QuarkNet is a national program that partners high school science teachers and students with particle physicists working in experiments at the scientific frontier. These experiments are searching for answers to fundamental questions about the origin of mass, the dimensionality of spacetime and the nature of symmetries that govern physical processes. Among the experimental projects at the energy frontier with which QuarkNet is affiliated is the Large Hadron Collider, which is poised at the horizon of discovery. The LHC will come on line during the 5-years of this program. QuarkNet is led by a group of teachers, educators and physicists with many years of experience in professional development workshops and institutes, materials development and teacher research programs. The project consists of 52 centers at universities and research labs in 25 states and Puerto Rico. It is proposed that Quarknet be funded as a partnership among the ESIE program of EHR; the Office of Multidisciplinary Activities and the Elementary Particle Physics Program (Division of Physics), both within MPS; as well as the Division of High Energy Physics at DOE.
DATE:
-
TEAM MEMBERS:
Mitchell WayneRandal RuchtiDaniel Karmgard
AAAS describes public engagement with science as intentional, meaningful interactions that provide opportunities for mutual learning between scientists and members of the public. Through the Alan I. Leshner Leadership Institute for Public Engagement with Science, AAAS empowers scientists and engineers to practice high-impact public engagement by fostering leaders who advocate for critical dialogue between scientists and the public and lead change to enable their communities, institutions, and others to support public engagement. This report, with additional work on understanding mechanisms for
Like many who started out as an ‘assistant curator’, I came to work in museums after years of academic study. Evolving some and swapping other habits formed whilst at university has mostly suited my aptitudes and appetites. But a puzzle emerged: how might I hang on to the invigorating, indeed intoxicating practices of research? After a quarter century of being involved with projects that attempted working solutions to this museological conundrum, the following speculations outline a more considered response. On taking over as its director, Ian Blatchford bravely criticised previous decades of
A public event series, “Ecohumanities for Cities in Crisis,” will bring humanities scholars and the public together in Miami, FL to discuss the tension between humans and nature over hundreds of years. Miami is on the verge of an environmental crisis from a warming planet and rising seas. As the region grapples with policy and science issues, humanities scholars have a unique role to play. The project will frame humanistic discussion about urban environments, risk, and resilience. The centerpiece is a public forum in March 2016 which includes a plenary of scholars from diverse humanities disciplines, a walking tour, and a panel on diversity and justice in environmental advocacy. There will be five subsequent public programs through the Fall 2016, an on online archive of all events, professional development activities for high school teachers, a graduate public environmental history course, and a curated museum exhibit.
The field of informal science learning and communication is comprised of many sectors—after school programs, science center exhibitions and programs, television and film, print and new media, to name just a few. Each of these is understood to make unique contributions, present unique opportunities, and require unique support. Science Live began with the observation that it is time to similarly acknowledge the practice of live public science events.
Public science events are live, in-person programs designed to engage publics with science in a social context that is at least as meaningful as
This poster was presented at the 2016 Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) PI Meeting held in Bethesda, MD on February 29-March 2. Earth Partnership: Indigenous Arts and Sciences (IAS) refines a model for integrating Indigenous and Western STEM education utilizing a 10-step framework for ecological restoration, project-based learning, and professional development. Through community dialogues and a collaborative design process with Native Nations of Wisconsin, Earth Partnership is developing an Indigenous Arts and Sciences approach that has allowed Native participants to voice their insights
This poster was presented at the 2016 Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) PI Meeting held in Bethesda, MD on February 29-March 2. The project fosters participatory science learning in rural agricultural communities.
The project is supported under the NSF Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability Fellows (SEES Fellows) program, with the goal of helping to enable discoveries needed to inform actions that lead to environmental, energy and societal sustainability while creating the necessary workforce to address these challenges. Sustainability science is an emerging field that addresses the challenges of meeting human needs without harm to the environment, and without sacrificing the ability of future generations to meet their needs. A strong scientific workforce requires individuals educated and trained in interdisciplinary research and thinking, especially in the area of sustainability science. With the SEES Fellowship support, this project will enable a promising early career researcher to establish herself in an independent research career related to sustainability. This project builds upon Resiliency Theory and theories of applied community participation to explore two specific contexts of participatory communication (i.e., processes of collective learning and shared meaning) at the science-society interface: (1) adaptive co-management meetings in New Mexico and Oklahoma, and (2) existing education efforts by drought scientists at two Great Plains universities (Oklahoma State University and University of Nebraska-Lincoln). A mixed methods approach (including, household surveys, oral histories, key informant interviews, and pilot tests) will model community-partnership capacity for drought adaptation in Cimarron (OK) and Union (NM) Counties, and assess the impact of community-academic partnerships on drought literacy and adaptive capacity across the Great Plains. Research in adaptive co-management meetings and interactive media (as contexts for participatory communication between scientists and citizens) provides the context for innovative case study research on the role of public communication about science in community drought adaptation.
Collaboration in case study research with Host Mentor Vadjunec and outreach efforts with Partner Institution Mentor Thomas (UNL) offers a unique opportunity to research the intersections of participatory communication and scientific literacy about the human and climatic drivers of extreme drought. The core research questions addressed by this proposal are, (1) What formal and informal pathways, players, and partnerships exist for participatory communication between scientists and citizens about drought vulnerability and adaptation, (2) How does communication about drought risk and recovery inform the effective diffusion and translation of drought literacy efforts in the Great Plains, and (3) How can we design forums and spaces for sustained interaction (i.e., engagement and collective learning) between stakeholders involved in adaptive drought communication? The project objectives uniquely related to advancing research at the intersections of sustainability science and education are, (1) to identify dimensions of community and partnership capacity for drought education and pathways of adaptive drought communication across scales, (2) to advance dynamic participatory models which assist in the adaptive co-management of water resources in local communities (i.e., increasing citizen-science dialogue, mobilizing community leaders, and fostering the drought education partnerships), and (3) to design and measure the success of drought literacy efforts based on inputs from sustainability scientists at various stages of community decision-making. The adaptive drought co-management workshops in NM and OK provide spaces for stakeholder interaction, which may lead to new approaches, innovations, and learning outcomes for communities in those regions. Outreach partnerships with UNL maximize dissemination of user-friendly and culturally-relevant drought outreach products, including a project website to consolidate scientific knowledge about drought in the Great Plains and interactive media templates. Interdisciplinary collaborations and research findings will inform efforts in academic community partnerships for sustainable practices across many NSF-supported disciplines.
This poster was presented at the 2016 Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) PI Meeting held in Bethesda, MD on February 29-March 2. At 6 national parks, project partners recruit scientists to be part of professional development for park rangers; create a visual library to support STEM learning; bring park rangers up to speed on the scientific research; research the impact of iSWOOP on programs for visitors; and investigate how iSWOOP fuels or sparks visitors’ interest.
Chemistry plays a critical role in daily life, impacting areas such as medicine and health, consumer products, energy production, the ecosystem, and many other areas. Communicating about chemistry in informal environments has the potential to raise public interest and understanding of chemistry around the world. However, the chemistry community lacks a cohesive, evidence-based guide for designing effective communication activities. This report is organized into two sections. Part A: The Evidence Base for Enhanced Communication summarizes evidence from communications, informal learning, and
Interest in the possible role for comedy as a medium for communicating and engaging the public in science is growing. However, current research has so far been restricted to exploring whether the content of scientific knowledge is accurate and precise within comedy, and whether the public might be said to understand science better for having watched it. In this commentary, I suggest that this approach neglects the diversity with which scientific ideas and images are used in comedy, particularly when comedy is written without the explicit goal of communicating science. I present my current
This poster was presented at the 2016 Advancing Informal STEM Learning (AISL) PI Meeting held in Bethesda, MD on February 29-March 2. Native Universe (NU) was designed to build institutional capacity in leadership and practice among scientific museums, in order to increase public understanding of environmental change and the human relationship to nature from Indigenous perspectives, while also providing access to science as practiced in the established scientific community.