Science belongs everywhere. Although informal science learning typically takes place in the bright spots of society—our museums, botanical gardens, and science centers—some science educators are creating programs for individuals who live in the darker parts of our communities, such as prisons. Over 2 million people are in prison in the United States, with a national recidivism level of over 70%. Yet men and women who are incarcerated can also participate in science learning and contribute to conservation projects.
Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo (WPZ) has more than 700 active adult and teen volunteers, the majority of whom spend much of their time speaking with guests out on grounds. Despite the thousands of contacts volunteers have with guests every year information about these interactions has so far been limited to measuring the frequency of these interactions and how they rate along a few customer service variables, such as friendliness and availability. In addition, many of these past measurements have grouped staff and volunteer engagements together, making it challenging to understand the role that
Water for Life (WfL) is a full scale development youth and community based program; centered on freshwater literacy, water conservation and rainwater harvesting led by the Pacific Resources for Education Learning (PREL) in Hawaii. The goals of the project are to: (a) promote an understanding of water conservation and stewardship in areas lacking adequate quality water supplies and (b) build local capacity among rural communities to develop and employ site specific freshwater harvesting strategies proven to improve water quality. Rural communities within four Pacific Island entities in the U.S. affiliated Freely Associated States (FAS) will participate in WfL activities. PREL is collaborating with a host of organizations (such as the Federated States of Micronesia National Department of Education, Marshall Islands Conservation Society, and the Micronesian Conservation Trust, etc.) to develop and implement all phases of the initiative. This work is already improving the quality of life for hundreds of people in the FAS through water conversation education and improved water quality in local areas. Working closely with site-embedded PREL staff, Core Teams at each site - consisting of 4-6 local leaders from environmental agencies, water/sanitation systems, and education institutions - participated in a 5-day professional learning immersion in May, 2013, to buld capacities to develop and facilitate water conservation and catchment activities at the four target sites in the FAS. The Core Team members at each site now are recruiting and collaborating with local community members to implement site-specific projects that both educate and provide enhanced access to high quality drinking water. Both adults and youth are now engaging in a spectrum of proejcts that address loca needs and priorities through site-specific service learning activities. The site-specific focus in each locale, determined by the local Core Team, is distinct. In Palau, the Core Team has built broader community awareness of water conservation issues, raised the issue of water security in national conversations, engaged remote communities in improving natural rainwater drainage collection systems, and produced youth-oriented educational materials focused on local sites. In Yap, the Core Team members have collaborated with public utilities to install first-flush diverters into community rainwater catchment systems on Yap proper, and now are installing these devices in rainwater catchment systems on Yap's neighbor islands. In Chuuk, groundwater springs in remote communities are being upgraded for improved storage capacity, protection against contamination, and better public access. In Majuro (RMI), public school rainwater catchment systems are being repaired, repainted, cleaned, and upgraded so that schools can and will provide adequate drinking water to students (and to broader segments of the community during droughts). Broad segments of communities, including school classes and clubs, church and civic groups, etc. are becoming increasingly involved in building better water security and resilience for their communities, in preparation for a predicted drought, predicted to hit in the winter of 2014-2015, brought on by an El Nino event now edevelopig in the eastern Pacific. Water for Life has produced a range of locally relevant educational materials, including books, pamphlets, flyers, etc., some in English and others in local languages. Posters and billboards are being produced to enhance and maintain public awareness. Infrastructure projects are enabling better collection of more, higher quality water for drinking. A full-scale water handbook is under development, and this will serve as a basis for a self-contained water 'course' that will be offered through local community colleges. The experiences of project participants are being captured, analyzed, and reported in front-end, formative, and sumative evaluations conducted by David Heil & Associates. Thousands of individuals, comprising large segments of the participating countries' populations, will be directly impacted by the project. The results will be applicable to other remote and rural communities outside of the Pacific distressed by poor water quality and ineffective freshwater harvesting systems.
This Full-Scale Informal Science Education award focuses on the physical and social science surrounding the extraction of natural gas from the Marcellus shale formation beneath the surface in north central and western Pennsylvania. The project targets the adult residents of the impacted or soon-to-be-impacted areas of Pennsylvania. This is a complex project involving the disciplines of geology, engineering, chemistry, social science, performance, and land management. Further, the project team includes a mix of physical scientists, educators, theater arts faculty, social scientists and engineers from Pennsylvania State University, the Pennsylvania State Cooperative Extension Service, and Juniata College. The project addresses several potential barriers to communication of science to the public. The proposal team provides four entry points for citizens of rural Pennsylvania to engage in learning about energy, its needs in the Nation, the economics behind these needs, the geology of the shale deposit and how to have productive discussions and make decisions using science-based evidence. The project will engage a multitude of communication mechanisms such as forums, community meetings, theater performances, data centers, blogs and workshops. The Pennsylvania State Extension will play a central role in working at the local level. The project is a complex effort wherein the residents of north central and western Pennsylvania will learn about the science and policies of natural gas extraction and how to derive and use scientific information for decision making. The proposal team will learn how to work and communicate with rural citizens. Further, the team will derive a variety of models from these activities that are likely to be adaptable for use in other areas of the Nation that have natural gas deposits.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Michael ArthurDouglas MillerJo BrasierRenae Youngs
This report summarizes the evaluation results from the NSF funded Eight-Legged Encounters family event that uses arachnids as a hook to draw public interests towards science. The event involves informative and hands-on activities that bridge the gap between academia and the public, extending knowledge about arachnids to children and their parents. The Bureau of Sociological Research (BOSR) at UNL was contracted to evaluate Eight-Legged Encounters. The data collection for this report involves five events and three audiences: adults, children, and the volunteers of the event. Two events were
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TEAM MEMBERS:
University of Nebraska LincolnEileen Hebets
This report provides background information about the Flathead Watershed, the people responsible for funding the project and an depth description of Phase I, the Delphi Survey. The report includes participant information, methodology, data acquisition and findings.
This final report summarizes the findings from three summative evaluation activities conducted by Serrell & Associates and the Oakland Museum of California with visitors to the newly renovated, reinstalled, and reinterpreted Gallery of California Natural Sciences in April and July 2014: the stay-time study, the cued questionnaire study, and the personal connections study.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Serrell & AssociatesBeverly SerrellMary T. Faria
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting held in Washington, DC. The project creates a STEM ecosystem in a severely under-resourced urban community. The Chicago Zoological Society, which operates Brookfield Zoo, is expanding a community partnership with Eden Place Nature Center in Chicago’s Fuller Park Neighborhood and offering a full suite of environmental science learning opportunities for teachers, youth, families, and adults. A research component is led by the University of Illinois at Chicago.
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting. In this NSF International Research Experiences for Students project MSU students will travel to the Altai Republic and work with faculty and students at Gorno-Altaisk University to conduct research related to native language use in learning ecological sciences in informal settings.
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. It highlights the goals, audience, outcomes, and lessons learned for a pathways project to develop a model for producing scientific news reports in a variety of media formats on a range of topics of keen interest to rural and Native American communities in Montana. Cultural differences and geographic isolation influence opportunities to provide STEM content to these communities, yet these communities are facing perplexing decisions about exploitation of their environmental resources. The poster highlights the successes of
BioTrails is a project of the MDI Biological Laboratory in collaboration with the National Park Service and the Schoodic Education and Research Center Institute, and is supported by an award from the National Science Foundation (DRL-1223210). The goal of the project is to establish practices for combining public participation in scientific research (citizen science) with DNA-based species identification (DNA barcoding) to scale-up and improve the accuracy of research projects that monitor animal and plant species in the sea and on land as they respond to climate and environmental changes. Once established through this project, the BioTrails team will expand the model to other national parks and long-distance trails, paving the way for engaging more citizen scientists in more places to understand, monitor, and manage biodiversity in a changing world.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Mount Desert Island Biological LaboratoryKaren JamesBill ZoellickAbraham Miller-Rushing
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting held in Washington, DC. The goal of the project is to establish practices for combining public participation in scientific research (citizen science) with DNA-based species identification (DNA barcoding) to scale-up and improve the accuracy of research projects that monitor animal and plant species in the sea and on land as they respond to climate and environmental changes.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Mount Desert Island Biological LaboratoryKaren James