E-Letter responses to:

editorial: Alan I. Leshner Outreach Training Needed Science 2007; 315: 161 [Summary] [PDF]

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Published E-Letter responses:

Scientific Research Practice for High School Students

Peter Csermely   (28 March 2007)

You've made my day!

David J. Lally   (23 March 2007)

Science Outreach by STEM Students

Steve A. Ackerman, Sharon Dunwoody, Robert D. Mathieu   (23 March 2007)

Thank you

Erin L. Dolan   (27 February 2007)

Scientific Research Practice for High School Students 28 March 2007
Peter Csermely, Professor of Biochemistry, Network Scientists Semmelweis University, Department of Medical Chemistry, P. O. Box 260, H-1088 Budapest, Hungary Respond to this E-Letter: Re: Scientific Research Practice for High School Students	I completely agree with Alan I. Leshner (1) on the necessity of broadening outreach programs. On the basis of ten years of experience of a successful movement in Hungary and worldwide [www.kutdiak.hu; www.nyex.info (2)], scientific research training for high school students not only restores the broken bridge between science and society, but also provides challenges to harness the increased risk-taking behavior of adolescents (3). The best practice of outreach programs is to utilize the adolescent’s intense drive. To achieve the exploration of the unknown, we have to offer real scientific research opportunities in top research teams. We cannot motivate teenager students, with their highly developed critical sense, with secondhand science. Attendance should be based on self-motivation, and students should be made aware that their excellence will be achieved and recognized by reaching higher levels of sophistication based on their continuous, high-level work. The project should offer nothing more than the joy of discovery, be free of charge, and offer no financial compensation. To help students explore novel social circles (4, 5) of the greater society, their project has to be personal. Students must be treated as equal members of the research team. The intensity of the contact must be strong enough to provide the excitement of personal involvement, but must also be moderate enough to allow freedom, which is a newly found treasure of this age. The activities must remain playful, build on volunteer work, and avoid any type of bureaucracy to allow multiple approaches. Establishing teacher-student research teams is very helpful in providing another novel setting of social structures. The students must be encouraged to be self-organized and be offered opportunities for promotion to give them yet another dynamic area of social challenge. To appropriately channel adolescent competition , students must have access to feedback through presenting their findings in conferences, essay contests, Web sites and journals. Professional scientists should discuss their findings with them, and peer control should also be allowed. This serves their need to be competitive and presents yet another exciting social setting for them to cope with the challenges of novel interactions with others. As an added value the increased risk taking ability of teenagers (3), their questions, and their ideas may lead their mentors to unexpected discoveries. References 1. A. I. Leshner, Science 315, 161 (2007). 2. K. Powell, Nature 442, 865 (2006). 3. P. Csermely, EMBO Rep. 4, 825 (2003). 4. M. Granovetter, Am. J. Sociol. 78, 1360 (1973). 5. P. Csermely, Weak Links: Stabilizers of Complex Systems from Proteins to Social Networks (Springer, Berlin, 2006).
You've made my day! 23 March 2007
David J. Lally, Coordinator for the Partnership for Research and Education in Plants Virginia Tech Respond to this E-Letter: Re: You've made my day!	Thank you very much for your insightful commentary. Many scientists typically respond to public disaffection with science with calls for better education of teachers or a better curriculum, as if all that was lacking was a more illuminating explanation of the issue at hand. In contrast to a healthy dialogue, they take a posture of "you're mistaken, let me explain it to you more clearly," without realizing how terribly arrogant and condescending they appear. As the coordinator of an outreach program, I interact with over a thousand high school students a year, engaging them in genuine scientific experiments, and conveying the excitement of being a part of one of the greatest scientific revolutions in human history. Typically, students come up to me after our discussions and thank me with great sincerity for my visit. It doesn't take an emotional savant to realize that they are not simply thanking me for giving them a clearer explanation about functional genomics or reverse genetics. What I walk away with each time is the sense that they appreciate just that I've taken the time to come and interact with them, to listen to them, and to convey that they are worth my time. It is incredibly satisfying work and I count myself fortunate every day that I get to do it. I was drawn into this work as an NSF GK 12 Fellow and I am allowed to continue it through an NIH/NCRR Science Education Partnership Award; precisely some of the programs you mention. They deserve our continued support. I am also fortunate to work with some of the excellent scientists that you mention who enthusiastically share their work with the public. I often find that though they initially express concern about the time commitment, they find it takes very little time, after all. Their small commitment not only makes a big impact on the students and teachers that they interact with, but they also gain a sense of accomplishment and a new perspective on the way they practice science and educate their students. If we don't support scientists in their efforts to convey their discoveries to the public, not only will we diminish the success of science as a whole, but we'll also take from them one of the most satisfying experiences of being a scientist. Thanks again for your support.
Science Outreach by STEM Students 23 March 2007
Steve A. Ackerman Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Sharon Dunwoody, Robert D. Mathieu Respond to this E-Letter: Re: Science Outreach by STEM Students	In his 12 January 2007 Editorial, A. Leshner issued a clarion call to members of the scientific community to improve outreach to society through, among other strategies, better training of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students. As individuals involved in such training, we write to endorse Dr. Leshner’s strong stand on behalf of “public engagement” as a training goal and to suggest that outreach skill-building need not compromise the rigor of a STEM graduate program. We will illustrate these points by describing a training structure that has been successfully road-tested at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. First, though, we think it important to support Dr. Leshner’s argument that outreach training must go beyond public education to focus on public engagement. We have ample evidence that the “to know us is to love us” assumption underlying many public understanding efforts is not realistic. We need to encourage STEM students to embrace the difficult work of bringing the public more fully into discussion of science issues and, ultimately, into the resolution of those issues. The challenge, of course, is how to help students grapple with this complex landscape. And that leads us to our UW-Madison example. The NSF-funded Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) is providing resources for building a community of faculty, postdoctoral students, graduate students, and staff who are dedicated to developing effective learning practices for diverse audiences (http://www.cirtl.net). Now in its fifth year and comprising a network of universities nationwide, CIRTL created a prototype program to prepare graduate students and postdocs for high-quality careers as both researchers and teachers. That program, called the Delta Program in Research, Teaching and Learning (http://www.delta.wisc.edu), is an interdisciplinary learning community that allows students to layer onto their disciplinary research training an array of courses and workshops that, with a modest additional outlay of time, can provide the kind of outreach skill-building sought by Dr. Leshner. Student demand for these training experiences has grown steadily; in the past three years, nearly 300 students and postdocs have taken advantage of Delta offerings. The Delta experience is teaching us not only that STEM students will take advantage of these opportunities but also that frontline STEM faculty will actively endorse and even provide such preparation. One of those Delta courses, “Informal Science Education for Science Students: A Practicum,” has been designed with public engagement—not just public understanding—in mind. First offered in 2003, the course (1) is team-taught by research-active STEM and social science faculty. While it asks students to begin to build communication skills, as do many informal education offerings around the country, it accomplishes this goal through the lens of audience. Students drawn to the experiential activities offered by the course find themselves challenged to explore the beliefs and attitudes of people they seek to inform; to take into account the diversity of culture, experience, and knowledge among those whom they will encounter; and then to actually interact with those individuals in real-world communication settings. For example, this spring, students will design interactive science demonstration stations for a day-long science fair. By engaging in evaluative research from beginning to end, these students are encouraged to question their assumptions about others, to begin to explore the sometimes cryptic links between information and learning, and, ultimately, to operationalize the concept of public engagement. Student enthusiasm for this kind of learning is not enough, of course. We still encounter STEM students who confide that they took our informal education course without telling their advisers, fearing they would be punished rather than rewarded for their efforts. So Dr. Leshner is right to worry about the geologic speed of reward system change in science. But we think CIRTL and Delta offer an effective and realistic roadmap to building public engagement motives and skills among students and post-docs for whom research remains a priority. We encourage other universities to take Dr. Leshner’s message to heart and consider options that would fit their particular cultures. Notes 1. We offer a guidebook that details our experience in teaching our informal education course. You can get this guidebook from the authors or at http://www.cirtl.net.
Thank you 27 February 2007
Erin L. Dolan, Assistant Professor Virginia Tech Respond to this E-Letter: Re: Thank you	Dear Dr. Leshner, I can't thank you enough for articulating the need for scientists to have "genuine dialogue with our fellow citizens." Most education-related essays and articles, even those included in the Education Forum of Science, focus on increasing science comprehension. Although this is part of the equation, as you note, "the problem is not merely a lack of scientific comprehension." I would like to encourage, even challenge, Science to consider publishing work in its Education Forum that demonstrates a reinvention of how scientists interact with the public. Thanks again for your timely and insightful editorial. Best wishes, Erin Dolan