Are you spotting animals migrating south and the colors of fall leaves? The weather has been unusual this year in many parts of the U.S. Does this mean seasonal changes in nature will be different as well? We won't know unless we collect the data. Your Research Missions this week are three projects, listed below, that help document the timing of seasonal changes.

SciStarter helps people learn about, and get involved in, research projects and we are excited how the community of enthusiastic, curious citizen scientists is expanding rapidly with no end in sight. Now, we're thrilled to announce a partnership with the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) that will make it easier for teachers and students to jump in and make a difference too.

Through our partnership with the NSTA, more than 400,000 educators will be presented with hundreds of curated, grade appropriate projects selected from the SciStarter project finder.

“With this partnership, NSTA equips teachers and their students to contribute to real science research,” says Gerry Wheeler, Interim Executive Director. “Our members are looking for authentic science to help study and explore the world, but it can be difficult for them to know where to begin. Now we’ll be offering projects vetted, sorted and aggregated by SciStarter to NSTA’s vast network of K-12 educators and science supervisors, as well as to the thousands of online visitors to the NSTA website.”

“The NSTA has tremendous credibility in the science education community and every week reaches over 400,000 educators. The projects available through SciStarter offer opportunities to engage students in real formal and informal research projects to learn by doing. In turn, their participation will be invaluable to researchers,” adds Darlene Cavalier, Founder of SciStarter.

To get us started, SciStarter contributor Peter Madden, presents this 3rd annual Back To School Citizen Science Projects post. Researchers and team leaders interested in featuring science projects on the NSTA website are encouraged to submit them to the SciStarter Project Finder for consideration by the SciStarter editors.

And because the start of school typically is also the start of cold and flu season, consider volunteering with the Health Tracking Network, a citizen science project that Dr. Devon Brewer describes in Help find ways to prevent the common cold and flu! – a post on the SciStarter Blog.

Reminder: Calling all researchers and science team leaders! Are you looking for citizen science volunteers to help with research? SciStarter brings projects and people together. If you’d like your project featured, submit it to the SciStarter Project Finder for consideration by the editors.

Would you like to contribute to the SciStarter blog? If so, email Dr. John Ohab, Director of Community Engagement: john@scistarter.com. Would you like your project featured in the SciStarter Newsletter? If so, email Dr. Lisa Gardiner, Editor: lisa@scistarter.com.

Keep experimenting!