caise

On a grey moist day in Washington DC, nearly 450 innovative thinkers in ISE convened for the 2010 three-day PI summit. This is the first year that I, a national grantwriter, have been able to attend. CAISE, thinking progressively in response to comments from last year's PI Summit participants, welcomed to this meeting the wide diversity of collaborators and supporters to attend this Summit that had previously been limited to ISE-funded Principal Investigators.

Having arrived after a rather arduous journey of late trains and Slurpies spilled by preschoolers on my lap, I was especially glad to be greeted by warm hugs, side-cast waves and smiles, and quick catch ups with the many many people I've had the good fortune to meet and work with in my 25 years in the this field. From my perspective, we are a closely-knit group. And perhaps that's because of my perspective.

But not everyone shares this view. John Falk, in the initial Landscape Study conducted for CAISE, notes that while there are in the U.S. possibly as many as two million contributors to ISE (from film and radio, social media, science centers, afterschool programs for youth, organizations for community development, etc. and etc.), but they don't necessarily identify themselves as “informal science educators.” We need a shared language that embraces the diversity of the field. Falk advocates, quite rightly, for coalescing of networks and a common infrastructure of identify among these individuals.

And it's true, that as exhibition developers, program designers, film or radio producers, etc. and etc. design and launch informal learning programs for the public, they do so nevertheless from the silo, if you will, of their organization. And then again there are individuals such as the experienced research and evaluation firms, grantwriters such as myself, members of the ASTC board, the CAISE Inquiry Groups, and many other “elders” in the field who do have a long view and a national perspective on the field of ISE. The fact that many of them are now here at the PI Summit is, I believe, a step in the right direction. Those of us who “travel” among and between ISE-funded programs and devote their careers to thinking about the field in its entirety and how to move it forward are leading many of the discussion groups, and devoting much of our time to making key introductions and helping PIs from across the country who work on similar (or dis-similar!) projects to come together at a common table and share their ideas and data at the PI Summit. As informal science experiences can happen anytime, anywhere, so too, there is here and now during these three days in DC, an all-inclusive congregation of the players and collaborators in the field of ISE. I am proud to count myself among them.