Who We Are  What We Do  Get Involved

With the conclusion of the New York World Science Festival on June 1 and the Cambridge Science Festival in April, there has been a lot of conversation about science festivals in the air. Science has a very natural fit in the cultural landscape of our communities and magnetizes a broad array of science-fascinated people—it seemed like a natural fit to highlight a few samples in this month’s Clarion. Science Festivals began in Europe and have been spreading there for many years. In another blog posting, COPUS Steering committee member Lee Allison found himself in the midst of Germany’s “Smartest Night of the Year” and inspires us to think about what an event like this would look like in our own Nations capital.

Café Scientifiques, another activity inspired by our European colleagues, have been a growing grassroots phenomenon across the globe. In the US much of the growth of this network has been cheered on by our colleagues at WGBH Educational Foundation in their support of the network of “Science Cafes.” This past weekend was marked by the 2008 Science Café conference, generously hosted by WGBH Educational Foundation in their hometown, Boston. The event was a tremendous success bringing together people with a wide variety of backgrounds to talk about what a Science Café is, how it works, and why they matter. Unlike Science Festivals which are relatively new in the US science scene, Science Cafes have been weaving their way into the fabric of our communities for several years now. They are an extremely effective tool for engaging new audiences because the secret ingredient is fun and they all have one thing in common—they communicate science in a manner that is lively, interactive, and informal.

Café organizers see themselves as “A bunch of people who are passionate about science and sharing it because we love it”! Many of the organizers worked for museums and science centers, but others that were included an entrepreneur, who was investigating a business model that involved community investment as a variable in his business equation. He astounded participants as he boasted of having successfully organized nearly 60 cafes in a single year! Other organizers had unexpected target audiences—after school teachers for professional development, senior citizens, inner city kids — one even sought to entice tourists!

I can’t encourage you enough to connect with the Cafes happening in your community, and if there isn’t one in place - start one. There is a toolkit that will be available soon to help you get through the first two hurdles - finding a venue and promoting the event. After that your biggest problem will likely be turning people away because of a packed house and having too much fun

I’m flying back from Germany, where I fortuitously happened to finish a conference the day before the “Long Night of Science,” also known as the “Smartest Night of the Year.”

Saturday night, June 15, from 5 pm until 1 am the next morning, the cities of Berlin nearby Potsdam and some smaller local communities hold hundreds of events - lectures, demonstrations, tours, discussions, and activities to celebrate and engage the community in science.

One directory of activities is 240 pages long. In small print. There were posters and banners up everywhere in the cities. Brochures and flyers fill kiosks and information racks next to others on local tourist destinations. Banners flew from every university. My conference was on the famous Telegraph Hill area in Potsdam that has been a center of science and research since the earliest days of the nation. Germany’s equivalent of a national laboratory for geology (GFZ) is based there, along with the Einstein relativity lab and other facilities. We got a sneak preview of some of the events and activities planned which they said drew thousands every year,

I happened to be in the Friedrichstrasse train station (bahnhof) at just before 5 pm on Saturday and discovered a large information booth for the festival, staffed with four people who were scrambling to answer questions, restock the bins with brochures, hand out balloons and sell tickets. Yes, the science night tickets cost 10 euros (about $16) but it does include bus and subway fares as well. While I watched, a constant stream of travelers queued up for information and tickets.

What an invigorating environment - being in a nation’s capitol where the biggest thing on a cool summer evening is discovering and enjoying the process, successes, and benefits of science.

The scientists at GFZ and their colleagues looked on the night for the public as a natural and rewarding part of their commitments as scientists.

I don’t know if we could ever hope to engage the American public as well, but I have a vision now of what it might look like if we could.

Blog posting contributed by: M. Lee Allison, PhD, PG
State Geologist & Director
Arizona Geological Survey
416 W. Congress, #100
Tucson, AZ 85701
520-770-3500 fax-3505
www.azgs.az.gov

Greetings fellow COPUS participants! The Society of Physics Students is happy to announce the creation of a COPUS Student Hub, a nationally distributed peer community interested in building bridges between their members, the national Coalition, and regional hubs to increase student understanding of and engagement in science. Your organization is invited to participate in this hub.

The idea for this hub was seeded a few months ago when I attended a meeting of COPUS participants that had started or were thinking of starting COPUS hubs, peer communities interested in building bridges between their members and the national Coalition. Some active hubs were represented, such as the Tampa Bay area regional hub, and others of us were still in the exploratory phase.

During that weekend-long experience I caught a glimpse of the potential of this Coalition. In discussions with representatives from science museums, science cafes, schools, and a variety of other organizations, I realized that there were many opportunities for collaborations and resource sharing between our members and these other organizations, opportunities that weren’t even on my radar!

We are optimistic that the Student Hub will foster this same spirit of collaboration. There are many student-focused organizations working toward similar goals of advancing science and science literacy, and this hub is a great way to bring them together.

At its core, the hub is about facilitating communication among organizations focused on students and enhancing their science experience. As in the national Coalition, there is no cost to participate in the hub, and the level of involvement is up to you. In fact, it is up to the hub participants to define what the hub will look like and its priorities.

For more information about the COPUS Student Hub and its’ plans, as well as the Society of Physics Students, please contact me, my information is:

Kendra Rand, Program Coordinator
Society of Physics Students
One Physics Ellipse
College Park, MD 20740-3843
Tel: 301.209.3047
Fax: 301.209.0839
E-mail: krand@aip.org
www.spsnational.org

I hope you will take some time to explore this opportunity and contact me with your questions, ideas, and interest.

Sincerely,
Kendra Rand

Relevant Links:
COPUS: www.copusproject.org
Hubs: www.copusproject.org/thematic_hubs.php
Society of Physics Students: www.spsnational.org

This email came today from one of our fantastic hub liaisons in Boston, Natalie Kuldell of the MIT Department of Biological Engineering. I thought others might enjoy hearing about their great kick off event.

Hi Sheri— If folks are looking for ways to jumpstart their regional hubs, I can highly recommend what we tried here in Boston. Just a few weeks ago we kicked off our regional hub with a meeting at a brewpub. We picked a place that was not too far for any of our “hubbies” to travel to. We also picked a place that wasn’t the “home institute” for any of us (me, Ben and Marie who are coordinating the Boston area hub) since we strongly feel that the hub doesn’t belong to any single participant. Email invitations went out about 2 weeks before the event, asking folks to stop by the brewpub between 4 and 6, to meet one another and share a little information about what’s happening at their organizations. At the event, we had a few nametags, a few copies of the latest COPUS Clarion and a list of the YoS2009 monthly themes. We socialized most of the time but did take about a 1/2 hour out to go around the room to say who we are, why we joined COPUS and how we’d like to see the hub work. One of the most surprising things to come from the gathering (at least surprising to us, the organizers) is how much there is going on in our area and yet how little effort has been made in the past to cross-promote and inform each other of these programs. So now we have two more mixers planned, one for July and another for September. We have lots of folks eager to share and coordinate their efforts and there’s a real sense of collaboration and sharing among us. So as I said at the start, if folks at other hubs are looking for ways to launch, I would highly recommend a face-to-face kickoff event at a brewpub or some other social place. Maybe you can join us for the next one! Best, Natalie Kuldell

For more information about the Boston hub and how to participate contact Natalie at nkuldell@MIT.EDU. Participation is open to anyone in the science community in the Boston area (or anyone within driving distance), the more the merrier!