SciOut18 Opening Remarks
https://rockedu.rockefeller.edu/new_outreach/sciout18-opening-remarks/

Rick Lifton:
I'm Rick Lifton, the president of the Rockefeller University and I'm thrilled to have the chance to welcome you to our campus this morning. We're grateful that so many of you have come from far and wide to be part of this impressive gathering. Based on the attendees in the ambitious agenda for the meeting I'm sure this is going to be an exciting two days here at Rockefeller. We share your commitment and passion for increasing the public's awareness and understanding and appreciation for the scientific method and for expanding awareness of the vital roles that science plays in our society. I trust that the network and community that you'll be building here through this terrific conference will play an important role in your future endeavors and we're honored to have you here at the University for the next two days. In an era in which the objective reality of truth and facts and the ability to appropriately weigh the strength of evidence seems under siege on a daily basis in our society I believe no effort is more important than educating the public about the methods by which we have come to understand the world around us and the benefits that that knowledge has brought to our global society. This rightfully begins in K through 12 education, inspiring children about the wonders of nature and the methods by which we achieve new insights into its workings. This should continue throughout life. This is why I'm particularly delighted to welcome you all to campus today! I moved here to Rockefeller from Yale in 2016 and I can tell you that one of the many factors that impressed me here was a university strong commitment to engaging the public in science. We're enormously proud of our scientific culture here at Rockefeller and of our efforts to spark interest, public interest, in an awareness of the key role of science in advancing health and societal goals. Just two nights ago we had an overflow crowd of more than 400 lay people at Caspary auditorium just across the walkway for the presentation of the Pearl Meister green guard award the world's most prominent award for women in biomedical science to the CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna that was followed yesterday morning by more than a hundred and fifty participants in our women in science program who attended Jennifer's public science lecture at 8 a.m. here in this room with an overflow crowd. Events like these increase awareness of the importance of society in our city and around the world. We do a dozen events like this for adults on campus each year including our women in science, our parents in science, and insight lecture series. On a k-12 front we're immensely proud of the RockEDU outreach program led by Jeanne Garbarino that brings New York City middle school students high school students and stem teachers to campus to engage in hands-on science curricula with opportunities for deeper lab experience and summer science programs for students who catch the science bug. Two other of my favorite events of the year are our talking science program that brings high school students to campus to learn more about science discovery from some of the world's great scientists via interactive presentations and hands-on demonstrations and our science Saturday program which brings a thousand area area middle schoolers and their parents to campus for a remarkable day of hands-on science with more than 30 engaging science stations directed by working scientists from Rockefeller and colleagues from our sister institutions across the city. This mission also extends to educating our government officials about the importance of public support for science as a public good. Early in my term here one of our trustees, Bill Ford, and I had the opportunity to organize a small group of scientific leaders from academia and industry to meet on two occasions with the new Trump administration which had early on proposed a 20% reduction in the funding for biomedical research in order to educate them about the vital impact that public support for biomedical science has had on the dramatic increase in healthy lifespan over the last century as well as on the nation's economic vitality. It's been gratifying that with the strong support for Congress the NIH budget has in fact increased 20% over the last three years. Commitment and engagement are critical. Before I turn things over to Jeannie I also want to take a moment just to tell you a little bit about Rockefeller University and give you some context for where you are meeting today. Rockefeller is a remarkable home for science. It was founded in 1901 with its core mission science for the benefit of humanity it's dedicated to the research and graduate education and biomedical and related Natural Sciences. Over the last century Rockefeller scientists have sought to solve the deepest questions in biomedical science with the knowledge that that fundamental understanding of life processes and disease are the surest path to preventing diagnosing and effectively treating human disease and along the way they have made transformative breakthroughs. For example Avery's classic experiments with pneumococcus demonstrating that DNA is the chemical of heredity those experiments were performed about a hundred and fifty yards to the south from here on the Rockefeller campus in 1944 and there are many other seminal discoveries of that ilk. Although we only have 80 faculty here on campus we're home to some of the world's most amazing scientists including 39 members of the National Academy of scientists, 14 Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators, a few weeks after my arrival here in 2016 Charlie Rice received the Lasker Award for his discoveries about the hepatitis C virus that led to the development of a cure for this disease that affects 3 million Americans and a hundred and seventy million people worldwide. At this time last year Mike Young had just been announced as the winner of the Nobel Prize in medicine for his discovery of the mechanisms of circadian rhythms that link our sleep/wake cycle feeding and behavior to the Earth's 24-hour day/night cycle and just two weeks ago David Alice was presented with the Lasker Award for his discovery of the role of histone modification in eukaryotic gene regulation. An amazing 25 of the 250 professors in our history have won the Nobel Prize in medicine or chemistry. Our community of just over 2,000 people includes students postdocs and administrative staff and our clarity of mission I think permeates through the entire community and as a consequence a remarkable number of community members participate annually in our RockEDU science outreach activities so I want to thank Jeanne and her co-organizers Nicole Woitowich of Northwestern, Edwin Lee of St. Joseph's University, Teresa Evans of UTSA Health and Science Center at San Antonio, and our colleagues from the American Society for biochemistry and molecular biology for putting together this week's program. I also want to thank the supporters for SciOut18: the Simons Foundation, the Rita Allen foundation, HHMI, Tangled Bank Studios, the Pinkerton Foundation, and the National Alliance for Broader Impacts. Your endorsement of this event are especially meaningful and I also want to thank our incredible event planning team for all their logistical support and all this brings me back to Jeanne Garbarino. It's now my pleasure to introduce Jeanne who joined Rockefeller in 2008 as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Jan Breslow whose lab was the laboratory of biochemical genetics and metabolism. In 2012 Jeanne took the helm of our outreach program and in this role she has been able to draw upon her passion for both scientific research and for STEM education and has just done a remarkable job. This exceptional RockEDU science outreach program that Jeanne and her team have built has emerged as the cornerstone for Rockefeller’s community outreach efforts and we're very proud of her accomplishments and privileged to have her here at the University and we're so grateful for all the work that she has done to turn RockEDU into the visionary program that it is today so please join me now in welcoming Jeanne to the program and thank you all for your efforts to advance the understanding of science in our society. I'm sure you'll have a productive meeting! welcome thank you 

Jeanne Garbarino:
Hi good morning thanks Rick for the introduction and good morning to everybody thank you for joining us today I don't memorize very well so I am going to read so as Rick mentioned I am Jeanne and I have the pleasure of serving as director of RockEDU science outreach and I'm also a member of the Outreach Committee for ASB MB and so together we are pleased to welcome you to your meeting SciOut18 so many of you have already put a lot of work into making this meeting what it is today and you shared your valuable insights through the preparatory work and we'll get into more detail as to what you actually said through that work but I do want to point out one of the overarching themes and many of you have stated over and over that one of the goals of science outreach is to reveal the actual process of science instead of science being presented as this shiny new product right and so you know that the process of science is the foundation of this is sort of built on this concept of iteration and failure right and so failure for us is a really good thing because we get to learn from it and we get to iterate upon it and its with this philosophy that we present to you this unconference. From my understanding the format that we are using for SciOut18 is actually very unique. I am not sure that there's been a conference like this and at least something that I've been exposed to and so I want to say to you with full transparency and in the spirit of the process of science that I am not sure that this is the right way to go about this but I tell you what we've been doing in the past is not working so let's iterate right and so last night someone asked me how will I know this meeting is successful and this is a valid question because we are spending a huge amount of time this morning to really tackle the question of metrics but my answer to that question right now as we're sitting is is very simple how I am measuring success of this meeting is you showed up. Oh my god let's just start there right so this meeting represents our collective call to build a stronger science outreach infrastructure regardless of how you were approaching science outreach in your context we are not convening over these next two days to focus on semantics okay so I can't really tell you what this conference is but I can tell you what this conference is not. Right, we're not gonna argue about what the definition is of outreach we're not gonna argue about you know what the set of best practices are for outreach because I don't fully believe that we can come up with a single definition or a single set of best practices because we all come from these different locations and have different contexts and different value systems right and so there's no one right way to do outreach however based on your input both in the prep work and the video submissions there are some unifying philosophies for science outreach and I'm not gonna stand up here and tell you what those unifying philosophies are I'm gonna let you all tell you what is science outreach. Anyways science outreach means meeting people where they are I think that science outreach is a way to connect people to research and to the world around them so in universities and institutions that hold knowledge and expertise are trying to get beyond their walls science outreach means more than just teaching people about science it means finding out what people want and need and finding a way that science can help them get that. Science outreach is super rewarding. Science outreach is a space for everyone to grow community members whether it's youth, parents, teachers, retirees, college student,s scientists, health professionals, everyone is inspired. Outreach is about communication about education working collaboratively with our university faculty undergraduate and graduate students and ensuring that their involvement is aligned with their own personal goals. At its best science outreach is a two-way street. It's a conversation between scientists and the non scientific public or even sometimes between scientists from different areas. It's not just having a degree and being in an academic institution anymore that gives you the idea of being an expert in something. I think that science outreach is at its best when it's truly a collaboration between partners, universities, k-12 schools, nonprofits, and corporations all working towards the same goal. I think the best science outreach comes when people walk away with something they can use finding ways to make science fun and not feel like learning at all. It doesn't look like a lecture or a classroom. it looks like an authentic and dynamic interaction between people and it's sometimes messy. It definitely should be hands-on and it should be accessible so that everyone can see themselves in the process. Science outreach is at its best when you can see participants connect what was previously disparate ideas and understand that in that moment when their lightbulb goes on and leave the experiences have broadened the worldview whether they pursue a career in stem or not is not the measure of success but whether they have the opportunity to decide for themselves if they are interested in the lifetime stem rather than through the circumstances of their socio-economic background, race, gender, geographic location, or other aspects of their identity and community. The best science outreach not only humanizes the scientists for the public that they're interacting with but it also tells the public that I could be part of science. People who look like me people who sound like me people with my background are scientists are engineers are technologists and mathematicians OUTREACH his lessons learned told with a straight face O is for own put it on the throne take it shape it make it in the study U you know that means unique make sure you stand out to make interest piqued T that's easy it stands for teach except you got to make sure not to preach R make it real with tangible appeal so it's an experience that anyone can feel E you have to evaluate to measure your successful better your break A I say adopt adapt because borrowing shouldn't be a handicap C of course for communication the only way to avoid stagnation and H for the haves help and not the have nots because where you're born is just a drawing a lot outreach sounds alike on all the missed spots and use the sciences the pencil to connect the dots thanks Jeff if you submitted it I'm putting it up okay getting zooming back in okay so we are in an at an inflection point as the value and necessity of science outreach becomes fully realized both in terms of societal impact and as a means to gain broad support of scientific research through funding policy or other relevant avenues. We hope that out of this meeting comes a new clarity around science outreach both as a field and as a practice that can be shared more broadly through a variety of platforms and channels many of which are honestly TBD. We're gonna see what happens right so our hope is that everyone leaves SciOut18 energized inspired and committed to maintaining and dare I say adding to the momentum that we anticipate will come out of this meeting. You might have noticed that the whoops hold on you may have noticed that the SciOut18 logo is a type of network technically this is a mycelium trace and we love mycelia at RockEDU and we think that is an amazing analogy for science outreach and here's why. Firstly it's a pretty badass organism and it is able to get into the environment and sense what the environment around it needs and what it has and work with that environment to sort of grow out and connect things. Right so I think that's a really great analogy for science outreach. Additionally it it serves as this information superhighway underneath the ground that is connecting you know the things that we see the trees and such and without this network trees would not grow as tall as they grow right it is essential so I think about mycelium as as this sort of or science outreach as the sort of mycelium of science right we are connecting scientists we're connecting communities and we're allowing things to grow and that's why we chose to use this as our as our logo so thanks to Nica for making it. I'll give her a shout out more officially in a second so speaking of our community we are I just want to get into a little bit of housekeeping we are asking you to adhere to a few important guidelines firstly and I think it's really goes without saying that please be aware and adhere to our code of conduct and you can read this in full on our site at SciOut18.org and at this unconference everyone has a seat at the table. We're here to learn from each other. We invite you to add your perspective when you have a learned experience to share and invite you to respectfully listen when you have an opportunity to learn and I have to say I am a super extrovert and so I try to like pay attention to how much time I'm holding the conch which sometimes is more than I should so I ask all of you to also be mindful of the time the amount of time that you are holding the concha. Make sure everybody has a chance to sort of say their say and if you witness someone not getting enough time or sort of being overpowered by someone else I invite you all to to say something about it and stick up for that person. Okay so more logistics, there is a set of tables under the chairs outside where we have the atrium there are a set of rectangular tables we invite you to put any kind of material from your programs that you want to share with the group out on that on that table and also there are no concurrent sessions everyone will be moving through the day together. We are adopting this unconference philosophy and through your input we've assembled this agenda based on what you wanted to talk about and this will consist of lightning talks presented by members of our fabulous community that will set the stage for deeper table level discussions and workshopping. Lightning talks will take place here in this room and table level work will take place out in the atrium and then lunch will take place in the Faculty Club where we joined last night. I also want to mention for anybody who's nursing and would like to pump but not miss anything we have a situation set up in the Rocky View classroom so just making that so you you can zoom and see what's happening here while also making food for your child which is important kids need to eat apparently During our table level work each table will have a dedicated facilitator and we have a bunch of templates and we ask that you are just filling that template with whatever words you want to put onto that just do it a little bit legibly so that we can make sense of it but please put as much as you can onto those templates so they can really understand where you're coming from and to sit at all of your tables each of you received four little cards in your bag and your and feel free to sort of sit at the table that matches that card that's sort of our way to loosely get you guys to separate and network with people you may not know we invite this also the purpose one of the purposes of this meeting is to get people to network with each other and we invite you to do so at any point in time during this conference. However if there is a table level discussion going on in order to not derail the conversations we've set up some spaces sort of on the other side for you to go and have these quiet conversations with whoever you want to sort of you know take over the world with and just so that we don't interrupt the flow I'm totally not even advancing here we are okay so there are four table little level discussions and I already told you about the cards and the templates all right les Oh another thing is we are providing you with an opportunity to share your honest thoughts and experiences with science outreach through our video confessionals and so Julie Nadel where are you Julie there she is right there she is going to be handling the sort of signups for that and this video will be used as one of the outputs of the meeting and is intended to promote this meeting and the community of practice that we're building and you can find it it's in the lounge in the RockEDU lab. I also want to take a little bit of time to front-load the thank-yous at this meeting in case we all get so crazy and busy that I don't get a chance to do that if this meeting would not be possible without the help of some major teamwork and first as you are all aware we have done our best to minimize the cost of attendance for this meeting and I we have set a very high bar for reducing financial barriers to participation and so I'd like to thank our funders for providing this opportunity I will particularly like to thank Greg from science sandbox at the Science Foundation for believing in this effort and for letting me drive this thing so thanks and all the help that he, Jill, John, and Sam has provided in rallying other funders to ensure that we can maximize attendance from community representatives so thank you to science sandbox, HHMI, Tangled Bank Studios, Rita Island Foundation, the Pinkerton Foundation, ASB MB, and the National Alliance for Broader Impacts. I would also like to point out that early aspects of this meeting were shaped by Jeff Jeff is actually the one who put in the proposal to ASB MB to you allow us to do this so thanks Jeff for doing that she's not here today she couldn't make it but I also want to thank Boyana Conforte because she was the one who sat me down was like you can't do this unless you are making it as low-cost as possible and so without her sort of saying like don't do it or don't do it like you know do it do it big or don't I wouldn't have even sort of thought that this is something that we should do so I appreciate her in input she sure for a number of very wise and insights I've been sort of talking with him throughout the planning process I mean like is this okay and so he's been really really helpful and Meg Groom who helps you identify and hone the major themes we initially proposed for this meeting and it only cost me a caipirinha all right two caipirinhas but all right not counting and to the folks who have been working behind the scenes so our side out planning committee does that does this get weird because I thought it was great he's good okay but I'm also a little weird right I know well this is actually one of the outputs if we can do this in this room by Friday it's successful right so thank you Edwin Danielle and Nikki for everything I'm so excited to be working with you here I also want to talk about our facilitation team so these are the people that are gonna be sitting at the table so grant Maria Andrea Annie Kate Devin Becky Christine Sara Christina Riley at Sonali and Bri thank you for the work that you're putting into this and the RockEDU team particularly so Odealys and Disan and particularly Nica and Doug. Doug is the the money guy so he's gonna you know make sure and he got you your hotel so he's a lot of work and Nica designed these beautiful beautiful things for us the SciOut all the SciOut branding and to our student interns Latt Tega and Ivan who stuffed all your bags prepared all the things so made the videos and oh this is our reader team I put facilitation team but this is the people that read your prep work so thank you to the people here who who made that happen as well and helped us at the agenda okay I think did I get everybody did I miss anybody oh thank well thank you for showing up that's also thank you so okay so the first thing that we let's just get into this right the first thing that we're gonna tackle is metrics and when I say metrics what is the first thing that comes to your mind? shout something out numbers? what else? what is it? crap? Oh question yeah so my answer to that it was like um many questions little answers you know so so let's just tackle this head-on right in this first round of lightning talks will begin with bringing to light some of the hard questions around science outreach that we have all undoubtedly asked ourselves we will then begin to zoom in and think about some practical ways of planning our initiatives to incorporate metrics from the start as well as proof of concept ideas around metrics we will then end with some insights on the state of evaluation outside of our field keep in mind that the Lightning speakers will be hard timed we will do our best to accommodate a question or two but we ask that you save them for the end so that we can keep things going