Community voice, alongside academic voice, is essential to the core community engagement principle of reciprocity—the seeking, recognizing, respecting, and incorporating the knowledge, perspectives, and resources that each partner brings to a collaboration. Increasing the extent to which academic conferences honor reciprocity with community members is important for many reasons. For example, community perspectives often enhance knowledge generation and potentially transform scholarship, practice, and outcomes for all stakeholders. However, community presence and participation at academic
The University of Guam (UOG) NSF INCLUDES Launch Pilot project, GROWING STEM, addresses the grand challenge of increasing Native Pacific Islander representation in the nation's STEM enterprise, particularly in environmental sciences. The project addresses culturally-relevant and place-based research as the framework to attract, engage, and retain Native Pacific Islander students in STEM disciplines. The full science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) pathway will be addressed from K-12 to graduate studies with partnerships that include the Guam Department of Education, Humatak Community Foundation, Pacific Post-Secondary Education Council, the Guam Science and Discovery Society, the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) and the University of Alaska-Fairbaanks. As the project progresses, the project anticipates further partnerships with the current NSF INCLUDES Launch Pilot project at the University of the Virgin Islands.
Pilot activities include summer internships for high school students, undergraduate and graduate research opportunities through UOG's Plant Nursery and the Humatak Community Foundation Heritage House. STEM professional development activities will be offered through conference participation and student research presentations in venues such as the Guam Science and Discovery Society's Guam Island-wide Science Fair and SACNAS. Faculty will be recruited to develop a mentoring protocol for the project participants. Community outreach and extension services will expand public understanding in environmental sciences from the GROW STEM project. Project metrics will include monitoring the diversity of partners, increases in community engagement, Native Pacific Islander participation in STEM activities, the number of students who desire to attain terminal STEM degrees and the number of community members reached by pilot STEM extension and outreach activities. Dissemination of the GROWING STEM pilot project results will occur through the NSF INCLUDES National Network, partner annual conferences, and local, regional and national STEM conferences.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
John PetersonCheryl SanguezaElse DemeulenaereAustin Shelton
In this paper I use the concepts “understanding of science” and “appreciation of science” to analyze selected case studies of current science communication in Denmark. The Danish science communication system has many similarities with science communication in other countries: the increasing political and scientific interest in science communication, the co-existence of many different kinds of science communication, and the multiple uses of the concepts of understanding vs. appreciation of science. I stress the international aspects of science communication, the national politico-scientific
This conference project features two gatherings of scientists, science educators, and other experts, as well as the development of a web site, list-serv, and related activities. During the gatherings, participants will explore how to build state-based programs that can engage people who are incarcerated in sustainability science programming. This work builds off of the success of the Sustainable Prisons Project, which has connected people who are incarcerated in Washington State with science through direct involvement in conservation research, and responds to calls from scientists and corrections staff interested in implementing similar programming in other states. The project will help advance the informal science education (ISE) field by potentially leading to high impact activities for a truly underserved population; building capacity among ISE professionals; and building knowledge and a replicable model of supporting non-traditional collaborations that serve the needs of people underrepresented in STEM.
This evaluation reports on the Mission: Solar System project, a 2-year project funded by NASA. The goal of the Mission: Solar System was to create a collection of resources that integrates digital media with hands-on science and engineering activities to support kids’ exploration in formal and informal education settings. Our goal in creating the resources were: For youth: (1) Provide opportunities to use science, technology, engineering, and math to solve challenges related to exploring our solar system, (2) Build and hone critical thinking, problem-solving, and design process skills, (3)
This poster was presented at the 2014 AISL PI Meeting in Washington, DC. It describes a project that creates incubators composed of community members to foster innovative solutions to regional challenges.
The Gertrude Stein Repertory Theatre (doing business as the Learning World Institute), in collaboration with informal science education venues, universities, and corporations in Chicago, San Diego, and Washington, D.C., is organizing a set of three professional conferences and a web site to encourage stronger national and local communities of practice around the application of arts-based learning (ABL) to informal science education. Arts-based learning is the instrumental use of artistic skills, processes, and experiences to foster learning in non-artistic disciplines. The goal is to apply ABL to informal science education in ways that can foster the acquisition of STEM skills that are important in today's workforce. The set of conferences, with a total attendance of 750, will focus on an understanding of current and potential ABL applications to workforce skill development, opportunities to practice ABL directly, and creation of a research agenda on the impact of ABL on science education. The web site (funded through other sources) will help conference attendees prepare for the workshops, provide opportunities for networking, aggregate resources, and host the research agenda.
Science communications proficiency is an important skill for STEM graduate students but is not a typical part of STEM graduate education nationally. At the institutions that do offer such science communications training, instructional approaches are highly variable, reflecting an absence of standards and evaluation metrics. The workshop will 1) inventory science communications training for STEM graduate students nationally, (2) identify high effective practices in science communications training with attention to curriculum, approaches, and evaluation, and (3) define a roadmap that gives concrete recommendations to university administrators and funding agencies for national implementation and scale-up of science communications training. The workshop will involve IGERT PIs, science communications trainers, science communications researchers, and individuals from national agencies and organizations with a high interest in STEM graduate student communications training. Products of the workshop will include a white paper to NSF that identifies best practices for science communications training and specifies a roadmap for national scale-up of effective practices; publications in the peer-reviewed literature and other media; and briefings of officials at organizations with capacity to foster changes in graduate education (e.g., NSF, Council of Graduate Schools, and AAAS).