal to analyze water quality data, and a keynote on March 17th featuring Emily McCartan and Jack McDermott from Long Live the Kings! (You can watch the recorded keynote here.) There were also plenty of virtual workshops, including an owl pellet dissection! (More workshop links to come later!)
Our 28th Annual Student GREEN Congress was also our first Virtual Student GREEN Congress! This Virtual Student GREEN Congress took place during the week of March 15th-19th, 2021, and included a digital Story Map and printable journal to analyze water quality data, and a keynote presentation on March 18th featuring Carri LeRoy, ecologist from the Evergreen State College! (You can watch the recorded keynote here.)There were also multiple live and pre-recorded workshops to attend, ranging from dissecting an owl pellet to investigating the medicinal properties of local trees!
Our 27th annual Student GREEN Congress was held March 21st 2019 at The Evergreen State College. 387 students from 28 different schools participated! All students were part of State of the Rivers sessions, where they discussed their water quality data with peers from other schools. We had over 100 volunteers and local natural resource professional help make this a meaningful, fun event for students. Our keynote speaker was Billy B, the Natural Science Song and Dance Man, who uses catchy tunes and fun dances to teach about the natural world. Read more about this Congress in this blog post.
Student GREEN Congress 2018 was Thursday, March 22nd, 2018. This year’s keynote and closing will feature the work of Killer Whale Tales, a 501 (c) 3 environmental education program that uses storytelling and field based science to inspire students to take an active role in the conservation of Southern Resident Killer Whales and their habitat! This will be an excellent compliment to your Water Quality Monitoring Field Investigations! Teachers, click here to access your 2018 Student GREEN Congress materials!
On March 23rd, 2017, the Nisqually River Education Project (NREP) and South Sound GREEN (SSG) hosted the 25th annual Student GREEN Congress at the Evergreen State College! This year, over 400 students represented their school in a morning “State of the Rivers” session, sharing water quality data and developing action plans to improve water quality in their communities. In the afternoon, they attended educational workshops: salmon carcass dissections, making bird boxes, getting up close with stream bugs, shellfish tasting, Native American storytelling, nature journaling, fly casting, live raptors, and much more. Our 25th Anniversary is a special opportunity to recognize those who work to keep the spirit of environmental stewardship alive and recognize the importance of hands-on, science-based learning. Students were welcomed to the event by Washington State Governor Jay Inslee, who prepared a video address, and Maia Bellon, director of the Washington Department of Ecology. The keynote speaker was Gene Tagaban, a member of the Takdeintaan clan, who also known as “One Crazy Raven.”