CLEAN Teleconference Call March 9, 2021
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The Science Education for New Civic Engagements Approach
Abstract: In this presentation, Eliza Reilly will introduce the national STEM education initiative Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities (SENCER). Since 2001 SENCER has supported faculty and informal educators who aim to improve student learning and civic capacity by linking STEM content to unsolved civic and social challenges of immediate relevance to students and their communities. SENCER courses developed by faculty at over 500 institutions teach biology through COVID, HIV and other infectious diseases, Chemistry through energy use or water quality, Computer Science through cybersecurity and algorithm bias, Math through voting and demography, for a few examples. Now faculty are energized to teach content all of these disciplines through climate change. Prof. Sonya Doucette will follow by describing how Bellevue College has used SENCER strategies to advance justice centered and civically engaged science teaching through a focus on embedding climate science and climate justice across the curriculum.
Eliza Jane Reilly is the Executive Director of the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement (ncsce.net). She has two decades of experience in the design and implementation of programs and materials to advance curriculum, academic leadership and faculty development that improves student learning and builds civic capacity. She has been an ongoing participant in SENCER and the NCSCE's formal and informal education programs since 2001 and currently serves as the General Editor of the SENCER Models and co-Editor of the journal Science Education and Civic Engagement: An International Journal. Since 2015 she has held an appointment as a Research Professor in the Department of Technology and Society at Stony Brook University and is currently a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Learning Innovation. In 2018 Eliza was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for her contributions to science education and civic engagement.
Sonya Doucette is the Program Co-Chair for Earth and Space Sciences at Bellevue College in Washington State. She strives to incorporate field work, and analytical techniques and instrumentation, into her courses through research projects so that students may experience "science in action." Some recent projects include carbon cycling in wetlands (North Seattle CC), nitrogen and phosphorus pollution in urban lakes (UW, Tacoma), and heavy metal contamination of urban soils and sediments (ASU and Hope House Farms in Phoenix). At BC, she co-developed a new course (CHEM 272) in which students have carried out research projects on topics such as the effect of pesticides on bees, micro-scale Puget Sound air pollution, and desalinization using forward osmosis. She is the coordinator for a new Sustainability Concentration and recently received an NSF grant to support the goal of incorporating climate science and climate justice throughout the BC curriculum.
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