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)
