Second Workshop: Geoscience Education and Public Outreach Network (GEPON) report

The Geoscience Outreach Workshop

Held March 22 - 24, 2006 at UNAVCO in Boulder, Colorado

Accessing the Report
Contacts

The 2005 report “Making a Broader Impact: Geoscience Education, Public Outreach and Criterion 2” (Scotchmoor, Marlino, et al., 2005) articulated the need for a geoscience education and public outreach network (GEPON) to support broader impact activities within the geoscience community. The report also recommended that a second workshop be held to articulate the characteristics, strategies, and management models of such a network. To address these goals, a GEPON workshop was held March 22-24, 2006 in Boulder, Colorado and attended by 38 scientists and Education and Public Outreach (EPO) professionals from 17 states and the District of Columbia. Common to all participants was the recognition of the importance of Broader Impact (BI) initiatives to increase public support for scientific research, to encourage students to consider careers in science, and to improve the level of scientific literacy among the broad citizenry.

An initial discussion of an informal survey of NSF Program Officers in the Directorate for Geosciences (Mayhew, 2006) provided a fresh perspective on the importance of BI and on the potential role(s) of GEPON. The survey revealed a lack of clarity about the purpose of Broader Impact, uneven application of Criterion 2 in the review process, varying degrees of understanding among principal investigators, and a dearth of exemplars. These, plus the findings from the initial workshop, informed the discussions that followed, which resulted in recommendations for five key initiatives that target two audiences: the geoscience research community and those who assist that community with their broader impact efforts. Working groups were formed to pursue the following initiatives:

  1. Provide community assistance to NSF. The purpose of this initiative is to clarify and integrate BI into the peer review process. It was recommended that a small working group be established to approach high visibility scientists to discuss the importance of BI, to develop a series of PI meetings with NSF on the subject of BI, and to establish guidelines for reviewing BI within proposals.
  2. Showcase Broader Impact exemplars. Such a showcase would provide ideas for models to be adopted or modified and would give recognition to those who participate in BI. It was recommended that a collection of examples should be identified to demonstrate best practices and to provide guidelines for implementing exemplary BI activities.
  3. Provide a venue for information exchange. It was recommended that a community database be developed that would link people to people and provide access to information about broader impact efforts.
  4. Support an annual meeting. An annual BI meeting would provide professional development for all BI stakeholders and participants and provide an opportunity to build partnerships and share experiences in BI activities.
  5. Increase appreciation of broader impact programs. This was deemed to be a long-term initiative that would focus on activities to more effectively engage geoscientists in broader impact efforts and to instill a positive perspective of such efforts within the scientific culture.

Participants agreed that ultimately a more formalized network would be needed to maintain these activities, but that the actual structure of that network could not be predetermined at this point.

Accessing the Report

The report available here summarizes the discussions and recommendations of a workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation, which brought together 38 scientists and education and public outreach professionals from 17 states and the District of Columbia, to discuss how geoscience education and outreach activities can support the science research community in efforts to fulfill the National Science Foundation's Criterion 2 - Broader Impacts requirement for scientific research.

The workshop was convened by the Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE) Program Center, and the University of California Museum of Paleontology (UCMP) and hosted by UNAVCO March 22-24, 2006 in Boulder, Colorado.

Text version of the report: Download (Opens in a new window)

To obtain copies of this report, please submit a request to support@dlese.org.

 

Contacts

Should you have any questions, please contact Judy Scotchmoor (jscotch@berkeley.edu) or Mary Marlino (marlino@ucar.edu).

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