Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Meeting Minutes - Feb 8th - Outreach

General Summary 8 Feb 2012 Meeting:
At this meeting we discussed our involvement in outreach activities, heard from Judy Scotchmoor about the UCMP outreach and education program, and heard about the upcoming Expanding Your Horizons conference at UC Berkeley on March 3rd.  (http://www.expandingyourhorizons.org/conferences/EYHBERKELEY/)

(Much more after the break!)


1.     Introductions – who you are, outreach activities
a.     Outreach opportunities from meeting attendees:
                                               i.     Professional organizations: WIS groups, Society of Conservation Biology, SICB
                                              ii.     CalDay
                                            iii.     Expanding Your Horizons
                                            iv.     Basis – Bay Area Science in Schools
                                              v.     Discrete events at schools
1.     Dinner with a scientist
2.     Fieldtrips
3.     After school programs
                                            vi.     Society of Women and Science for undergrads
                                           vii.     Lawrence Hall of Science
                                         viii.     Girls Inc
                                            ix.     International opportunities during fieldwork
                                              x.     GEMS afterschool club
                                            xi.     NSF GK-12 fellowships
                                           xii.     Mentoring high school students
                                         xiii.     Community in the Classroom
                                         xiv.     Museum outreach (UCMP, Essig)
                                           xv.     Prison University project
                                         xvi.     IB communicating science course (biannual?)
                                        xvii.     Science fairs
                                      xviii.     MARE (NOAA COSSEE)
                                         xix.     Website outreach (ex: Understanding Evolution, research blogs)
                                           xx.     Learning Ally (voice recordings of text books)
                                         xxi.     Berkeley Science Review (science writing)
                                        xxii.     Boy Scouts/Girls Scouts
                                      xxiii.     Science at Cal
                                      xxiv.     RETs – Research Experiences for Teachers (CalBlast)
                                        xxv.     Flat Stanley (children’s book, cutout character that travels around the world)
b.     Judy Scotchmoor, Director of Outreach at the UCMP, introduces herself
                                               i.     Female scientists – valuable commodity
                                              ii.     Different types of outreach activities:
1.     Single events – Dinner with a Scientist, CalDay
2.     School outreach
3.     Outreach organizers here at Cal (Science at Cal)
a.     Monthly meetings (CEOs – coordinators of education and outreach)
                                                                                                     i.     Good way to find out different outreach activities
                                                                                                    ii.     WIS outreach could attend
b.     Flat Stanley – easy way to get involved in outreach
                                                                                                     i.     Coming back this year!
                                            iii.     Judy’s story:
1.     UC Berkeley undergrad (major in BioSciences)
a.     Faced adversity in career advising
2.     Middle school teacher
3.     Went on a dig with EarthWatch, reignited interest in doing science
4.     Took sabbatical, volunteered at UCMP as fossil preparatory with Mark Goodwin, started organizing teacher workshops
5.     Created temporary outreach position at UCMP that was extended!
6.     Has gained numerous grants and done teacher education, web outreach, etc… at UCMP
c.      Girl Scouts – 100th anniversary; looking for scientist outreach volunteers
d.     Professional Societies – many have education committees (consider participating)
2.     Outreach as an alternative career
a.     Historically, anti-outreach attitude in higher education
                                               i.     Broader Impact criteria for grants
                                              ii.     Anti-science movement has galvanized people into recognizing that communicating how science works is important to counter confusion
                                            iii.     Shift in who is doing outreach – more scientists are participating directly in outreach
                                            iv.     Informal science world – invent a job/niche for yourself
1.     Not a lot of money (both salary and grants)
2.     Science communication
3.     Use of technology
4.     Multiple languages
5.     Conversation/networking are key to creating these sorts of jobs
a.     Being involved in professional societies
b.     Meeting people during outreach activities
                                              v.     Long term commitment – take a project and expand it
                                            vi.     Get a diversity of experiences with a variety of audiences
                                           vii.     Better term for outreach – focus on it as ways to educate many different audiences
3.     Conversion of scientist focused communication to outreach!
a.     Leave the powerpoint at home – bring something interactive
b.     Don’t talk too much yourself!
c.      Know your audience (visit classrooms)
d.     Figure out what you are passionate about, share what you do
e.     Talk about HOW you do your science, how you’ve adapted your science, how you failed and had to come back and do it a different way (students don’t get to see this in the classroom)
4.     Judy and Betsy – GBIO – Graduate Student Broader Impact Opportunities
a.     Obligation of the university to enrich how graduate students communicate about science
b.     CalBlast – 4 IB grad students ; work with elementary school teachers to make them more confident in science
                                               i.     5 day summer institute
                                              ii.     Hires 4 grad students each year (paid for 2 months of summer salary, work intermittently)
1.     Earth sciences and physical sciences
5.     Expanding Your Horizons
a.     Conference – annual day of workshops geared toward the STEM fields
                                               i.     Graduate students/Professionals
                                              ii.     20 workshops (each girl attends 3)
                                            iii.     250-300 girls in grades 7-9
b.     Saturday, March 3rd
c.      Introduce middle school students to different scientific fields
d.     Two ways to help:
                                               i.     In kind donations:
                                              ii.     Day of labor (email Maya DeVries)