I sponsor an environmental club for 6th-8th graders at Marie Murphy School in Wilmette. Our club is interested in researching an endangered species in the area and sponsoring a community awareness campaign about that species. What is the best way to go about doing this research and what resources (people, programs, government agencies, web-based, etc) would you recommend we investigate?

This sounds like a great project. If you haven't already decided which species the group wants to learn about and increase awareness about I would suggest going to http://dnr.state.il.us/espb/ where you can find a list of T&E species by county. Once you have decided on a species, I would recommend making contact with biologists at the Illinois Natural History Survey http://www.inhs.illinois.edu/organization/ and with Chicago Wilderness http://www.chicagowilderness.org/ I can help direct you to appropriate INHS biologists once you know which species is of interest to the students.