By Every Independence Day, Denver’s Park Hill neighborhood lines its streets with families, flags, lawn chairs, and homemade signs for one of the city’s most beloved community traditions. This year, the 16th Annual Park Hill 4th of July Parade will have something a little different marching down the route: a celebration of community science.
Caroline Nickerson, a communications specialist with Colorado State University’s Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory (NREL) and CitSci.org, will walk the parade as Ms. Doctorate Colorado 2026. She’ll be representing the message at the heart of her platform: anyone can do science.
She’s inviting the whole CSU community to walk alongside her. Faculty, staff, students, alumni, families, and friends are all welcome to join the CSU/CitSci parade group, carry signs, wave to the crowd, and help spread the word about how anyone can take part in science.
Sign up to walk in the parade →
What Is Ms. Doctorate Colorado?
The Ms. Doctorate title recognizes women who have earned doctoral degrees and who put that education to work beyond the classroom, lab, or office. Titleholders choose a platform, a cause they champion throughout their year.
Caroline’s platform is citizen science: research that opens its doors to everyone. As Ms. Doctorate Colorado 2026, she’s spending the year talking about public service, community-based research, and the many ways people with advanced degrees can serve the public good.
Meet Caroline
Caroline Nickerson is a communications specialist with CSU’s Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory and CitSci.org. She writes and shares stories about environmental research, public participation in science, and community-driven projects, with a focus on making science easier to understand, easier to join, and more connected to the communities it serves.
She earned her Ph.D. in Agricultural Education and Communication from the University of Florida, where her research focused on climate change communication. She also holds a Master of Public Policy from American University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida.
Beyond CSU, Caroline is the co-founder and Executive Director of Florida Community Innovation, a nonprofit that supports student-led civic technology and research projects. Across her work in public information, environmental communication, and social services, she helps communities use research to solve real problems.
Citizen Science: Research Anyone Can Join
Citizen science is research that anyone can join. A volunteer might photograph wildflowers on a weekend hike, count and categorize the litter they pick up at a park cleanup, watch the evening sky for unusual clouds, monitor the soil in a community garden, or help classify images for researchers from their living room couch. Individually, these are small acts. Collected together, they become datasets that researchers could never assemble alone, spanning more places, more seasons, and more years than any single lab could cover.
Communities benefit too. Citizen science gives neighborhoods a way to investigate their own questions, pick up new skills, and see their everyday observations matter to something bigger.
CitSci.org, based at Colorado State University, makes all of this possible by helping researchers, educators, students, and community groups create and manage their own citizen science projects. Thousands of people use the platform to gather data, ask questions, and share findings.
Three Projects You Can Join Right Now
For her Ms. Doctorate Colorado platform, Caroline is spotlighting three CitSci.org projects, each one open to anyone with a little curiosity.
Leave No Trash turns ordinary cleanups into environmental data. Participants collect litter in parks, neighborhoods, campuses, and along trails, then record what they find and where they find it. Over time, those records build a clearer picture of what kinds of trash show up in shared spaces and how often, information that can help communities prevent litter rather than just clean it up. The project works well for families, classrooms, scout troops, and community groups looking for a hands-on way to care for local places.
On certain summer evenings, long after sunset, thin electric-blue clouds can appear shimmering at the edge of space. These are noctilucent clouds, the highest clouds in Earth’s atmosphere, and scientists are still working to understand them. Space Cloud Watch invites volunteers to watch the sky and report when and where they spot these rare clouds. Those observations help atmospheric researchers track a phenomenon that satellites alone can’t fully capture.
Healthy soil is easy to overlook and impossible to live without. It grows our food, filters our water, supports entire ecosystems, and stores carbon that would otherwise warm the climate. The 2FP Resilient Soils Project brings participants and partners together to collect information about soil health and the land stewardship practices that protect it, building a clearer picture of what resilient soil looks like and how to keep it that way.
Join the Parade on July 4
CSU personnel, students, alumni, families, and friends are all invited to march with Caroline and the CSU/CitSci group through Park Hill on the morning of July 4. No experience is necessary. Walkers will carry signs, wave to the crowd, and talk with neighbors about ways to get involved in citizen science.
Sign up to walk in the parade →
Once you register, we’ll send you the details: arrival time, meeting location, what to wear, and everything else you need for parade day.
The 16th Annual Park Hill 4th of July Parade is an event of Greater Park Hill Community, Inc. and runs entirely on the generous support of its community sponsors.
Then Celebrate at CSU Spur
After the parade, keep the holiday going at CSU Spur’s Fourth of July Party from 5:30 to 9 p.m. The family-friendly evening features BBQ and drinks, lawn games, kid-friendly activities, and an outdoor DJ, all capped off with views of the Denver skyline as the fireworks light up the night.
CitSci.org Blog 