Today we will be speaking with our three
panelists about careers in science
outreach and education. I have with me
Lauren Martin, who is a consultant
working with the Arizona Science Center
an other educational institutions.
Welcome, Laura. Thank you.
I have Shaheen Khurana who is a Program
Director with the nonprofit ReSet.
Welcome, Shaheen. Thank you. Chris Williams,
who is a STEM Education Specialist with
the National Museum of African American
History and Culture. Welcome, Chris. Thank
you. So my first question - - what first
piqued your interest in science
education and why do you think trainees
should be interested in this type of
career? I guess I'll start so,  I
got my first experience in science
education and outreach when I was a
graduate student at Georgetown
University. It was during that time I
was in a school in Southeast Washington
DC and I was working with some students
and I realized that it I may be the only
African American scientist that they
ever have a chance to meet. So that
kind of got me excited about just going
out into the schools and interacting
with the students and meeting with their
parents. That that's how it all
started. Then when I was a
postdoctoral fellow at the NIH, I was
continuing on with the scientific
outreach and engagement sessions. I would do science fairs, stem festivals, and
just participate in any way like that.
It was actually during the Career
Science...Career Symposium at NIH
that they had during my first years when
I met Julie Edwards from the Carnegie
Academy of Science Education.  I
asked her could I come in a
volunteer, just to get an idea about how
STEM education programs are run. So I was there for a year and a half, maybe a year,
year and a half.  I learned a lot, met
a lot of great people, and I just grew my
network that way. After that I
started a non-profit STEM education
program called the First Life Science
program and I've worked with that
organization for like three or four
years.  I stopped only because my wife
and I had twin boys and they require all of our attention. So I did all
that while I was at the National
Institutes of Health, and after
that I ended up going to do a AAAS
Science and Technology Policy Fellowship
at the National Science Foundation. 
And then the way I ended up at the Museum is
that while I was there, a colleague of
mine who was at Georgetown University
when I was there, reached out to me and
asked me if I was interested in having
my information sent over to the National
Museum of African American History and
Culture because of an opportunity that
they had and I said - sure, no problem.
They sent my information over and I went
in for an interview. I didn't know it was
an actual interview, but I still dressed
up and put on my suit and I went in for
an interview. And I was offered a
position as the STEM Education
Specialist at the Museum and I've been
loving it. It's a dream job for me. So I'm
thankful for all of the entire path and
journey that I've been on so far.  Wow,
that's great. Laura?
I started out in graduate school, first
of all, before I got a master's in
education, I taught for a few years and I
was very, very interested in how
children's thinking when they
were saying all these weird things and
curious, and at the same time very
uninformed or misinformed. And in fact I
developed that into a fun sort of
icebreaker for teachers where we write
down these beliefs that we had about
science when we were younger, like you
eat a watermelon seed and it
grows in my stomach. Or I had
somebody tell me if you got rain
in your eye, you would go blind. So
I was walking around like that for years.
So all these curious things that
kids thought about. So when I went to
graduate school for my PhD in
cognitive development, really but
cross-cultural and developmental psych. The people we read
were Piaget and Vygotsky, who both were
very focused on physics as the topic.
So I got into that, I did my dissertation
on children's joint problem solving of
physics problems.  From there I went
to work at one of these R&D groups at
Bank Street College of Education called
the Center for Children and Technology.
There we we started doing scientific
research, but not the kind where it's an
open hypothesis and we're going to see
what falls out. These were projects that
we wanted to come out in a particular
way, so we were evaluating the
strengths of these educational projects
in STEM education. So I went on from
there looking at different media
and how that supports learning in
science and math primarily, and then later
engineering and technology. So that's
how I got into it and have been working,
I worked at the Children's Television
Workshop for a while. We ran the Three, Two, One Contact show,
which is a science show and Square One
TV Mathnet show, among other
things, and Sesame Street of course. And
then went into the museum field, where we
looked at how exhibits can support
people's learning of science concepts
and math concepts. So that's how I got
into it and loved the topics, because it
still amazes me how people thin. 
Giving people the benefit of the doubt,
they really do want to learn a lot about
how the world works. So we're happy to
help them do that. Shaheen?
So my path to STEM education outreach, I guess is a little different from
everybody else's.
So I'm I started off my career in the
private industry working in the
telecommunications sector in Sprint,
Nextel, Nortel wireless
systems design. Then I moved to the
government working in emergency
preparedness and disaster recovery. So
I've made a couple of, like a
transition, from the private sector to
the government sector. Then in 2016, I
was ready for new challenges.
I knew I wanted to work with more
social justice issues and that was my
long-term goal. So I started
volunteering with ReSet. So I was trying
to figure out what would be a good fit
for my skillset, you know with my
technology background and bringing in
some of the private sector and the
government sector experience. So I
started working, volunteering with ReSet.
Since my background is also computer
science,
I started building computer science
curriculum to teach. So I started looking
at resources, and then building the
curriculum together, and I started
teaching it to schools in DC with ReSet.
ReSet, by the way, it stands for
Raising Excitement for Science
Engineering and Technology. So right
off the bat, that's sort of seemed like a
good fit for me to volunteer my time.
Then I built the curriculum
and I started working with the two
schools, and then realized what a big gap
it was, you know, in our
schools. Both from teachers not
being equipped to teach it, and
then looking at all the
students, the untapped potential of the
students. So I think my motivation has
been like I've had a rich career in tech,
and it's been impactful, my work
has been great, and I wanted to be able
to let the students know about that.
It sort of afforded me a great lifestyle.
I think over and above that, the part
that really interests me is the economic
empowerment that goes along with the
STEM education, basically
those high growth, high wage jobs.  I
know... you know, I came from a low
income family, but
my mother was a very strong
education advocate. So she
made a lot of sacrifices to make sure
that we had those those career
pathways. There's that
educational background to be able to do,
to get into technology. So right
off the bat I knew I wanted to
sort of be able to create those career
pathways for students, especially women,
girls, minorities, and then low
income students. So that's sort
of my interest in STEM education.
So Chris, when I think of science within
the Smithsonian Museums, I think about
the Natural History Museum, or I think
about the Air and Space Museum. I was
surprised to learn that there's a STEM
education specialists at the National
Museum of African American History and
Culture. Could you talk about your role
at that museum? So your 
response is exactly what everyone
else says whenever they come into one of
my programs. They say - - I didn't know there
would be STEM at this museum. But when you think about it, and you think about what history is,
history really entails everything. And a
lot of times people think about
African American history, they'll think
about music, they'll think about civil rights, they'll think about
religion, religious
leaders and things like that.  But STEM,
science, our African Americans have been
making contributions to the STEM
enterprise for as long as this nation
has been in existence. So what I do
at the Museum is actually pretty simple,
I tell the stories of African Americans
and the contributions they made to
American culture and society through
STEM. So I do that for teachers, I do
that for students, and I do that for the
public. So for teachers we have a couple,
we have several different programs that
they can participate in. The first one is
the STEM As The Teacher Fellowship.
This is a program that's designed for
K-12 STEM educators who
have at least five years of teaching
experience. What they do is they have
submit their application and then
whoever the selected fellows are, they
come in and work with the museum
educators for a two-month period over
their summer break. What they're
doing is helping us to create new STEM
content that we can share with other
teachers, as well as with the public.
On top of that, they help us to develop
STEM workshops, professional development
workshops that range from either a
day-long to multi-day workshops. Then
for the public and for students, we have
a lot of fun programs. One of the smaller
programs is known as a pop-up program.
It's the type of program, if you walk
into a museum and you just happen to
look left or happen to look right, you see
something that catches your eye. You want
to go over and check it out.
It's not always necessarily on the
calendar, but once you get there, the
head of education likes to call it a
'surprise and delight program'. So it's
a STEM program, hands-on. I want
people to come in and be engaged. The
really cool part, I'm designing these
programs not knowing who's going to come
through the door. So sometimes you'll
have seniors, sometimes you'll have class
groups, 40-50 children with two or
three adults, and other times you just
have random people coming in one or two
at a time. Then one of the larger
programs that I do are called STEM Days.
These programs are
Museum-wide programs that often focused
around a central theme. So we've had two
spend days so far. We had one in 2019, and
it was done in conjunction with the 50th
anniversary of the Apollo 11 Mission,
when man first walked on the moon.
This was all about African Americans at
NASA and the different roles that we
played over the course of NASA's
existence, ranging from administrators to
scientists, and engineers, and even
astronauts. We had astronaut Alvin
Drew come in and speak to our audience,
which was actually really exciting.
Everyone loved him and wanted to
get pictures. Then just earlier this
year in February at the end of National
Engineering Week, we had our STEM Day
focused on engineer African American
engineers. We had two speakers, we had
Dr. April Erickson from NASA and then we
had the inventor of the Super Soaker
Dr. Lonnie Johnson come in and 
speak to our audience. I mean these
programs are are tons of fun. They're
just like smaller pop-up programs ,but
instead of it just being a museum
content, what we end up actually doing is
inviting in outside organizations that
have similar focal points to what the
program is going to be about. We have
them come in and they help to create a
STEM atmosphere where people can come in and have giveaways, just learn about the
different careers, and either in
engineering or different careers at NASA.
And just really learn history
and STEM all in one place, and I think
it's always a lot of fun, 
really amazing. Yeah, sounds great.
Alright, Shaheen. So ReSet works with both
schools and other nonprofit groups, such
as the Girl Scouts to provide inquiry
based STEM programs. Could you discuss
what you do as a program director? So
my role as a program director is to go
out and recruit more STEM professionals
to teach in our classrooms. So what we
do is we work with different organizations like NIH, like US
Patent and Trade organization, the tech
companies around in the area like Booz
Allen, General Dynamics. So we recruit
volunteers from all of these
organizations and so ReSet stands,
like I said, it stands for Raising
Excitement for Science, Engineering, and
Technology. The goal there is to get
students really excited about science.
You know, there's really lots of research
which talks about how if
you engage students early and
consistently, and they're more likely to
choose STEM electives in high
school and then go on to college and
then in careers in STEM. So
we really we concentrate, so ReSet
concentrates on the K through eight, K
through middle school, elementary and
middle school programs. So what we do is
we recruit STEM professionals to do
hands-on programs in in schools. 
We particularly prioritize Title 1
schools and working at with underserved
communities. So we work with, of
course, the Girl Scouts, and we work with
Northern Virginia Family Service, Wesley
Housing, which provides low-income
housing, Martha's table. And so these
programs are intended to both create
that excitement for science, as
well as provide STEM role models. 
So when we bring in professionals from the
field to teach in our classrooms, they
sort of make those connections between
life and learning. So it kind of 
aligns some of the...like for technology,
it's going to in the technology sector,
it's going to align the things
that we teach in school more
with what the needs of the technology
are. So we do outreach to recruit more volunteers,
we're also working constantly to expand
our STEM programs in our schools and
community service organizations. We're
working closely with our volunteers to
provide them curriculum, so
they can be more effective in their
teaching. As some of them come in and
they've got some teaching experience, and
others don't. So we give
them sort of the tools that they need to
go in and be successful in a
classroom. And with the...
with a volunteer program like that you
have the teachers are always in the
class, so the volunteers have the luxury
of being inspirational and not having to
worry about the discipline aspect. And so that's primarily what we,
what I do as the Program Director
for ReSet.  Building out our programs,
building out our partnerships in schools,
in community services
organizations, particularly with the Girl
Scouts. Where we're doing targeting, closing
the gender gap in technology. There's 1.8 million Girl Scouts.
So if you want to close the gender gap in technology, there's
no better way to do it. So our
programs are, we have a program called
Think Like a Programmer where we teach
them both coding, as well as
computational thinking. It's
sort of like the mindsets of a computer
science and it's all of it is through
games and activities. We teach
them about technological innovations
using drones, so they're
programming drones. We have
opened up a hard drive to look inside, so
it's all really hands on. The goal is
to introduce them to computer science
early, so that when they get to
high school they're
more likely to take it. I think people
are in there under the impression is you
know students are going to get to high
school and then they're automatically
gonna take electives, STEM electives,
and that's just not really the case. 
You have to introduce it to in elementary
to get them interested.  But we're
really working on expanding our computer
science program because that is
basically where all the future
jobs are. Tech jobs are growing faster than
any other sector, right?  Half a million jobs by
2026 and they are the high wage, high
growth kind of jobs now. Alright, that's
great. Thank you.  Laura, you
worked as the Director for Science
Interpretation at Arizona Science Center
before moving to consulting. What do you
do in your role as a consultant in STEM
education and outreach and how is that
different from working directly at the
Museum? Well the the role of the
consultant varies depending on the
project and depending on the institution.
I'd say in all cases what you're doing
is you're working at a level with the
administration and with the people
making the decisions, so you're not again
with the kids or with the teachers as
much as you are when you're working
directly in a museum. Now in a museum
when you get promoted to higher and
higher jobs you might lose
a little bit of touch with all the
campers and all the teachers that come
in. I always tried to attend as many
trainings as I could and
made sure I saw what was going on when I
was in the charge of the education
departments. But
as a consultant you're dealing more
with the administration. The people, as I
said, making decisions about the
programming and about how it's
going to unfold. Then there you have
different roles, so you might be a
consultant on an NSF project that allows
you to put in your two cents and they
can take it or leave it,
but those are fun programs to be
part of because you get to brainstorm
with other consultants and
advisers and really help the projects
open up,  try new things. So
that's really good. Then the projects
tell you how they're doing and
you can comment on those kinds of
aspects of the program as well. Then
there are the kinds where they hire you
to solve a problem for them. That
might be where you roll up your sleeves
and you talk with people and you map out,
based on your expertise, what kinds of
approaches would be good. You recommend
readings, you recommend strategies for
overcoming certain problems, or
addressing certain issues that the
museum would like to address, or the
institution. So there are those kinds of
consulting as well. I'm just finishing up
a project with our local Botanical
Garden which has developed its five-year
strategic plan and they're trying to
design and evaluation for their
strategic plan to see whether it worked to
reach particularly new audiences that
they're trying to speak to. So I've been
helping them the staff gather their
thoughts, gather their programs, ideas, put
it into a logic model framework, and help
them along. They're not quite there yet,
but we're working on it.
When the garden
reopens in the fall, which we hope they
will, we'll pick it up again. So that's
the kind of thing I do
as a consultant. As I said it's lots of
fun to come in and brainstorm
and give people ideas and get
them organized. It's very
satisfying to help do that. One of the
issues that, I'll just continue for
second, one of the issues that we do
come in contact with a lot is
the fact that people in the museum
fields in the STEM areas may not have
the background in how people learn these
topics. So we tried to introduce those
kinds of things and reflective practices
among the staff. Bring them information
about learning and help them to develop
sensitivity to the visitors and to the
people who attend their classes things
like that. I have a couple of books
I was going to show.  This is
for everybody to know about, it's
called How People Learn from the
National Academies Press a National
Research Council.  That's a really good
resource. It's not very new, but it's
pretty universal. The ideas
haven't changed that much since then.
The other book that I worked on is
called Learning Science in Informal
Environments. It's also a
National Research Council publication.
Those are both available online, but
they're big books, so I would say I
recommend buying them instead of
downloading. Building on that idea,
so how do you go from writing highly technical papers to
writing lessons or activities for
elementary school students? So for both,
whether you're writing highly technical
papers or you're creating an
activity for students or for teachers,
you still have to do your research. You
still need to know what your goal is and
you need to have the background
information in order to reach the goal.
But just think about it... so for the
technical papers you need data, you need
proof. Whereas when you're working with
teachers or students, you you want to
make sure that the learning goals are
very clear. For me, what I'm
doing I want to make sure that whoever's
participating in any of the activities
that I'm doing that they're actually
having fun. So with that you want
them to learn, you wanna have fun. So that
means you have to start the activity or
the lesson in the appropriate place, so
that everyone isn't... some people aren't
left behind because you're starting in a
more advanced position than where they
are. But you don't want it to be so
simple that the people who have advanced
knowledge or bored with where you're
starting, which is finding the sweet
spot and providing additional
opportunities where people can learn
and get some learning on the side while
they're in the space. So for when I
create activities in
the museum, I'll create them for people,
for students that are at least eight
years old. The group I'm
focusing on primarily is somewhere
between 8 and 17 years, an average. But
children eight years old don't come to
the museum by themselves, maybe as 
younger siblings. So I try to start it in a
place so if a child is incredibly young,
but I need to get the parent excited,
because the child is probably going to
be a little more excited, a little more
interested. So I'm just trying to find a
way to provide opportunities for
intergenerational learning and just use
images and cool hands-on activities that
allow the students to get excited, but
also allow the adults to get excited and
not feel like they're being childish. I
want them to get in touch with their
childlike curiosity and but...
but not to feel a little nervous or
uneasy about it. Shaheen?
Oh, well I definitely found it very
challenging moving from the
research papers to building content for
students.  I had no teaching
experience, so when I started building
this computer science curriculum, I
think I constantly underestimated
how much time it would take to build.
The content is not a problem, it's
how to make it engaging and exciting to
students, you know.  So what I found
is basically young students,
they're very eager to learn, they're
always excited about learning, and
they're very non-judgmental. So
whatever your teaching style, they're
like flowing with it. But they are
very transparent, so if they're bored you
can tell it so.  I mean there's
no filter, right?  What I
dread is that little glaze going over, like
a glaze of boredom. So that
was my challenge. Trying to make sure
that the curriculum that we
develop is really engaging.
From a computer science perspective, I
mean there's obviously the coding aspect
of it. and for some reason they love the
coding aspect of it. So we use Scratch,
which is log base programming language.
It's developed by MIT for school-aged
children, so really we have no problem
with engagement there. It's like
drag and drop and they're seeing the
results almost immediately. It's the
concepts - algorithms,
how the internet works, all of
that. How do you make that engaging? 
So we designed... in using
resources there's a few
nonprofits out there
Code.org, obviously Scratch, CS Unplugged. They're sort of developing content for
young students to get them
really interested in computer science.
I was able to use a lot of the
resources, but with young kids I
found that you have to try it, right? I
mean to try it and see how it works out.
Some lessons seemed to go
really, really well and then some lessons
for some reason will sort of
falls short. So developing that
curriculum and having it ready for
volunteers when they come in sort of
lowers the barriers for us
bringing in new volunteers. So
we'll give them sort of like a plan of
potential lessons that they
can pick all from. 
They know that they've been tried and
they you know the students really enjoy
it. Also props really work well.
So we for our STEM lessons, we give our
students little lab coats and so
they they feel like
they're scientists, and all of
that. Then everything has to be
really hands-on. We also do a lot of
field trips. To provide that
exponential learning aspect of it.
So for example, one of our
most popular field trips is a
science cruise on the Anacostia River.
It's also provided by another nonprofit
called Living Classrooms.  We
will get letters from the students after
they've been on that field trip,
and for some of them this is their first
experience of a field trip, 
because we worked with a lot of Title
1 schools. They'll draw pictures of
the boat and how they they were able to
steer it, and all the fish
that they were able to see.
So that kind of is where I think all
the lesson building needs to be
from. Where they can touch, feel, 
experiential. Alright, thank you.
Laura, you mentioned the two books that
trainees could check out. Do you have
other suggestions? Well I published a new
book on reflective practice in museums
that just came out last year from
Routledge Press. That's the good one, but
I was going to say that in regard to
making the transition from academic,
because those publications are quite
academic, there is a version of the
Learning Science in Informal
Environments that's meant for
practitioners that kind of boiled down
the research that which most people are
not comfortable reading, like your boards.
But I was going to say two things - one
is you really need to be bilingual in
the sense you need to know that you
can't just write for grown-ups in the
lay audience the same way that you do
for your job years in the academic
circles, certainly not for
children. Also everything from
exhibit labels, which are really hard to
do well, they're not simple. It's not
simple to translate science into
material, as Chris said,...we went with the eighth grade
level. It might be the eighth year level,
what kind of language you use. So you get
to know that. But the other part of that
is testing all of what you're writing.
I'm a great believer in
prototype testing. You do a beta version
testing with your audience before you
print it up or etching in metal on
on the side of your exhibit. Because people might
misunderstand it or they might not get
it or
you might find that it's not clear. 
We've had many examples in my career of
those kinds of things, but as long as you
you do run it by your audience
beforehand and there are many ways to do
that that'll save you a lot of grief in
the end. But this idea that we even
produced as part of my NIH grant a
handbook for scientists who come to the
museum either to give a lecture or to
work with kids in the public on how to
speak to the public. Now Zeiss
interestingly did not want, the scientists
on our Advisory Committee did not think
this was an important thing. Why
would the scientists need to know how to
speak about their work? They
know how to speak about their work.  But
what they don't know is people don't
read graphs the same way that they do,
people don't understand these
complicated relationships and
diagrams. People don't take jokes easily
and scientists make jokes, and the kids
are very literal. So you have to be very
careful about the language you use. So we
we did the handbook anyway and there's
another larger NSF project that's also
doing the same thing. Training
scientists to speak to the public in a
way that's not condescending, but is
comprehensible. So there are definitely
there's a science to writing for the public.
We encourage everyone to think about
it that way because it's not as simple
as it looks.
I guess starting again with Chris, could
you tell us about the best aspects of
your current position and then maybe the
most challenging aspects of your
position? So I'll start with the
challenges. Well, one of
the biggest ones is.. it's just
learning about all the different history
of African Americans in STEM, because most, at least in my experience, most of
the contributing.. many of the contributions
that African Americans have made are not
known widely.  So that was the
first challenge. The second challenge was
knowing now that I have all this
additional information, which people or
which groups do I focus on?  And so, but that that turns into
being a plus because it gives me a lot
of intellectual freedom and gives me a
lot of, not wiggle room, just gives me many
directions that I could possibly go.
I guess I would say the third most
challenging part of being at the museum
is just learning  the new organization, how how it works.
And not just doing the work upfront that
the public sees, but doing all the work
in the backend such as planning, ordering,
bringing in the correct speakers, making
sure all of the logistical
aspects are taken care of on the back
end. With the most wonderful parts of my
job are, and honestly I work with
phenomenal people. I work in the
Education Department and everyone on the
Education Team is great. They've been
incredibly supportive. But
within the Education Department, I work
on the Teaching and Learning Team.  As
I mentioned, we do 3rd grade through
12th grade, and although I'm the only
STEM person on the team, they are always
giving me ideas, trying to find new ways
for us to work together so that we can
make the most most robust products that
that we possibly can.
Another really good thing about working
at the Museum, as I said, is the
intellectual freedom. Because many of the
people who've made contributions aren't
necessarily known this means I can pull
people out into the public side that
they've never heard about while also
making connections with people who they
do know, as well as people who are
currently doing the type of work
that I'm highlighting from the past as
well. Then here's another thing
that I didn't get when I was doing
research, so with research you can work
for years on a project, months on a
project. You'll write it up, you'll
publish it, you may have a strong impact
on two to three labs around the world,
maybe just depending on what your topic
is, but very few people have a an impact
an immediate impact that they can see
and feel
and that they know it's lasting. Whereas
when I'm working with students or
working with the public, I get to see the
moment that the light bulb goes on.  I
can see when the connections are made.
And that's really what I enjoy,
probably more than anything is that
one-on-one connection seeing someone
leave with new ideas or new capabilities
that they didn't have when they first
started and came into the program. Okay,
and then Shaheen.  Could you answer the
same question? Yeah, so echo what Chris
said, as far as the best part of some of these programs that we
do is a very is seeing the very direct impact that you have on students. It's like
the so called lightbulb moments. With ReSet I've had
plenty of what they call the
mission moments, right? Where you've had
students that you started off coding in second grade who are now in fourth
grade, and they're like taking off and
doing like these games, building
their own games, so it's just that
very direct impact that you can see
when they actually get it.  And what we're trying
to teach, especially with community
science is not just like the actual
content, it's also the mindsets. 
How to persist through a problem,
debugging your code, and that kind
of thing. So when they finally
are able to get it, it's just amazing to
watch. Then the other thing I'm
particularly proud of is the Girl Scout
program that we have. I mean where
we have our volunteers training the teen
Scouts in all of the coding and
all of the activities for the program.
Then the the Teen Scouts are
actually turning around and teaching the
Juniors and Brownies in the
Think Like a Programmer badge program.
It's just amazing because you're
getting twice the bang for your buck. Both sets of students, both sets of
Scouts are learning all of the
content and then the teen Scouts are
getting more of that leadership and the mentoring and the presentation
skills. Then having some of
the teen Scouts tell you that
because of the program, they're actually
choosing their major to be computer
science.  I also work with a couple of
different organizations, those are like
eleventh and twelfth graders, and a
lot of them are actually going
on to take computer science in college.  I've been writing
recommendations for them in
college and that's been really
rewarding to see that. From a challenge
perspective, I think I'll just speak to the
larger challenge of enhancing
the diversity and inclusion in
STEM, especially in the technology
sector. It's basically a
complex set of issues and ...
how to get at to...there's so
much untapped potential in the students.
How to sort of look at
training more of the teachers to be able
to teach computer science so they can
create these career pathways for their
students. Then also matching the
needs of the tech sector with
what has being taught in schools.  So I think
those are the larger challenges in our industry.
Thank you.
Then Laura, the same question. I agree that the idea of turning
kids on to science and technology is a
great feeling.
I think the satisfaction also comes from
seeing the staff develop as well.
Their skills and their knowledge about
how people learn and implementing that.
The projects are so exciting and it's a
very creative place to be for a
person with a science background, who
comes into a field of informal learning
that is outside of school. Which is what
primarily I focus on, although we
certainly do a lot of work with teachers
and schools. But the creativity that
you get to enjoy and having fun with
topics and sort of bringing the
excitement of technology, media things
like that to the public is so much fun
and part of the job that's great. We
had for instance,  that NIH grant I
mentioned, we were focusing on
bringing concepts from the NIH Roadmap
to the public. Several of the
concepts in their roadmap are just too
complicated -  molecular biology. That
doesn't make sense to even try.  So we
picked some projects, some topics that
were relevant for the public. Then we
went off and had a lot of fun with
our advisers and with the kids and
getting feedback on all these things. So
that's a good thing. I think the
challenges from working in a museum
primarily, the administration's are
always a challenge because they may
might not provide for enough staff
development time and enough
breathing space for the staff to do as
good a job as they can, because they're
out delivering programs of all
kinds, day and night, including birthday
parties and things like that.
So getting the administration to buy
into the significance and the importance
of the STEM programs
is a big one, so I'd say that and
getting the staff to reflect on their
practices is a challenge, only because
they don't have time. So my next
question is now that schools are shut
down a museums are closed because of the coronavirus, is this impacting your
institution's mission? How are you
responding? Then do you anticipate
that these changes will continue
long-term? How do you think your field
will look five years from now? Chris? So
it is definitely impacting the way that
we get work done, but it has not changed
the mission. We're still reaching out to
the students, to the teachers and trying
to create content, virtual content that
they can access and use and within the
Smithsonian. There have been a number of
institution wide initiatives put
together to create content that they can
share with the local school district,
such as in DC, Virginia, and Maryland.
So I've been trying to create content
that I can include within those
initiatives and I try to send it out to
people that are on that listserv, but
also within my own network. Because I
have a ton of connections who are in
STEM and in science education,  and they
can share with people who they know are
interested in the topic or looking for
information on the topic. I do
imagine this is going to be something
that we're going to have to deal with
for several years in the future, because
if coronavirus is anything like the flu
or the common cold, it's going to be
seasonal.  If it is seasonal, you're
gonna have to deal with this every
late summer, early fall, and so on until we
have a vaccine or until we have a
treatment that makes it
significantly less deadly, this is
going to be something we're gonna have
to get used to. I think 
people are going to start to adapt or
organizations are going to
start to adapt and learn to create
virtual content or in-person content
that can be quickly switched to become
digital and virtual. Okay, thank you. 
Shaheen? So for us too, the impact is
is rather large because most of
our programs are with schools and
community service organizations. So
when schools shut down that was
a huge impact.
But we're very busy now trying to
convert all our programs to virtual
programs. So with the Girl Scouts we're
doing virtual coding in computer science
programs and other STEM
programs. And in our schools'
distance learning there's just been a
variety of different products that
they've been using  - Microsoft Teams, Zoom,
and so they've just started actually a distance learning programs in
Virginia and the DMV area,
and they've had significant challenges
with it. So we're starting to work
with the schools, trying to put
some of the programs that we have in
place, continue them online. The other
thing that we're working with is
providing tech tool training to the
teachers. Because the teachers, I
think were just not prepared to deal
with all of these
tools and providing... so for
example, we're helping them with training
on how to do voiceovers for
PowerPoints, how to do their
lessons to convert that, Google
classroom tools, and how to use those. So
we're doing tech training for the
teachers. We're also doing a lot of STEM
at home activities, like creating
videos and providing resources
to parents and of course the educators.
Things that they can use around the
house to do STEM experiments.
They have to be simple, 
because we're asking,
we're already asking the parents to do a lot of teaching at home.
So those are the kind of resources that
we're trying to put together. But I
anticipate that since this has
been a good exercise in using
all the distance learning tools and I
know from the school
perspective, they are not able to
guarantee they're not able to
ensure equity, so they're not
requiring it. So they're pretty much
going to be working very hard and making
sure that they have a distance learning
tools, at least in the future for a
situation like this that comes
up again. I think most of our
programs, virtual programs are sort of
here to stay. And why not, right?  I mean it definitely extends all of
our learning opportunities. I think I
anticipate in the future we'll do like a
combination of the two.  In person,
as well as virtual.  Okay, great.
Laura? Well we have a small, well considered  a mid-sized science
center that does a lot of programming in
the community and after school, and also
Girl Scouts and everything. But for the
time being what we're offering is some
daily internet activities for parents
and kids at home and demonstrations.
We are videoing the demonstrations that we do on the floor of the Science
Center, which are fun little lessons in
different topics. I don't know, I can't
speak for the Science Center, but my
guess is that they will also continue to
develop the online presence, of
which we don't have a very strong on.e
Some other large museums do have quite
extensive programs online for kids and
teachers. We don't have that as much,
but my guess is that they will be
developing some more of that once they
know what the reopening
is going to look like, and how schools
are going to be able to handle field
trips, and how they're going to let the public come in. I believe
that there's not a substitute for
hands-on, so I'm hoping that the real
face-to-face experience won't disappear
at all, even though the online experience
is very exciting as well. Okay and then
my final question is - what kinds of steps
would you recommend to our trainees who
are interested in a career in science
education outreach? Chris? I think what I would say is just
really pay attention to what you're
interested in and what you put in as
soon as you hear these words. So
for me, when I was in graduate school,
that was my first introduction to
science education. I had no idea this
would end up turning into a career for
me. But I continued to to follow through
with it because it was something I
really cared about. And I did find
out I was good at it as well, so that
makes a difference. But if there's something
you're passionate about,
stick with it continue to follow through
with it, even if you have another
job or another career happening at the
same time. Because you never know, like for me, you never know when
you're going to get the call that
there's an opportunity for you.
Then another thing is whatever your
interests are, make sure you let other
people know, and your network, anybody
you come in contact with. Let them know
what you're interested in, what you've
been doing, what you've done so, that if
an opportunity comes up that may be good
for you, they'll be able to help you. So I
would say try to volunteer or find internships and organizations that work with STEM
outreach.  I find volunteering is a
great way to get a real good feel for
the mission of the organization, as well
as get an idea of where
the gaps are and where you...
your skills will be of value.
Definitely be a passion for teaching,
there's opportunities
within STEM education outreach
to be able to do that, and especially if
you're interested in youth development
or child development so look for those
opportunities. There are opportunities for advocacy in this area
if you want to create that long
term change. So there are
organizations like Girls Who Code, Black
Girls Code, or who work sort of like
a mix of both programs, as well as.... advocacy.
There are several areas that you can
work with you know there's volunteer
coordination, there's kind of programs
that I work with, teaching advocacy, so
interning or volunteering with an
organization, I think is the best way to
be able to do that. Then do you have
any organizations would suggests, either
you or Chris or Laura?  There's a lot
of nonprofits that are working or
developing content, so those I think
would be great to work with code.org, CS
Unplugged, Scratch,.. so that's
some content curriculum building
perspective. If you're interested in
working with underserved communities and
girls, if you're passionate about
education equity,  then I would say Girls
Who Code, Black Girls Code. They're expanding computer science education and
they have great programs for
building those 21st century skills,
computing skills so that
they have both experience with
actually teaching and program building,
advocacy.  There's a lot
of policy organizations also that work
with STEM education -
Urban Alliance is another one
that's a local organization.  I would
say working with local organizations is
a great way to directly impact
your community. So I would start
there. There's a couple of things that
people can do. There are a number of very
good R&D firms around the country that
have projects in the Washington area or
other places, and to look them up and see
whether there are positions open or
internship opportunities, that would be
good.
Volunteering is very good because you
make yourself indispensable very quickly
and they'll offer you a job. But the
other thing that I was going to say is
that there are, if you're in a
university, go to the Department of
Education because they might have, many
of these big universities have NSF
grants, some have NIH grants - those are
few and far between.
They have grants from NASA,
they have grants from NOAA. They
might be hiring people to work on these
programs, these projects out in the
community, because they do a lot of
educational work in the STEM fields. So I
would go out of the biology
department or the physics department and
go to the department of education and
see what possibilities there are there
for them. Also to go online and to look
at what NSF is funding and what NIH is
funding, there might be something in your
area there's sometimes turnover
on the staff of these projects, so there
might be an opportunity to contribute to
those as well. Yeah, so that's what it is.
There's some very exciting research and
development projects going on in the
country and you should become aware of
those. One of the
big firms it's called TERC, T E R C , in
Cambridge Massachusetts has a number of
interesting projects going on. Another
one is Educational Development
Corporation or Center in Newton,
Massachusetts and New York City, and they
do a lot of very interesting educational
work. But there are more, and all the
museums. Many, many museums have funded grants to do special projects. ]So that's
another thing, if you go to the ASTC the
Association of Science Technology
Center's website, they have some job
postings, but you also will find out
through their publications which
museums have large grants to do public
outreach. You can get in touch with
them and see if there are any openings
at those places as well. I don't know
what's happening over the Covid
summer, but the grants should be continuing. That's good. Okay.
That was the end of my questions. So I'd like to thank everybody for participating in
this panel.
