The Da Vinci Science Center will expand its Women in Science and Engineering Network by partnering with community organizations, colleges, and universities to enhance the STEM learning and support ecosystem for women and girls in the Lehigh Valley and surrounding communities in eastern Pennsylvania. The museum will assess the needs of K-12 girls, undergraduate women, and women in STEM employment, and map opportunities for cross-sector collaborations to support them. The project team will identify marketing and recruitment messages that encourage STEM-interested girls and women to participate in programs and follow developmental pathways within a STEM learning ecosystem. Based on identified needs and messages, the museum will pilot and evaluate new STEM programs for girls and women, and train educators and mentors to sustain this work.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Karen Knecht
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
There is a significant under-representation of women in STEM which is damaging societal progress for democratic, utilitarian, and equity reasons. However, changing stereotypes in STEM requires a solution denied by the problem — more visible female role models. Science communicators are critical to curate the conditions to bypass this Catch 22. We propose that enhancing self-efficacy for female scientists and engineers to mentor others will generate more supportive workplaces. Similarly, enhancing self-efficacy for public engagement improves the visibility of diverse female role models for
The employment demands in STEM fields grew twice as fast as employment in non-STEM fields in the last decade, making it a matter of national importance to educate the next generation about science, engineering and the scientific process. The need to educate students about STEM is particularly pronounced in low-income, rural communities where: i) students may perceive that STEM learning has little relevance to their lives; ii) there are little, if any, STEM-related resources and infrastructure available at their schools or in their immediate areas; and iii) STEM teachers, usually one per school, often teach out of their area expertise, and lack a network from which they can learn and with which they can share experiences. Through the proposed project, middle school teachers in low-income, rural communities will partner with Dartmouth faculty and graduate students and professional science educators at the Montshire Museum of Science to develop sustainable STEM curricular units for their schools. These crosscutting units will include a series of hands-on, investigative, active learning, and standards-aligned lessons based in part on engineering design principles that may be used annually for the betterment of student learning. Once developed and tested in a classroom setting in our four pilot schools, the units will be made available to other partner schools in NH and VT and finally to any school wishing to adopt them. In addition, A STEM rural educator network, through which crosscutting units may be disseminated and teachers may share and support each other, will be created to enhance the teachers’ ability to network, seek advice, share information, etc.
This poster was presented at the 2019 AISL PI Meeting, and describes the the ongoing research questions and goals of the Ute STEM Project, which explores the integration of the traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) of the Ute Indians of Colorado and Utah and Western science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
The is the poster presented at the 2019 AISL PI Meeting about a project that explored ways to create conversations between scientists and publics that both groups value and learn from. The content focus was the emerging field of synthetic biology and two methods were developed. Hands-on activities like those developed and distributed by the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network were developed but with the twist that each activity was designed to stimulate a conversation about societal implications of various applications of synthetic biology. Scientists and science students were trained
The Multi-Site Public Engagement with Science—Synthetic Biology (MSPES) initiative was an Innovations in Development project funded by the National Science Foundation (DRL-1421179) through the Advancing of Informal STEM Learning program (AISL). MSPES promoted public engagement with science (PES)—a model of mutual dialogue and learning between public and scientist audiences—through the creation and distribution of PES kits to nearly 200 informal science education sites around the country. Kits included two types of learning experiences: (1) forum programs during which scientists and teen or
Public engagement with science (PES) is about dialogue between scientific and technological experts and public audiences about societal questions that science can inform but not answer. In making decisions about these kinds of societal questions, social values and personal experience play roles equal to or greater than the one played by science. Rather than focusing exclusively on science itself, PES focuses on discussing problems that communities view as worth solving; the information society needs and wants from scientists; the potential risks, benefits, and consequences of new technologies
Scientists (and engineers) wishing to conduct public engagement do so in the context of established disciplinary norms and complex institutional systems that may support or limit their success. This report seeks to convey the known complexity, unique challenges, and opportunities for universities to better support for scientists in their public engagement work. The report is intended to drive discussion towards deeper exploration and development of actionable next steps.
This is a report from Workshop III: Academic Institutions, part of the Support Systems for Scientists' Communication and
Underrepresented minorities (URMs) are less than 10% of engineering faculty, despite comprising nearly a third of the nation's population. A common explanation for their disproportionate representation, at the engineering faculty level, is related to a lack of access to effective mentorship from other faculty. This NSF INCLUDES Design and Development Launch Pilot project will expand a new mentoring and advocacy-networking paradigm to bring together two stakeholder groups: (1) underrepresented minorities (URMs) who are engineering faculty and (2) well-regarded (primarily non-URM) emeriti/retired engineering faculty. A previously-funded NSF project found that this mentor-mentee pairing was viewed favorable by both parties and beneficial, particularly by the URM engineering faculty. Because of these results, the investigators proposed to scale, test, and evaluate the approach on a broader scale by creating national infrastructural network partners to help increase capacity to serve a greater number of URM engineering faculty and to introduce tele-mentoring and training models to serve URM faculty who work in remote geographical locations with very little access to mentors.
The project will use a multi-phased phenomenological, mixed method research design to gain greater understanding of the ways in which the URM faculty and emeriti faculty experience the opportunities afforded by the project. Further, the investigators plan to collect data to examine how project participants perceive and experience conventional, direct communications (e.g., telephone calls, e-mail, and in-person meetings)through the mentoring process versus the use of Embodied Conversational Agents (ECAs), anthropomorphic interface agents that engage a user in real-time dialogue by using verbal-nonverbal channels to emulate the in-person experience. This project has the potential to broaden participation in the engineering professoriate and opens up new possibilities for supporting URM engineering faculty.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Comas HaynesValerie ConleySylvia MendezKinnis GoshaRosario Gerhardt
resourceprojectProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) will continue its collaboration in providing to early- and mid-career scientists and engineers experiential professional development and public service fellowships via the AAAS Science and Technology Fellowship Program. Consistent with the immersion model adopted by AAAS, Fellows at NSF will be selected annually through a competitive process and placed in organizations throughout the Foundation. Fellows will work with NSF staff on a broad range of activities in order to gain insight into how national science and technology policy goals are translated into and reflected by NSF's mission and strategic goals and how and by whom national science and technology policy is driven, shaped and prioritized. NSF fellowship assignments are designed to: educate and expose Fellows to NSF programmatic planning, development and oversight activities in all fields of fundamental research via hands-on engagement; utilize the Fellows' expertise on projects that apprise NSF officials in areas of mutual interest to the Fellow and the host organization; and provide developmental opportunities to inform future career decisions. The program includes an orientation on executive branch and congressional operations, as well as a year-long suite of knowledge- and skill-building seminars involving science, technology and public policy within the federal as well as NSF contexts.
In the long-term, the AAAS Fellowship program seeks to build leadership capacity for a strong national science and engineering enterprise. Upon completion of the Fellowship, Fellows will have gained: a broader understanding and increased insights about the development and execution of federal-level science, technology, engineering and mathematics policies and initiatives as well as how policy and science intersect; enhanced skills in communicating science to support policy development; and a greater capacity to serve more effectively in future leadership roles in diverse environments, including public and policy arenas, academia and the private sector. The ultimate outcome of the Fellowship program experience -- policy savvy science and engineer leaders who understand government and policymaking and are well-trained to develop and execute solutions to address the nation's challenges.
This report presents the findings from the summative evaluation of the Multi-Site Public Engagement with Science project (MSPES), funded by an NSF AISL award. MSPES aimed to bring together public audiences and professional scientists through “Building with Biology” programming - public events and forums centered on the topic of synthetic biology. The goal was to promote meaningful, two-way dialogs around this area of science, which is rapidly advancing and raising interesting social and ethical questions. The project team sought to move beyond a traditional "public understanding of science"
The Montana Girls STEM Collaborative brings together organizations and individuals throughout Montana who are committed to informing and motivating girls to pursue careers in STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The Collaborative offers professional development, networking and collaboration opportunities to adults who offer and/or support STEM programs for girls and other youth typically under-represented in STEM. The vision of Montana Girls STEM is that every young person in Montana has the opportunity to learn about STEM careers and feels welcome pursuing any dream they
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Suzi TaylorRay CallawayCathy Witlock