This award will support a two-day Earth Science Education and Outreach Provider Summit at Tempe in the winter of 2012, hosted the EarthScope National Office. Participants will include E&O personnel and advisors from facilities and large research projects supported by the Division of Earth Sciences and other related organizations. The Provider Summit will be co-facilitated and evaluated by E&O experts from the Science Education Resource Center (SERC) at Carleton College. The outcome and products of the meeting will constitute a unique resource for shaping informal and formal Earth science education and public outreach. The EarthScope National Office will ensure that the findings and products of the Provider Summit will be widely disseminated through its own channels, through SERC, and via the other participating organizations. These resources will be highly visible and freely available to all Earth science educators, educational institutions, and societies.
EarthScope (www.earthscope.org) is a program of the National Science Foundation [NSF] that deploys thousands of seismic, GPS, and other geophysical instruments to study the structure and evolution of the North American continent and the processes that build mountains and cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The EarthScope program is a collaboration among scientists, educators, policymakers, and the public to facilitate and use exciting Earth-science discoveries as they are being made. The EarthScope Observatories are operated and maintained as a collaborative effort by UNAVCO, Inc., and the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology [IRIS]. A rotating, university-based EarthScope National Office [ESNO] facilitates scientific planning and coordinates education and outreach efforts for the EarthScope community. ESNO is housed at Arizona State University [ASU] from 2011 to 2015. ESNO at ASU organizes the biannual EarthScope National Meeting and several scientific workshops held throughout the year. It has also assumed a coordinator role among a seti of organizations that provide Earth-science education and outreach programs related to EarthScope scientific topics. To better develop contacts and improve coordination among these organizations, ESNO at ASU received funding from NSF (grant EAR-1216301) to organize and host a two-day Earth Science Education and Outreach (E&O) Provider Summit at Tempe, Arizona on 20-21 February 2012. Eleven organizations: • American Geosciences Institute [AGI]; • Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. [CUAHSI]; • Critical Zone Observatories [CZO]; • Drilling, Observation, and Sampling of the Earth’s Continental Crust [DOSECC]; • Geodynamic Processes at Rifting and Subducting Margins [GeoPRISMS]; • Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology [IRIS]; • National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics [NCED] with Geoscience Alliance [GA]; • Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation [NEES]; • Southern California Earthquake Center [SCEC]; • UNAVCO, Inc.; and • United States Geological Survey [USGS]. sent representatives to convene with EarthScope and NSF. ESNO also subcontracted wioth the Science Education Resource Center [SERC] at Carleton College, which served as co-facilitator, external evaluator, and archivist for the Provider Summit. SERC established a Provider Summit website (serc.carleton.edu/earthscope-eno/index.html). Intellectual Merit The Provider Summit included a comprehensive review and group discussion of the E&O programs and resources of the participating organizations, networking opportunities, and a day-long session in which self-organized working groups identified and prepared draft white papers on the following topics relevant to Earth science E&O: (1) Effectively measuring program impact; (2) Using an Earth-system approach to organize ideas, resources, content, and pedagogy in informal learning environments; (3) Developing inter-organizational web resources focused on specific issues such as hydrofracking; and (4) Effectively using social media for E&O. SERC also presented its own pre-Summit review of the online E&O resources of the participating organizations. Broader Impacts Project outcomes and deliverables include Provider Summit websites on SERC and the EarthScope website; enhanced participation by some participating organizations (AGI, GeoPRISMS, Geoscience Alliance, and SCEC) in EarthScope E&O activities, and facilitated collaboration among some of the participating organizations outside of EarthScope-specific activities (e.g., CUAHSI and Geoscience Alliance). Websites: Provider Summit on SERC: http://serc.carleton.edu/earthscope-eno/index.html Provider Summit on EarthScope.org: www.earthscope.org/events/earthscope-education-and-outreach-provider-summit Addendum to Final Report: semken.asu.edu/esno/providersummit.pdf For more information please contact: Dr. Steven Semken, ESNO Deputy Director, at semken at asu dot edu
