Scientist-Educator Collaboration
Goal: To build regional capacity for implementing broader impact activities by ocean scientists, working with educators to ensure that the content and products of current ocean science research efficiently reach a broad audience in a timely fashion.
Details: Working with the Center for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence – Ocean Systems (COSEE OS), NEOSEC is supporting member institutions in working with ocean scientists to fulfill National Science Foundation (NSF) broader impact requirements. In addition to workshops and mini-grants to educator-scientist partnerships, COSEE OS is also supporting NEOSEC as a model for other Centers around the country. Components of the project include:
1 Broader impacts workshops. NEOSEC member institutions, including member and non-member ocean scientists, will gather to share best practices for collaboration between educators and researchers, with an eye toward fulfilling NSF’s call for broader impact of scientific research. All will benefit from professional development opportunities that focus on effective collaboration, means for evaluating partnerships, and developing mutually advantageous outcomes.
2 Broader impact mini-grants. Following on the workshops, NEOSEC member organizations will be invited to apply for mini-grants of $3000 to $5000 to fund collaborations with scientists centered on developing museum or aquarium exhibits, formal classroom activities, and informal educational programming.
3 Direct support to regional collaboration. COSEE OS is supporting strategic planning, development of formal governance documents, and other structures to enable regional initiatives and leverage expertise and resources held by individual member institutions around key content areas of climate change, ocean health, and ocean observing.
4 Regional ocean literacy activities. NEOSEC’s biennial Ocean Literacy Summit and other New-England-based efforts bring together committed educators, scientists, and decisionmakers to advance regional awareness of humans’ connection to the ocean, and the ocean’s connection to us.
For more information: Billy Spitzer, New England Aquarium: bspitzer@neaq.org
