caise

CAISE Fellows 2008-09

Jennifer Adams

Jennifer D. Adams is Assistant Professor of Science Education at Brooklyn College in New York. Her project, Caribbean Community Science in Brooklyn, seeks to generate relationships that creates an interest in science amongst high school and early college youth and engages community elders as valuable sources of knowledge and culture in the Caribbean-American community. Working in tandem, the youth and elders would discuss Caribbean ecology—how they understand and use the natural environment “back home” and how those cultural practices are reproduced in the NY urban context. Botanists, park rangers, teachers, etc. would be brought in to the conversation in a spirit of co-learning.

Sarah Garlick

Sarah Garlick is the Director of The Geoscience Outreach Foundation in Intervale, New Hampshire. This newly formed nonprofit organization works directly with active geoscientists to develop media- and community-based outreach projects that bring their research into the public sphere. The Geoscience Outreach Foundation and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville are producing a documentary film about a team of mountain-climbing geologists and a science journalist who travel to a remote region of Tibet to study the tectonic forces that are actively uplifting the Himalaya. The film uses a high-stakes adventure story to draw new audiences to science programming.

Kantave Greene

Kantave Greene is Visiting Professor at Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi. Through a university, museum and high-need schools collaboration, his project explores the use of small-scale, physical models to teach human impacts and the severity of natural events on an environment. The project would develop a miniaturized model comprising urban, rural, woodland, and wetland environments. The model would allow the public to change the state of the model to see the impacts of urbanization and deforestation on the environment. These models address and improve group-learning, and social-interaction by means of a physical-interactive medium.

Ka’iu Kimura

Ka’iu Kimura is Associate Director of the ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center of Hawai’i in Hilo, Hawai’i. Her work supports science acquisition through an indigenous culture. ‘Imiloa proposes to provide hands-on explorations of science and cultura that are relevant to all with special attention to the interests of indigenous language societies. These activities would connect low density rural populations with informal learning opportunities that incorporate research from Maunakea observatories and advances in celestial navigation for voyaging poineered by the Polynesian Voyaging Society.

Sherry Marshall

Sherry Marshall is Director of the Oklahoma Museum Network in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Her project, Museum Networks Connecting to all Communities, would address the benefit of small museums working together to bring interactive, discovery educational experiences to rural areas who historically lack access to this type of enriching programming. Through the development of small state-wide museum networks, and connecting them with teachers, University pre-service teachers, and the general community, informal institutions can work together to serve specific localized educational needs in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.

Sandra Martell

She is an Assistant Professor of Learning and Development in the Department of Educational Psychology and an Instructor for the Museum Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Sandra’s research looks at learning across academic disciplines like art and science among diverse urban learners and across disparate settings, including schools, museums, and the outdoors. Her project seeks to use modeling and representation relative to astronomy education.

Trevor Nesbit

Trevor Nesbit is Director of Development & Voices for the Lake at ECHO Lake Aquarium and Science Center in Burlington, Vermont. His project, Voices for the Lake (VFL), will test a continuum of public engagement, evaluating the impacts of emerging informal learning experiences on behavior change by developing a science-based basin-scale water quality challenge in an alternative reality gaming environment using real-life incentives, social networks, and a live community challenge exhibit. VFL develops scenarios and visualizations that leverage complex systems and the semantic web, Web 2.0 and citizen science toolkits to engage teens and adults through science center, academic, civic center, private business, and neighborhood and water quality association partnerships.

Hi’ilani Shibata

Hi’ilani Shibata is Education Operations Manager of the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, Hawai’i. Her most current initative is establishing a structured youth career pathways program, Alaka`i Carreer Ladder. It is a youth program based on Hawaiian Values to promote career pathways in education, science, hospitality, and museum studies. Youth, recruited through community organizations, intern with scientists , conduct demonstrations, and develop visitor programs at Bishop Museum.

Christina Soontornvat

Christina Soontornvat is Public Programs Coordinator at the Austin Children’s Museum in Austin, Texas. Her project, "Science Is" Professional Development, builds on research in the formal classroom on the effects of training teachers in the nature of science. The Austin Children’s Museum (ACM), in collaboration with the UT Austin and The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), will develop Science Is…, professional development aimed at increasing ISE professionals’ capacity to communicate the nature of science to the public.