Science To Go

Science To Go

Researchers bring science to the people, even amidst the limitations of lockdown.

By Gloria J. Chang

Liz Roth-Johnson, PhD, was only two months into her new role as curator of life sciences at the California Science Center in Los Angeles when the coronavirus pandemic shut down the center. Normally, the state-funded center—the largest science center west of the Mississippi—welcomed 2.2 million visitors a year, seven days a week with no admission fees. Quick action was required to reach the grade schoolers that normally came to visit.

“We had to rethink hands-on exhibits,” says Roth-Johnson, the 2014 APS-sponsored AAAS Mass Media Fellow. Her role is to design, develop and build exhibits for the World of Life Gallery, which covers the science of humans and other living things. “We pivoted to online content like many others.”

With a mission to stimulate curiosity and inspire science learning, the center created “Stuck at Home Science” (https://californiasciencecenter.org/funlab/stuck-home-science), a series of videos for children and families who were, well, stuck at home. These YouTube videos ran the gamut of live DNA extractions to balloon rockets to animal visits—all with an activity that children could do at home. As reopening delays continued, the center built on its online offerings, which now include blogs, virtual field trips and sold-out virtual summer camps (the center distributed 2,100 summer camp kits to participants last summer).

Across the U.S., the pandemic forced scientists and institutions to reach their audiences in unexpected and new ways. As the entire world seemed to go virtual in 2020, so too did museums, learning centers and universities. But with a little creativity and brainstorming, the scientists were able to provide “science to go” and meet families where they were—at home.

For Roth-Johnson and her colleagues, that meant figuring out technology they had never used before. She spearheaded Ever Wonder?, a podcast delving into the world of science. She started with interviews with staff members, who presented their hands-on exhibits as audio experiences. The podcast later expanded to interviewing scientists outside the science center.

“None of us had made a podcast,” she says. “None of the staff creating ‘Stuck at Home Science’ were professional video creators.” Her takeaway? “Don’t be afraid to just try things.”

‘MORE THAN JUST A PHYSICAL BUILDING’

In the Midwest, Frederic Bertley, PhD, CEO of Ohio’s Center of Science and Industry (COSI), was under added pressure in the weeks leading up to the center’s pandemic shutdown. “We were going from millions in revenue to zero. How the heck are we going to survive?” he remembers thinking.

As a science center that depended mostly on ticket sales for its budget, a shutdown threatened its very existence. As a physiologist and immunologist who researched vaccines at Harvard Medical School before shifting his primary focus to public outreach, Bertley knew the virus wasn’t going away soon. After laying out a strategy to decrease operating expenses and increase revenues independent of physical visits, he then ramped up plans already underway.

“Prior to the pandemic, we launched our new strategic plan,” he says. With the spread of cellphone use and digital everything, “we knew we had to be more than just a physical building.” Like the work on the coronavirus vaccine, the pandemic only accelerated what was already in the works.

COSI launched a variety of programs independent of physical visits. COSI Connects (https://cosi.org/connects) includes a suite of online activities such as videos, virtual visits to an exhibit and a variety of hands-on STEM kits that contain five experiments. Families waited in a line of more than 300 cars to pick up the popular kits.

Partnerships with various governments, associations and corporations were another key to success, allowing the center to exceed fundraising goals that had been set before the pandemic. “We showed our donors what exactly their dollars were doing and their impact on the end user,” Bertley says.

There’s also a new TV show called “QED with Dr. B” made in partnership with a PBS affiliate, with plans to develop accompanying online educational content. COSI is now gearing up for its third annual science festival in May 2021, which will be virtual two years in a row. “The pandemic has forced everyone to be innovative in real time,” Bertley says.

GRASSROOTS OUTREACH

Nine years ago, after explaining what he did as a physiologist at his daughter’s fifth grade class on Career Day, Patrick J. Mueller, PhD, associate professor of physiology at Wayne State University’s School of Medicine in Detroit, decided to continue making annual visits. In 2021, that visit went virtual after the cancellation of last year's visit. “What is science? What is a scientist? This is the question to answer and to show people,” he says.

“Outreach to me is about making people aware of opportunities for themselves, but also how certain things work, which all lends to a better society,” says Mueller, who describes his outreach efforts as grassroots and believes any interaction is a chance to do outreach. As just one example, after meeting a group of students while participating at Brain Day at the Science Center in Detroit in 2017, he invited them to a meeting with the Michigan chapter of APS. One of the students is now about to enter a postbaccalaureate program at the National Institutes of Health doing research.

“It’s a two-way street,” Mueller says. “They get introduced to areas they love. You get the reward and satisfaction of seeing someone find their niche.”

UNDERSTANDING YOUR AUDIENCE

Alicia Schiller, PhD, associate professor and director of combat casualty care medicine at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, learned early how to connect with young students. In 2017, she and colleague Bryan Becker, PhD, published a study on an outreach event that specifically targeted Native American middle and high schoolers, who are underrepresented in STEM. They brought in 275 local students to participate in a day-long, 10-station event that taught them about physiology.

“It’s easy to say, ‘I’m a professor, a postdoc student, a physiologist,’ but students connected none of these roles with being a scientist,” Schiller says. “That was incredibly useful for us because all we had to do was change how we introduced ourselves: ‘I’m a scientist and I do research on the heart or the lungs.’”

The most interactive activities were also the most effective. “One of the fun things we did was an activity we called ‘What does a scientist look like?’ We provided a skeleton, clothes and miscellaneous costume items. The schoolchildren dressed it up and took selfies to share.”

Their study assessing the impact of their outreach event showed an increased understanding of what a physiologist is and increased enthusiasm toward scientific career opportunities. They can take the knowledge with them as they get back to outreach post-pandemic.

WHEN VIRTUAL BEATS IRL
 
At the University of Texas, El Paso, Alvaro N. Gurovich, PT, PhD, turned twice-yearly informational in-person visits for the physical therapy doctoral program into an online visit during the pandemic.

“It went so well it looks like we’re going to do it virtually instead of face-to-face moving forward after the pandemic,” he says. “El Paso is so far away from everything, so doing it face-to-face, we had 100 people showing up, making their way from areas up to eight hours away. When we did it virtually, we had 300-plus people attending via Zoom because it was more accessible.” In fall 2021, a student from Australia will join the virtual program.

To ensure the event was both engaging and relevant, the four-hour session started with an icebreaker and included a video created by current students in the program to appeal to their own age group and an informal question period with them. Then faculty had breakout rooms for prospective students to ask questions.

With his lab now open again—with restrictions—Gurovich is focused on returning to his K–12 student outreach, but also virtually. “Now that we know how to deal with the pandemic, we can start thinking outside the box to bring science to middle schoolers next academic year,” says Gurovich, who believes this is the perfect age to do outreach. “A lot of studies show that middle school, grades 5 to 7, is when kids make the decision to go to college.”

PANDEMIC SPOTLIGHTS NEED FOR SCIENCE OUTREACH

No doubt, the pandemic created challenges, but it has offered some improvements that will continue long after it’s over.

“It’s really been an opportunity to expand our offerings, to grow and create new ways to fulfill our mission to stimulate curiosity and inspire science learning,” Roth-Johnson says. The podcast, for example, will continue after the center reopens. And the online content expanded the center’s audience nationally and internationally. “Stuck at Home Science” had participation from all over the world, including Italy, Germany and the Middle East. Roth-Johnson has also been working on a new COVID-19 exhibit that will open when the doors do.

If anything, the pandemic has shined a light on the importance of science literacy and competence.

“I think if it wasn’t clear to people, it made it very clear that science matters in our everyday lives,” Bertley says. “The pandemic has shown us science really affects and influences our daily lives in ways we don’t realize, and it can offer solutions to get out of this pandemic. To see all the scientists from around the world get together with such incredible speed to come up with several candidate vaccines, and at least four in clinical use that have high efficacy, that’s exciting. And science made it happen.”