In this issue:

Message to Members: Advocating Voluntary National Science Education Standards

News to Note: NSF/AAAS Conference, Public Engagement in Science, India S&T Report, Caribbean Division Meeting, Enhanced Whistleblower Protection, Human Rights Coalition Meeting, Science in Low-Income Schools, ENTRY POINT! Interns, AAAS Report on Computer Science and Minorities, MIT’s OpenCourseWare Wins Science Prize, Science Update’s 5000th Episode

Science Careers: Career Feature: B.S./M.S. Level Scientists, Report from Summer Leadership Institute, New Humor Column, Upcoming Events

Announcements: 2011 Annual Meeting, New Award for Public Engagement, “Dance Your Ph.D.” Contest, AAAS Division Meetings, Atlas of Science Literacy Workshops, Deadlines for AAAS Awards, Science NetLinks Facebook Page, AAAS President’s Circle

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Message to Members

Advocating Voluntary National Science Education Standards

Dear Colleagues,

AAAS has been instrumental in improving the quality of science education since 1962, when we established a Committee on Science Education to develop materials for students and teachers, beginning with kindergarten and grades one and two. In 1985, AAAS founded Project 2061 to help all Americans become literate in science, mathematics, and technology.

With its 1989 landmark publication Science for All Americans, Project 2061 set out recommendations for what all high school graduates should know and be able to do in science, mathematics, and technology by the time they graduate from high school. Benchmarks for Science Literacy, published in 1993, translated the science literacy goals in Science for All Americans into learning goals or benchmarks for grades K–12. Many of today's state and national standards documents have drawn their content from Benchmarks. These AAAS publications are the foundation for Project 2061's ongoing research and development efforts to reform curriculum, instruction, and assessment. With recent publications like Atlas of Science Literacy, which maps connections among learning goals within grades and over time, and newly funded efforts, such as one supported by the U.S. Department of Education to develop innovative curriculum materials for middle school science, Project 2061 continues to influence the direction of science education reform.

Broadening these initiatives internationally, Project 2061 materials have been translated into Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese. AAAS conducts yearly workshops for educators from Shanghai, participates in annual science education forums in many different countries, and has hosted delegations of educators from around the world who are interested in our approaches to science teaching and learning.

This year in the United States, we have been a leader in advocating the adoption of a framework of voluntary K-12 national standards for science education. In a 28 March editorial in Virginia's Richmond Times Dispatch , noting that the nation's governors and state school officers had proposed unifying standards in English and math for all students in American public schools, AAAS officials called for science standards also to be included. A 28 May editorial in Science urged the scientific community to support "a clear statement of learning goals for science that are standard across the United States." Participating in a science education standards development effort, AAAS invited members to comment on a conceptual framework for next generation standards for K-12 science education released by the National Research Council in July. The framework will be revised based on input from the science and education communities and the public, and a final version will be released next year.

Also in July, AAAS once again organized the annual meeting of the NSF-funded Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program, established to train science, technology, engineering, and math K-12 teachers in high-need school districts. During the conference, experts described learning goals that will focus more on real-world skills and less on rote memorization, and urged educators to teach to the highest expectations that all students can succeed. (See News, below.)

A common set of standards, accompanied by a sustained commitment to implementing them, is key to reinvigorating the skilled and innovative science and technology workforce that is critical to economic progress. As a member of AAAS, your support for this initiative is invaluable. Thank you.



Sincerely,


Alan I. Leshner, CEO, AAAS

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News to Note

NSF/AAAS Conference Describes Next Generation of Math and Science Standards
Education experts gave an early look at the new generation of standards in mathematics and described the process now under way for developing a conceptual framework for voluntary national science education standards -- which will include a component on engineering -- during the annual meeting of the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship program. The 475 conference attendees included recipients of Noyce grants and graduate and undergraduate students preparing to be teachers. Since 2002, the program has trained 7,700 teachers for high-need school districts, answering growing concerns that U.S. students are falling behind global competitors in science and math. Read more about the conference, funded by the National Science Foundation and organized by AAAS.

AAAS and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre Urge Greater Public Engagement
In a report issued at the Euroscience Open Forum 2010 in Turin, Italy, AAAS and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre urged scientists and policy makers alike to sharpen their messages and engage the public as they seek to advance policy on issues such as climate change—an area where scientific facts about human-caused impacts may be inconvenient or in conflict with core values. Several examples of successful public engagement were given, including Sweden’s open dialogue with local communities in determining the site of a deep underground repository for its nuclear waste. Read more.

India’s S&T Minister Reports on Transformation Through Education
Speaking at AAAS, Minister of State for Science and Technology Prithviraj Chavan said India is completely focused on transformation “through S&T, through innovation, and creating a knowledge economy.” India plans to increase spending on education by nine-fold between 2009 and 2014, identify and encourage promising scientists at an early age, and build and open 700 new colleges and universities. These efforts are framed to improve the welfare of India’s 1.1 billion people, while working with other nations on global challenges such as energy and public health. Read more about the country’s progress since gaining independence from Great Britain in 1947.

Report from AAAS Caribbean Division: Building Haitian Science
Scientists, scholars, policy experts, and educators from Puerto Rico, the United States, and Haiti gathered in San Juan for workshops and meetings to explore collaborative efforts to build Haitian capacity in science and science education. The goal of the initiatives is to help Haiti recover from its devastating January earthquake and contribute to its long-term economic development, including training professionals and building labs, which currently are nearly nonexistent. Participants drafted a set of policy and action recommendations, which would involve the Haitian and U.S. governments, the scientific community, and international development and aid organizations. Read more.

OSHA Head Calls for Enhanced Whistleblower Protection
During a recent AAAS-hosted event, David Michaels, head of the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), said the U.S. government’s Whistleblower Protection Program will undergo a “top to bottom review” to better protect employees against employer retaliation after reporting workplace dangers or illegal activities. Michaels spoke at a meeting of Professionals for the Public Interest, a coalition launched last year to help organizations and members defend against external pressures challenging the integrity of their work. He is hopeful that, with more inspections and investigators, toughened citations and penalties, and far-reaching enforcement initiatives, OSHA will be in a stronger position to protect employees and the public. Read more.

Coalition Explores Human Right to Benefits of Science
In late July, the AAAS Science and Human Rights Coalition addressed access to life-saving medicines as integral to the right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress -- a  right first recognized internationally by the United National General Assembly in 1948. Experts from universities, nonprofit organizations, and pharmaceutical companies explored solutions to the lack of access to existing medicines that cause the death of about 10 million people annually. Strategies include pricing based on a nation’s economic status; nonexclusive licenses to make generic equivalents; and, rather than giving drug developers the exclusive rights to sell products, awarding large cash prizes based on successful product outcomes. Read more.

AAAS Works to Spark Interest in Science at Low-Income Schools
A multifaceted three-year AAAS initiative is testing strategies for improving science teaching and learning through in-school curricula, after-school activities, and summer workshops for teachers, primarily from low-income schools in Washington, D.C. During a recent workshop, middle-school teachers explored technical engineering concepts by building a miniature bridge. In an after-school program, students built model wind turbines, learning about renewable energy. Both are real-world applications that spark interest in science. GET SET (Global Education for Tomorrow in Science, Engineering, and Technology) is supported by the National Science Foundation. An independent assessment of outcomes will determine the effectiveness of various strategies. Read more.

ENTRY POINT! Interns Tour Capitol Hill
Taking a first-hand look at how science policy affects work in the laboratory and the classroom, eight AAAS ENTRY POINT! interns toured Capitol Hill and met with congressional staff. Now in its ninth year, the program places talented science and engineering students with disabilities in competitive 10-week internships with leading companies and government research agencies across the United States. As the nation celebrated the 20th anniversary of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act, the interns recapped their summer placements during a post-tour event at AAAS. One university senior, who has cerebral palsy, described her work as part of a team designing robots to explore other planets at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Read more.

AAAS Report: Boosting Computer Science, Minority Degrees
While the number of students pursuing computer science degrees has decreased nationally, institutions participating in the National Science Foundation’s Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) program “are defying national trends…with cohorts of underserved students being reached,” according to a report from AAAS released online in mid-July. The program funds eleven alliances -- large research universities, historically black colleges, states, middle and high schools, and various nonprofit organizations. Through an NSF grant, AAAS provides technical assistance and documents the program’s impact on underrepresented minorities -- women, scientists with disabilities, and several racial minorities. Read more about how the program works.

MIT’s OpenCourseWare Wins Science SPORE Prize
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s OpenCourseWare (OCW) program gives worldwide access to nearly all undergraduate and graduate curricula from 33 academic departments, including syllabi, lecture notes, and exams. Because of its enormous success as a science and engineering education tool, attracting an average 1.5 million visitors each month, OCW was selected to receive the Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE), which recognizes exceptionally innovative materials. MIT was the first institution to bring entire curricula to the Internet, and has initiated a global OCW movement. Read more and access an article in the 30 July issue of Science.

AAAS’s Science Update Logs 5,000th Episode
From the first broadcast in 1988, which covered the 25th anniversary of the first digital computer game, to the 5,000th episode in July, which focused on quirky animal behavior, the award-winning Science Update series has covered both profound and whimsical aspects of science. Executive producer and host Bob Hirshon says the show tries to “balance stories between those describing large scientific advances and those that are just plain interesting...any topic that gets the general public excited...” The series airs daily on “American in the Morning,” carried by 200 commercial AM radio stations, and also is syndicated on an additional 20 AM stations. Read more and access recent episodes.

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Science Careers

Science Careers, published by AAAS, offers many resources to help you advance your career. Whether you're seeking a new job, advice on career advancement in your chosen field, or ways to stay current on industry trends, you'll find helpful tools on the site -- all for free. Thousands of searchable jobs from academia, industry, and government are available as well as job alert e-mails, career advice, a resume/cv Database, webinars, and more. Visit ScienceCareers.org today.

Check out the latest resources from Science Careers:

Read the Latest Career Feature from Science Careers: B.S./M.S. Level Scientists
Sponsored by the National University of Singapore
More and more scientists are looking for alternatives to Ph.D. programs. Professional Science Master's (PSM) degrees offer training in science and business that provides a pathway for science and math majors directly into jobs. The NSF and other foundations are directing more funds to universities for the development of these degree programs. Find out more about whether a PSM is the right choice for you. Read more.
A Science Business Office Feature

Report from the 2010 Summer Leadership Institute
Young scientists heard inspiring stories about preparing for leadership through a range of experiences during an intensive five-day course at AAAS in July. The 2010 Summer Leadership Institute of the Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) featured keynote speakers, group exercises, leadership development planning, and networking. Speakers included a member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota who is the first American Indian woman to lead the Indian Health Service, and the acting director of the National Science Foundation -- she grew up in a family of 12; neither of her parents finished high school. Read more.

Science Careers Introduces “Experimental Error”
Read the first humor column about careers in science, now appearing in Issues & Perspectives.

Attend Upcoming Events:

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Member Benefit

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Announcements

Registration and hotel reservations have opened for the 2011 AAAS Annual Meeting, which convenes 17-21 February in Washington, D.C., under the banner “Science Without Borders.” More information>>

New Award to Recognize Public Engagement: Nominations Deadline 15 October
The new AAAS Early Career Award for Public Engagement with Science will recognize exemplary scientific activities that promote interactive dialogue with a nonscientific, public audience. The award is open to scientists and engineers who have been working in their current field for less than seven years (at a pre-tenure or equivalent level.) Nominations are invited from AAAS affiliate organizations, universities, government agencies, the media, research organizations, and individuals. Read more about eligibility and nominations for the award, which includes a $5,000 prize and support to attend the 2011 AAAS Annual Meeting.

Third Annual "Dance Your Ph.D." Contest: Deadline 1 September
Turn your Ph.D. into a dance, and enter the contest for cash awards in each of four categories: Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Social Sciences. Rules and how to enter can be found at http://gonzolabs.org/dance/.

AAAS Arctic Division Science Conference: 13-15 September, Anchorage, Alaska
Access information and register online.

Caribbean Division Annual Meeting: 25 September, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Río Piedras Campus of the University of Puerto Rico
Access information and register online.

Sign Up for 2010 Atlas of Science Literacy Workshops
Designed for science teachers, curriculum specialists, and other educators and researchers, these workshops demonstrate how participants can use the conceptual strand maps in Atlas 1 and Atlas 2, along with other Project 2061 resources, to take a benchmarks-based learning approach to science, mathematics, and technology. Read more and register to attend one of the workshops listed below.


Nomination and Application Deadlines for 2010 AAAS Awards

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More About AAAS

AAAS News & Notes appears in Science in the last issue of each month.
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Join the AAAS President's Circle
AAAS's undertaking to advance science in the service of society is an enormous one, especially now as we are increasingly called upon by the administration and Congress, the science community, and the public to speak up for science on a host of global issues. You can help to ensure that the voice of science -- your voice -- is heard by becoming a part of the President's Circle today with a philanthropic contribution of $500 or more. You will receive updates about our activities and invitations to AAAS events. You will also be invited to participate in a Live 2010 Webinar to be hosted later this year. Visit us online at www.tinyurl.com/dye8kn or call +1 (202) 326-6636 for more information.

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