12 Broader Impacts Henderson DUSEL S3 Proposal

12. Broader Impacts (owner: Claes)

12.1 An Integrated Program of Research and Education

How did our universe come to be? What is it made of? What is the dark matter that astronomers have shown forms 23% of the universe? Where does mass come from? Do the recently established observations that neutrinos have mass provide any clue?

How deeply does life extend into the Earth? How do microorganisms found deep underground fundamentally differ from those that live on the surface? Are there new life forms to be discovered? Do they hold secrets to the origin of life?

What lies deep beneath the Earth’s surface? Why is the Colorado Mineral Belt one of the most lucrative mining districts in the world? How accurately do surface measurements and drill-hole samples predict what is unseen below?

What are the challenges of working in extreme conditions deep underground?

DUSEL will investigate some of the most fundamental and engaging questions that humans have posed about their world. Its multidisciplinary swath provides something to capture almost anyone’s imagination and provides a wonderful example of interdisciplinary science.

DUSEL science is cool! Doing research deep underground is hot!

12.1.1 An Overview of Our Guiding Principles

An exceptional opportunity exists at Henderson DUSEL to build an integrated education and outreach program where multidisciplinary research dovetails with education. E&O programs connected to the science of DUSEL will reach students, teachers, scientists, and the general public through K-16 instructional material development, outreach programs to regional schools and communities, research experiences for undergraduate students and teachers, professional development workshops for teachers, exchange activities for undergraduate and graduate students, a visitors center, and outreach to the state and nation through a variety of online and distance education resources. Our goal is to expose a diverse group of students and teachers to enhanced science instruction through engagement with active scientific investigation and to interest the general public in our science. Briefly, we will build on the following principles:

Locale: We will attract and engage a large audience by capitalizing on the Henderson Mine’s unique setting along major tourist corridors surrounded by hiking and skiing trails in the beautiful Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.

Scope and Impact: A “cradle-to-grave” strategy will build interest in science at an early age, increasing student participation as “scientists” in appropriate, authentic research experiences from grade school through college. By targeting teachers and teaching faculty we will make the greatest impact.

Diversity: DUSEL E&O programs will reach out to a diverse group of students and members of the public. The Laboratory will make special efforts to attract groups typically underrepresented in science and engineering through partnerships with community colleges and universities and professional and community organizations.

Collaboration:The Education and Outreach Office will bring together a diverse group of project scientists, K-12 teachers, and local community members to define needs, prioritize program plans and develop and conduct programs.

Partnerships:Partnerships with educational institutions, organizations, and industries with significant synergy, both local and national, have already been established and will continue to grow. In addition DUSEL will work to develop links with the outreach efforts of underground laboratories around the world.

Assessment: Program and facilities development and implementation will be guided by appropriate formative and summative assessment. With assistance from our partners we will design an overall evaluation plan including internal and external evaluation.

Structure: The main components—informal science education, formal science education, and public outreach—will be implemented in three phases: Phase 1precedes ground-breaking, culminating with the opening of the temporary visitors’ center, and covers approximately the period from 2007 through 2009; by the end ofPhase 2 (2008 – 2010, overlapping substantially with Phase 1) we will have completed the permanent onsite visitors’ center; Phase 3 begins in 2010 and marks the implementation of our initial suite of educational programs. Early plans will focus on a few programs that can be done well. The pace will increase as the group gains experience and the audience grows.

12.1.2 Location, location, location

Located in the center of one of the country’s major tourist destinations, the unique draw of the Front Range/metropolitan Denver area will make it possible to reach large audiences. The Henderson Mine is situated at the edge of Arapaho National Forest where the Jones Pass and Berthoud Falls Pass trails meet, along the major north-south corridor connecting the destination resorts of Loveland Pass and Winter Park. The average daily traffic count on I-70 through Clear Creek County is 42,000 and along US 40 it is 7,100.

The nearby Georgetown Visitors Center draws 254,000 visitors a year; the Idaho Springs Visitor Center and Mining Museum 45,000; Georgetown Loop Railroad 65,665; US Forest Service Information Center in Idaho Springs 26,127. The large per day visits occur from May through September. (Notice that most K-12 school visits would be during the slack months).) Both the Georgetown and Idaho Springs Visitors Centers will carry bi-lingual displays on DUSEL; Georgetown already displays two posters on the science to be pursued at the proposed Henderson-DUSEL.

The Mountain Communities immediately adjacent to Henderson include the 6 school districts of 5 counties (Clear Creek, Eagle, Gilpin, Grand, Summit) with 817 teachers serving 11,432 K-12 students. The 7 Front Range Counties (Arapaho, Boulder, Denver, Douglas, El Paso, Jefferson, and Weld) include an additional 40 school districts with 27,887 teachers serving 492,344 students. There are eight major colleges and universities one hour from Clear Creek County including CU Boulder, University of Denver, CO School of Mines, Red Rocks Community College, and Metropolitan State College of Denver, with CSU only a bit further away.

12.1.3 Our Target Audience: Teachers Speak for Themselves

In order to compete globally our nation requires a scientifically literate general public strongly supporting research, and well established pipelines into STEM careers. The emphasis cannot be solely academic, but must encompass all careers that require STEM training: engineers, scientists, technicians, teachers, regulators, and contractors.

This suggests a broad target audience. We need to excite the general public to appreciate why they should support DUSEL efforts. We need to engage visiting K-12 students, undergraduates, and graduate students to build and nurture their interest in STEM. We need a program designed for teachers, clearly the most cost efficient way to reach large numbers of students. These programs must also involve the community colleges which train many engineers and technicians. The needs of the STEM fields are so great that proposed programs must not exclude students in financial need or the small rural schools, and must recruit effectively to include all under-represented groups.

From inception, the Henderson DUSEL collaboration has integrated planning for education along with planning for research. To facilitate planning input was collected from over 150 educators from Colorado to Long Island in an effort to identify their needs and learn how they felt those needs could best be met by a national laboratory: not only what they’d expect from a national Educational & Outreach program, but what they would actually use. A series of special workshop sessions for area educators were organized in conjunction with each of the three Denver-area Henderson DUSEL topical workshops and the Stony Brook Capstone Workshop (see Sect. 12.5Prior Work). Informal discussions followed presentations to the Denver Area Physics Teachers group, the Midwest Regional NSTA Conference, local chapters of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) and the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), and a DUSEL exhibit to the general public at CSU’s Little Shop of Physics annual open house. There was strong consensus on few frequently recurring suggestions:

  • It is essential that any Visitor Center include an underground experience.
  • Such a Center should have classroom and lab facilities for visiting classes, providing experiences unavailable to the typical classroom.
  • Instructional material must be specifically tied to the National Science Standards. These standards often dictate a fully packed school year; teachers cannot easily accommodate new topics or enrichment units. Their need is for novel approaches to presenting required topics. Teachers are excited by illustrative examples from cutting edge science.
  • Teachers need, and seek professional development opportunities that provide continuing ed and graduate hour credits; specifically, teachers are all greatly concerned with the need that all become highly qualified in teaching areas.

In the sections that follow we describe a Visitors’ Center that includes the very facilities our teachers expressed an interest in, instructional programs designed specifically to follow the National Standards, and a series of preservice and professional development programs that offer the opportunity to earn graduate and continuing credit hours. We propose to provide an underground experience several ways: with above ground displays, interactive exhibits lining a horizontal drift that visitors will dress up in safety gear to enter, and virtual 3D deep underground toursprojectedin a fulldome digital planetarium.

12.1.4 A “cradle-to-grave” approach

A long-range strategy of targeting, assessing, and tracking is proposed that starts by building interest in science at an early age, and with the general public, increasing student involvement as they progress from grade through middle and high school. Students will participate as scientists in authentic research experiences in school classrooms, online, in the visitor center classrooms and labs, and in underground facilities.

By targeting teachers we can impact a generation of students. Teachers will gain understanding of the nature of science in summer research experiences and in research-scenario workshops and learn how to translate those experiences into classroom activities and investigations.

By initially concentrating locally, resources will be better focused on development and assessment. Best practices (in transfer to the classroom, classroom methods and pedagogy, student and teacher-based research programs, recruitment and sustaining long term interest) will be surveyed, developed in consultation with scientists (education researchers as well as DUSEL scientists) into specific applications, assessing them along the way, and building upon what works. Successful programs will be disseminated nationally.

We will build on our collective experience of success in three existing programs:

  • The Biogeochemical Education Experience – South Africa, a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) where undergraduate students from multiple disciplines work with an interdisciplinary team examining biogeochemical processes in the deep subsurface.
  • The Little Shop of Physics (LSOP), a hands-on program that each year reaches over 15,000 students and offers workshops in science instruction to over 200 teachers around the world.
  • The Cosmic Ray Observatory Project, a nationally recognized outreach program engaging high schools in a study of correlated extended cosmic ray air showers across Nebraska is the model for the SALTA (Snowmass Area Large Time-coincidence Array) project.

12.1.5 Diversity

Deep underground science and engineering research projects may attract a different type of individual to science and engineering. The cross-disciplinary synergy, which is starting to appear, promises to foster a new breed of scientists and engineers skilled in multiple-science techniques and crosscutting applications.

Many of the students who take part in programs at the DUSEL facility will be from the nearby Denver Public School District, the largest in the state. DPS is a truly diverse district, with a student population that is 50% Hispanic, 20% African-American, 20% Anglo and 10% Native American, Asian-American and other ethnicities.

The Broader Impacts Committee has met with local chapters of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, and the National Society of Black Engineers. These groups were quite excited about opportunities to take part in the programs of the Laboratory. These connections will grow and help us attract and retain a diverse community of students and scholars.

Partnerships with universities will facilitate the participation of a diverse range of undergraduate and graduate students in DUSEL programs. For example, the McNair program at CSU provides scholarships for minority students to participate in research projects. With the cooperation of the McNair program, we will identify, recruit and support a diverse population of students to do research at the laboratory.

12.1.6 Collaboration

DUSEL’s Education and Outreach Office will bring formal and informal educators and scientists together to plan and conduct programs. We will actively recruit master teachers to become our partners. We will offer professional development for them to learn DUSEL science as they join development teams with scientists and other educators. We will actively encourage scientists to participate in and contribute to outreach efforts and assist them to develop their expertise in education and outreach.

12.1.7 Synergistic Partnerships, Local and National

Locally, LSoP involvement allows Henderson DUSEL to take advantage of the program’s 15 years of experience in science outreach. Partnerships with The Discovery Science Center, Fort Collins and the National Renewable Energy Lab will help to open DUSEL’s own Visitors Center early with fascinating, effective interactive displays. The Mt. Evans Observatory offers an extreme high altitude site near Henderson, augmenting the particle astrophysics program with photon astrophysics. We have also made contact with the Denver Astronomical Society, the Denver Area Physics Teachers, the Colorado/Wyoming American Association of Physics Teachers Chapter, and University of Colorado School of Education's Science Discovery program.

We have worked with the National Science Teachers Association to recruit participants and promote DUSEL science. DUSEL presentations were on the agenda of the NSTA Midwest Area Conference in Omaha. We plan for teachers nationwide to become involved in the development of DUSEL instructional materials as part of a continuing series of NSTA conference workshop sessions (special extended hands-on sessions), with new and returning groups of participants over several years. Material will be beta tested, assessed, further developed through brainstorming and discussion with groups at these venues, and finally distribution through these meetings.

A potential partnership exists with the Pierre Auger Experiment if it opens in its selected eastern Colorado location. Auger E&O is another University of Nebraska-led effort. Particularly significant is our connection with Fermilab’s Education Office. The Education Office has been a great help to the Broader Impacts Committee from the start of the S2 process. Formalizing this partnership will provide essential guidance especially in the developmental stages of the Education and Outreach office.

DUSEL will join INTERACTIONS.ORG, the international collaboration of physics labs, and following the example of both particle physics laboratories and light source facilities, work to develop links with the outreach efforts of underground laboratories around the world.

12.1.8 A strong web presence

Since most of the teachers and students we hope to reach may never have the opportunity to visit DUSEL, Education & Outreach materials and programs must be offered online and through distance-learning. The asynchronous nature of the Internet can ignore the inconvenience of time zones in making its materials accessible anywhere, anytime. An interactive website will provide content for informal and formal education (targeting teachers of different grade levels) and outreach to members of the general public. This material will include downloadable instructional materials, streamed video of special lab events, and eventually, as it becomes available, data and analysis tools. DUSEL experiments will be summarized by content area and searchable via the National Science Digital Library by science education standards. The site will feature live Cosmic Weather Reports from the CROP and SALTA projects and live webcasts and downloadable podcasts of lectures and programs. A weekly newsletter posted electronically will feature a “find” of the week highlighting an experiment or collaborating institution, promote the lab's calendar of events, and include an “Ask-a-scientist” feature. The web site will also have trip planning advice and downloadable pre- and post-visit classroom activities; teachers will be able to plan school group tours (and the general public its own visit), customizing itineraries and downloading pre-, during, and post- visit curriculum materials.

12.1.9 Evaluation

Program, exhibit, and facilities development will be informed by ongoing formative and summative assessment. University partners and local school districts will bring significant expertise in educational assessment. Working with the R&D Center, CSU’s collaborative office with the local Poudre School District, graduate students can evaluate such topics as the impact of a short-term visit on understanding and attitudes toward science; the level of content appropriate for different grade levels; the effectiveness of classroom activities and much more. This feedback may even provide publishable data on the impact of the education and outreach work of the Laboratory.

Broader Impacts Committee: Dan Claes (UNL, CROP), Chair; Brian Jones (CSU, LSoP), co-Chair; Susan Pfiffner (UTK, BEESA), co-Chair; Marge Bardeen (Fermilab Education Office), Douglas Duncan (Colorado, Astronomical Laboratories),Jack Dunn (UNL, Meuller Planetarium), Chang Kee Jung (SUNY), Mark Kuchta (CSM), Barbara Monday (CU, Science Discovery), Gavin Polhemus (CSU), Robert Stencel (DU), Victor Stenger (Colorado Citizens for Science), Andrew Warnock (CSU and Discovery Science Center), and Jeff Wilkes (UW).