I am Janice McDonnell and I will be Jim’s co-blogger for COSEE NOW.  I have been fortunate enough in the last 15 years to work with ocean scientists here at Rutgers and other institutions interested in communicating their science broadly, not to mention getting high marks in panel reviews for their proposal to meet criterion II!   My goal is to generate a useful discussion on writing better Broader Impact Statements and to explore what kinds of projects do scientists find interesting and rewarding.

I have had the great pleasure of working with our podcast host extraordinaire Ari Daniel Shapiro.  In doing so, I get a chance to chat with the scientists he interviews for the broadcasts.  Not too long ago I asked Professor Gwyn Griffiths star of podcast episode #13 Autonomous, enormous, ingenious to tell me what makes his visits to schools successful?

He summed it up with no false modesty (a British trait as he says):

1). Perhaps because I am a father and grandfather, I connect with young audiences.  I project enthusiasm and a sense of fun.

2) . I use props – for example to get across just how poor batteries are as energy sources for underwater vehicles, have an example, labeled with how many kilojoules of energy it contains, and have a soda can (non diet!) for a comparison. In the UK the energy is on the can in kJ.

3).   I provide opportunities for kids to tinker and do hands-on activities that allow them to explore the science.

Prof. Griffiths also shares some great resources.  Dr. David Price’s  Science Made Simple project and a related project Engineering Explained provide presenter training, consulting, and other ideas to help you translate your science to public audiences.

As educators, we are always looking for new and innovative ways of partnering with scientists to create programs and resources that make a difference and contribute to science literacy.  What are your tips for success?  What resources do you find most useful?  I thank Prof. Griffiths  for sharing his ideas and ask you to post your ideas today.  It will “take a village” to turn the tide of the seeming decline of public science literacy.  Tell us what you think.

My name is Jim Yoder and I oversee the academic programs at WHOI.  I am currently a PI with COSEE-NOW and am also a researcher, although not as active as in the past.  I worked at NASA Headquarters for a couple of years as a Program Manger in the 1980s, and again in the 1990s, and also at NSF as Director of the Division of Ocean Sciences from 2001-2004.  At NSF, I was involved in the development of the OOI initiative and was also involved in many discussions on the broader impact criteria and how it was to be evaluated.

The purpose of this blog is simple.  We would like to engage the ocean science community and other interested parties in a discussion as to how best to use ocean observatories and ocean observing initiatives to serve public outreach and education, as well as other “broader impacts”.  Our hope is that this blog will be helpful to those of you planning to submit NSF and other proposals to federal agencies related to the use of ocean observing assets.  Specifically, we hope that the discussion will help you develop better ideas for broader impact activities related to ocean observing and thus for more competitive NSF and other proposals.  Although our focus will be on broader impacts in the context of ocean observing activities, we would like to start with a broader discussion on broader impacts.

First, some background. The National Science Board, the governing body of NSF, approved the use of two merit review criteria in March 1997, and each subsequent issuance of NSF’s Grant Proposal Guide (GPG) since 1997 has continued to strengthen the importance of broader impacts in the preparation and review of proposals submitted to NSF. Thus, the broader impact criteria is now more than 10 years old and well established in the NSF system. The NSF webpage lists a document that provides examples of broader impact activities (http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/gpg/broaderimpacts.pdf). A recent article in the ASLO newsletter (June, 2009, Vol 18, no. 2, openly available at www.aslo.org) co-authored by 3 NSF Program Managers from the Division of Ocean Sciences, Polar Programs and Environmental Biology provides some practical advice. In the concluding paragraph, this article states:

“The second major criterion is the project’s broader impacts. NSF is very serious about the broader impacts of a study ….. , but this criterion rarely supersedes intellectual merit. There are several types of broader impacts, but no expectation that a single proposal should cover all of them. Chose the one(s) that best fits your research and for which you can make a convincing case. …. Don’t rest on past accomplishments; we evaluate the broader impacts of the current proposal.”

This sounds like good advice, but what do you think?  What are your experiences as well as your opinions on the broader impact criteria?
By the way, Janice McDonnell will share this part of the blogosphere with me, and we’ve also asked some former NSF Division of Ocean Science Program Managers to engage in our discussion.