Outreach
NICE Education and Public Outreach (E/PO)

Recognizing the need for more Americans in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers, UC Berkeley's Center for Science Education at the Space Sciences Laboratory (CSE@SSL) and the NICE science team have created a needs-based education and public outreach (E/PO) plan. NICE science - the science of the boundary between Earth and Space that is affected by both weather and space weather - is little known by students, teachers, and the general public. The human impact related to NICE science - loss of radio communications and uncertain location information from global positioning satellite (GPS) - are important to our technological societies. We use this content together with educational pedagogy and partners to help bring students into science from the very young (kindergarten to middle school) and to keep students in science from high school to beyond their undergraduate studies. The NICE E/PO program has several focused goals: 1) engage and educate K-12 educators in physical, Earth, and space sciences using NICE content; 2) share the discoveries of NICE with students, educators, and the public; 3) mentor NICE undergraduates to continue towards STEM careers; and 4) engage students' parents in NICE-related science (ionosphere, magnetism, magnetosphere, weather) with a focus on Latino/Hispanic communities. We propose to meet these goals through several program elements. Teacher professional development workshops will introduce teachers to curriculum involving NICE underlying science - weather, space weather, and the ionosphere. For example, high school students will have an opportunity to compare NICE data with sudden ionospheric disturbance data from monitors at their schools. Our educational website and print materials will provide information at a public level on the NICE mission, science, and discoveries. We will mentor the undergraduates working with NICE science team members by providing them an on-line community to interact with each other, the NICE scientists, and E/PO team including women scientists. And we will work together with Latino/Hispanic community members, la Casa de la Cultura Maya, to hold community events that place ancient science from Mexico and Central America, Latino/Hispanic culture, and NICE science side-by-side. Our two independent evaluation partners, Cornerstone Evaluation and Contemporanea, will evaluate this E/PO program in order to help us improve our program and to report whether or not we are meeting our goals. Our cost-effective plan builds from proven CSE@SSL programs, and leverages other existing NASA E/PO projects though partnerships with Stanford and Rice Universities.

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