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Background

Founding Premises GSEE was founded at the 2009 ICAM Annual meeting in Cambridge, England on the following premises:
  • The public understanding of science and its role in society is a major global problem and improving that understanding can be a global multi-disciplinary effort.
  • Major improvements in that public understanding become possible if significant numbers of research scientists and engineers engage with non-scientists at every level, from K-12 on.
  • It follows that a global partnership can accelerate the global understanding of science and its role in society by coalescing, connecting, and expanding the community of engaged scientists and engineers across disciplines and borders, and providing them with the tools to make their work with students, educators, informal science education professionals, and the public more effective.
  • It is timely to initiate experiments in engagement on a large scale by building regional, national, and global partnerships in the engagement community [research scientists and engineers in universities, the private sector and government, and their professional and honorary societies] that carry these out in collaboration with the educational community of teachers, informal science educators, and behavioral scientists.
 Experiments in engagement Research scientists can and do play a myriad of roles in outreach and informal science education, from giving public talks to being involved in instructional materials development, and from running science festivals to offering research internships to students. At present there are only the beginnings of efforts to treat engagement by scientists with school-aged children and the public at large as an experiment-based and empirical science, as compared to an art practiced on an individual basis. Moreover, because improving science education, outreach and communication at every level is a major global challenge and significant experiments in engagement are (and could be) carried out in many different countries, developing engagement as an experiment-based science is both important and desirable within the context of a global perspective. GSEE is itself an experiment in engagement—to see whether by sharing information and working together on major initiatives, scientists in leading educational institutions, scientific societies, science museums, and corporations, can accomplish far more than they can by working separately.

Founding Partners GSEE began under the auspices of ICAM, the Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter [http://icam-i2cam.org] with a group of thirteen ICAM branches [Kyoto University, National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, the Paris ICAM Consortium, Rutgers University, Sabanci University, Santa Fe Institute, University of California [Davis], University of California [San Diego], University of Cambridge, University of Chicago, University of Colorado [Boulder], University of Illinois [Urbana-Champaign], Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center] and the University of Pennsylvania serving as its initial Founding Partners. During 2012, the number of GSEE Founding Partners has expanded significantly to include 33 institutions, with the AAAS, the National Academy of Sciences, American Institute of Physics, American Association of Physics Teachers, the American Physical Society, the Exploratorium, FermiLab, the International institute for Applied Systems Analysis, the Koshland Museum, MIT, Northern Illinois University, and the Science Academy [Istanbul] joining six other ICAM branches [Argonne National Laboratory, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Northwestern University, University of Buenos Aires, University of Utrecht, Zhejiang University] as Founding Partners.

GSEE is in the process of expanding this group of Founding Partners to include corporations, additional leading science museums, media leaders, other major universities, additional honorary and professional societies, charter schools, citizen-science organizations, and other "grassroots" groups. A brief description of GSEE's initial activities may be found at http://icami2cam.org/index.php/outreach/gsee/.

Becoming a GSEE Founding Partner is simple: it requires only a shared interest in our goals plus having one or more key members of your institution who agree to work with GSEE to explore potential synergies between the Partner's activities and those of GSEE, and to keep both groups informed of existing and planned activities that are of mutual interest. Founding Partners are invited to nominate members of GSEE working groups, to send representatives to exploratory workshops, to participate in GSEE Founding Summits, and to join in other GSEE activities.

 GSEE Strategy and Plans
 * Use our skills and influence to get more scientists, at every level of their careers, engaged in science education and give them the tools and guidance to do so effectively.

*Work with our most prestigious senior colleagues to raise the stature of outreach/public engagement/informal science education so that an early career scientist can receive institutional backing and advance professionally through a scholarly and active approach to outreach.

*Develop a global Engagement Registry-a list of experiments in engagement carried out or proposed by members of the GSEE community as part of our effort to help engaged scientists communicate and collaborate with one another and with formal and informal science educators across traditional boundaries

*Ask: What are the Grand Challenges in Engagement?—the major problems that need to be addressed in order to enhance substantially the number of scientists who actively participate in science education, outreach and communication, and make their engagement more effective and impactful.

*Carry out new experiments in engagement that focus on scalable and sustainable concepts and practices and realistic assessment protocols; act locally, but think globally

*Consider creating a Science of Engagement as one of our long-term goals