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Chapter 10. Education and OutreachThe CIRES Outreach ProgramThese two projects heightened awareness and discussion of education and outreach at CIRES. As those involved realized the amount of work needed to run such initiatives, CIRES Director Susan Avery, who had a great personal commitment to education, recognized the growing pressure from funding agencies to move toward a model of science that was more responsive to societal needs. As an undergraduate Avery had been certified as a high school physics teacher, and put great effort into her own undergraduate teaching as participant in and then advisor to the University of Colorado Faculty Teaching Excellence Program (FTEP). She served on many committees and advisory boards which made her aware of a changing relationship between science and society. Funding agencies, especially NASA and NSF, began to put more emphasis upon "education outreach components" and "broader impact on society" as one criteria of proposal review. In some cases, the education outreach component of research proposals accounted for 20 percent of the review weight. As the community became aware of CIRES interests in outreach, CIRES was increasingly being asked to contribute to educational efforts. In 1996, CIRES was asked to support a Colorado Alliance for Science summer institute for Denver Public School teachers. About forty kindergarten through high school teachers attended a series of one-day workshops hosted by University of Colorado departments. CIRES volunteers, including Pamela Burnley of the Geological Sciences Department and Alex Weaver, Donna Sueper and Susan Buhr of the Aeronomy Laboratory [ About this Lab ] provided two CIRES days, one each of geology and atmospheric sciences, with a mix of lectures and hands-on activities. These volunteers were the first to be approached when CIRES decided to hire an outreach director. Susan wanted to do it in a more focused way ... We needed to do it right and we needed to get somebody in here to get some real work done on it, rather than have it be something on the side. It was going to take some commitment to administer it, and doing the infrastructure stuff, organizing events, dealing with students from out of town and so on ... at some point the Executive Committee decided it was okay to have a person on the roll.... We were being proactive to do something on our own. Alexandra Weaver accepted a position as director of CIRES k-12 Outreach in 1996, and at that time Susan Buhr was also hired on a part-time basis. Initially, discussion of potential CIRES outreach activities had focused on the idea of a four-course Earth science certificate program for teachers. But, after conducting an extensive needs assessment of area teachers and districts, and discussions with outstanding Earth science educators at the national level, those ideas were radically changed. Very few teachers wanted semester-long courses that exposed them to what we perceived as exciting topics in Earth sciences. Most of them had piles of books, activities, and other materials that they never used, because they didn't have the science background to understand the concepts. They wanted short courses and workshops focused on specific concepts, where they could really learn to use these materials. They also wanted training in the Earth and space science content areas specified in their school district science standards, which are extremely specific by grade level. We found that there are many outstanding teacher training programs in the region and we needed to develop a program that would complement those efforts. CIRES ideas of best outreach practices further evolved when Weaver and Buhr attended a four-day NASA-sponsored "Pre-College Education Workshop for Scientists and Engineers" presented by the Space Science Institute at the University of Colorado. This "education boot camp" linked them with many excellent mentors and colleagues from around the country and brought their thinking firmly into the cutting-edge of education research. The first CIRES Outreach activities emphasized classroom presentations and public events, but these were soon downplayed as it became apparent that CIRES could have a more substantive and unique impact with longer-term projects. Along with Kenneth Emo, a School of Education doctoral student, Weaver and Buhr began to develop professional development projects, working with the St. Vrain Valley School District to support implementation of new Earth and space science content. Weaver secured funding from NASA Earth Systems Enterprise for the first Earthworks workshop, a summer field-based workshop for teachers from around the country. They began to realize what CIRES could contribute to a unique type of education, the integration of research scientists and cutting-edge Earth-system science in service to the needs of science education. The first St. Vrain Valley workshop and Earthworks workshop in 1997 set the framework for what would become hallmarks of CIRES Outreach:
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