» AAAS Wrap-up

I had the wonderful opportunity to go to the annual AAAS meeting held in Vancouver this past week, and man, I’m so glad I did! Here’s a quick wrap-up of some highlights and also links to some of the materials I generated for my visit.

(1) Carl Wieman’s plenary address on changing undergraduate science education was spectacular. It described a specific methodology that has shown factors of two to three improvement in retention and mastery rates of science objectives in the classroom.

* Here is a summary of the talk.
* Here are the slides (with lots of references – pdf)
* And a study he was involved with and was published last year in Science that took a veteran teacher and a newbie, gave them the same class size and time, had them devise the same assessments for course mastery, and then just had the veteran teacher teach in a traditional lecture style and and the newbie teach using methods based on research in cognitive psychology and physics education. The new methodology blew the traditional lecture out of the water.

(2) A new science & society fellowship available to soon-to-be and recent science PhD grads through a program called Emerging Leaders in Science and Society. More information is forthcoming, but you can get the gist of the fellowship here! Speaking of such opportunities, I’ve updated the “Public Service and Your PhD“ post on my home blog several times since it was posted a few months ago, so check it out (and let me know if you have suggestions for additions!)!

(3) Here’s the poster I presented at AAAS: Science Communication on a Shoestring: Some Simple (and Cheap) Ways for an Individual To Expand Science Communication in a Developing Nation“ (pdf)

(4) Since I was in the neighborhood, I got a lovely invitation to give a talk in the Mongolia Lecture Series at the Program on Inner Asia Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia. This opportunity gave me the chance to connect with other researchers whose topics overlap with Mongolia, which was great. Here’s a copy of my presentation: “Clearing the air: The story of the pollution crisis in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia” (pptx).

Lastly, a big thanks to the Joshua E. Neimark Memorial Travel Assistance Award for allowing me to participate in this conference.

Random aside: The Vancouver airport had an awesome aquarium in the departures lounge. Fish, colorful kelp, anenome...and you can see a reflection of the Departures/Arrivals screen on the aquarium wall.