Informed and Engaged (from Director's Notes, INSGC Observer)

This morning, I made some people happy.  Because INSGC was one of the sponsors of the Neil DeGrasse Tyson lecture on September 19 (see other stories, this issue), I was (unexpectedly) provided with some additional tickets for the lecture.  Two members of the staff in my IE department had asked if I might be able to find them a seat, and I brought them the tickets this morning.  What pleased and enthused me the most is the level of excitement and pleasure they demonstrated when receiving the tickets. 

This is a great example of the positive experience that we at INSGC can bring to others when we support opportunities for STEM engagement.  As I have previously mentioned in my Director’s Blog (http://insgc-bc.blogspot.com/2013/08/locally-grown.html), the challenge may in fact be to identify what do our customers / prospective partners / students want to learn, do, or share.  Sometimes it is about going out to them; other times, it’s bringing them in to help us understand what excites them.  One INSGC-led project is attempting to take this approach within the context of a “research experiences for teachers” project.  Research (to me) is a grand exploration and scouting process.  There is a process of providing information about facts and formulae and functions, but real research is not just about piling those facts up.  It’s about having tools to go out and solve problems, and make sense of a context that you didn’t previously understand… perhaps a context no one has previously understood.   The process of education is not a passive one, as most inspired (and inspiring) teachers will tell you.  In my research group’s blog (http://grouperlab.wordpress.com/2013/09/15/eaten-up-with-curiosity/) , I recently wrote about being “eaten up with curiosity,” as Rudyard Kipling described Rikki-Tikki the mongoose. 

So, what does that sort of experience look like—the well-informed, effectively-engaged, continuously curious citizen as researcher?  Well, we have a historical grand exploration and scouting process, which set out from Indiana (Clarksville) in October 1803: The Corps of Discovery, led by Lewis and Clark.  Now, you would never send out people into the vast unexplored wilderness unprovisioned.  For the Corps, it was medicine and gunpowder and cartography equipment and notebooks: things to go exploring, and make notes, and bring back descriptions of what you found.  For an informed, engaged person, the provisions of research are equally important: analysis skills, mathematical techniques, understanding of physical properties and laws.  But no one would confuse the provisions for the expedition.  They are simply tools to allow you to do a better job exploring.  What’s out there?  What do we want to know?  How do we bring that experience back to others?  That’s a bit harder, especially when the territory is vast and your experience is greatly limited.  (There’s an ocean out there, or some magical destination that may or may not really exist.  Even after the Corps returned, it was hard for most people to believe things like the Badlands, or the Rockies, or the herds of bison, really existed—the explorers had experienced things far outside of the previous experience of those in the United States in 1806.)  And this is always a challenge of the researcher.  How do you share what you’ve seen and learned with others?

That is one way that I appreciate and enjoy Dr. Tyson: he engages people to do the exploration that they can, and he provides them with provisions to do more exploration if they choose.  The stories are accessible, and interesting, and entertainingly presented.  And it helps that stars are visible to lots of us, and we want to tell stories about them.  But Dr. Tyson doesn’t just entertain.  His informative examples are also powerful tools and provisions, useful for a journey of discovery.  I have come to see how vitally important it is to find out which exploration journey a person wants to take, and provision them for that journey, as well as other potential journeys and side trips not yet envisioned.  (One challenge that a high school teacher has, that I don’t have in my university lectures, is that I can make a better guess as to the range of journeys that an Industrial Engineering undergrad will be ready to take after I have tried to provision them with project design or statistics.  It’s still a pretty large range of journeys, so I better make sure my provisions will last, and they don’t leak away or rot over the years to come.) 

I love the process of exploration.  Through my career I have noted that more information, about more subjects, means more provisions that help me discover and document and describe more about those territories I encounter along the way.  Sometimes the information is challenging and new, but that’s okay.  Skis and snowshoes don’t seem to be that useful along the Ohio River in September and October, but I can be glad to acquire them along the way to North Dakota, or learn how to make them when I need them.  If it is our job to teach the excitement of exploration, and not just the excitement a specific person has for a specific subject, there is an added responsibility to learn about a variety of journeys, and get people ready and well-provisioned for those.  I’m pleased that INSGC is able to help with West Lafayette events this fall that excite and engage both kids (Dr. Kaboom, Purdue Space Day) and adults (Dr. Tyson and other general public visits by astronauts).  A broad set of offerings provides our audiences with a range of information and a span of topics that increase the value for more people, regardless of their area of interest.  In other words, a rich stock of provisions for a explorers set off on a variety of journeys of discovery and experience. 

 

Locally Grown

“We don’t sell yesterday’s corn! ... Our green wagons show up at familiar locations, picked that morning…”

Last weekend was beautiful in northern Indiana.  In fact, Friday and Saturday were the sorts of days that local festival organizers dream, and hope, and pray for all year.  Sunny weather, light breezes, glorious blue skies and 75 degrees.  (We might get lucky again this weekend!)  Lovely days, of course, to consider STEM engagement in small Indiana towns—not the Purdue Day experience at the Indiana State Fair last Friday, but a much more local experience.    For instance, elephant ears are a popular dough pastry, but there seems to be something more… essential… for those who lined up at Old Settler Days in Delphi, gathered around the courthouse square.  It’s not just the subject, but the context and application, that matters for those few days.

Part of this lesson came from an unexpected discussion I had with Vic Lechtenberg over lunch.  (Vic had to leave lunch early, as it turns out, specifically to go down to Indianapolis for the Purdue Day BBQ at the State Fair.)  After many years at Purdue as a professor studying crops, and as Dean of Agriculture, Vice Provost for Engagement,  Acting Provost… Vic connects to people well about the applications of his work.  We were talking about sweet corn (another staple at these local festivals), and why Indiana folks rave about how their corn is better and sweeter than anyone else’s.  Funny, I mentioned, folks in Wisconsin used to say the same thing at their sweet corn festivals.  Vic then explained the science behind this feeling, and the appeal of the green wagons.  The enzymatic reaction in corn that turns sugar to starch means that tasty, succulent eating corn doesn’t travel well.  Locally grown, freshly picked, tastes the best.

It was in that moment that I realized why I think the A in Agriculture is different from the other letters in STEM.  Agriculture is a beautiful way of connecting science and technology, engineering and math, in ways that people care locally.  Normally, I don’t think much about enzymes or sucrose decomposition reactions, the stuff of organic chemistry.  But how can I think about sweet corn anymore, or the signs I see by the roadside, without thinking about Vic and his focused explanation in ways that mattered?

And in that thought was a seed (pardon the pun).  What’s the difference between trying to get someone to be excited about your interest, and trying to get them excited about how your interest links to their interest?  An abstracted discussion about advances in manufacturing seems remote and dry.  However, I got to spend a few minutes at the cruise-in a few blocks from the Taste of Cass festival in Logansport. 

The Taste of Cass Festival, Downtown Logansport

One very proud owner showed off their 1925 Indiana Motor Truck, made in Marion—even providing a brief history of the company.  Across the way sat a 1955 Studebaker. 

Restored 1925 Indiana Motor Truck, Logansport Cruise

Indiana Truck Owner's partial history of the company

1955 Studebaker... Looks like it just came from the South Bend factory.

Although they weren’t at the cruise, Auburns, Stutzes, Subarus, Toyota have all been made in Indiana, all representing milestones in manufacturing.  What cars will be at the cruise-in during Logansport’s 200^th or 225^th anniversary (and I wish them the very best in achieving those milestones), and what stories will people tell?  Will anyone have the sense to listen?

Round barns were a technological and engineering marvel in the 19^th Century.  Space for storage, and showing, and efficient use of materials.  There are two notable round barns in Rochester.  One is the Round Barn golf course, at what used to be a fish hatchery.  (“We didn’t have to create the water hazards, they were already here!”) 

Round Barn Golf Club, Rochester, IN

I didn’t know this when I first stopped in to ask about greens fees, but the conversation brought me back to a challenge at a STEM Action Coalition meeting to show whether NASA had anything to do with fish hatcheries.  I could immediately make the connection to tilapia and enclosed life support systems; geographic information and water quality; and ecological models of system dynamics, including mathematical descriptions of stability and resilience.  I’d just finished writing a paper on resilience that the folks in the golf course might not care about… but they would get a discussion about keeping a lake stocked with healthy fish.

For many aerospace geeks, there are a few names on the pantheon of people whose names are not just aerospace history icons, but whose names represent iconic companies.  Curtiss.  Douglas. Hughes.  Wright.  School children know that Wilbur was born in Indiana.  But do we even remember that another of that pantheon was born in Indiana as well?  Lawrence Bell has a small museum in his hometown of Mentone, the Egg Basket of the Midwest.  Who is Bell?  Ask anyone in helicopters about the Bell UH series (“Hueys”).  Or anyone from the Right Stuff era.  Chuck Yeager’s Glamorous Glennis, in bright orange, breaking the speed of sound over the California desert… the Bell X-1. 

Bell Aircraft Museum... It wasn't Sunday.

Sadly, I’ve not been in the museum.  It’s only open for a few hours per week, on Sunday afternoons.  It’s a small group of devoted volunteers, trying to keep an important memory alive in a warehouse across from the silos and animal feed office, just off Indiana 25.  Mentone’s egg festival is in late May, not August, but any weekend will do. 

Mentone Indiana, Egg Basket of the Midwest.  And home of Lawrence Bell.

Maybe there will be some other glorious Indiana day, when I will get to spend some time connecting to their interest, and savoring another of the locally grown products. 

Summer, Yes. Lazy, Not So Much.

It's a beautiful day in West Lafayette today.  Brilliant blue skies, temperatures in the upper 70s to low 80s.  Sounds like a perfect day for a low-stress staff meeting called at 11:00, with the Director to suggest taking the rest of the day off?  Unfortunately, that is not INSGC this week.  (I did play golf yesterday, in between statistics class lecture notes and NASA site logins and reviews of project reports.)

The activities that we discussed today are being repeated 52 times across the country, and they're summarized with another NFLA (NASA Four Letter Acronym) known as OEPM (Office of Education Performance Measurement, if you must know).  How do we enter these program measures and costs?  Which way do we enter the student data?  What can we provide in a secure way, given the time available and workload required?  Imagine my readiness for full-scale panic this morning when it seemed that data had gone missing... but no, it was a challenge in accessing the data using the right combination of key clicks.  Scary, and a reminder of the various ways that the process could go wrong and place us in noncompliance.

Even in my most humorous moods, I can't laugh away this last point.  Noncompliance with a federal grant requirement, or violations of contractual fiscal obligations, is a really big, nasty deal.  This was not something that I spent lots of time worrying about in grad school, or while getting tenure.  (For clarity, I am not talking about research ethics or fraud or stowing away leftover grant funds for a fishing trip to Antigua.  All of those are clearly wrong, and we did talk about why those things were really bad for the individual, and the institution and profession as a whole.)  Over the 10 years that I've been INSGC Director, my biggest summer worry most years has been about making the budgets (including that mysterious "cost share") balance against costs, and exceed the promised commitment to NASA.  (Yes, it's that important.  A grant proposal with a promised cost share amount is considered a legal commitment by the institution to spend that amount of money that won't be charged to the grant.  It's not just a good idea.  It's the law.)

So, today's meeting included a lot of "What's still outstanding?"  "What do we do with those numbers?"  "When do we finalize the report to send off to Headquarters?"  (Officially, the due date is July 19--next Friday.  We're aiming for Wednesday, July 17.  Overachievers?  No, just paranoid and worried that something might go wrong and... put us in noncompliance.)  This is not fun, but it is enough to justify the hours being spent by both Ellie and Julie, our summer interns, checking and entering and staying in close communication with Angie and Dr. Dawn.  Hey, BC!  Here's why we're going to talk you out of doing what you just said you wanted us to do! (A task that is easy when set up one way becomes profoundly difficult when done another way.  Ironically, that's part of what I look at as a human factors engineer, but that's an issue for another day and another blog.)

Once we're done with OEPM, the work's not done.  I will be in Indianapolis multiple times talking about and working with others on a "STEM Engagement Umbrella": we've got a lot of wonderful outreach activities underway at our museums, science centers, and college campuses.  However, it's a real challenge just to find out what's going on in STEM here at Purdue this week, let alone around the state.

(How many of you knew that this year is the 100th anniversary of the Lincoln Highway, the first national route system designed and built explicitly for auto traffic?  This highway, now described in large part by the US 20, US 30, US 33, and 933 route designations through towns from Ft. Wayne to Merrillville, is part of how Indiana developed as part of the automobile nexus of the US before 1930.  Indiana was also part of the National Road system, implemented a century earlier, through Richmond, Indianapolis, Terre Haute, and other towns in the central part of the state.  In other words, the history of transportation technology and civil engineering created the layout and population centers of the state known as the Crossroads of America.  If that isn't STEM affecting your life, I don't know what is.)

Those in education policy need to focus on criteria for evaluating how well programs meet state education standards.  I just want to highlight how much STEM affects all of us in Indiana every day, and help engage that understanding on a more consistent and effective basis.

Welcome Home, Commander Hadfield

It was time for the next blog entry, and I was thinking about all sorts of things to say about STEM Engagement, and ways to remind people of the challenge and value and wonder of space travel and exploration of all kinds.  But, this evening, a friend of mine insisted I watch Chris Hadfield's Space Oddity video on YouTube:

Nothing more to say.

Thank you, Commander Hadfield, and a melancholy welcome back to Earth.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/05/13/astronaut_chris_hadfield_returns_to_earth.html

Up, Down, Top, Bottom, and a bit of Strange

Up, Down, Top, Bottom, and a bit of Strange

Affiliates Meetings are important.  I already knew that, and no matter how much we try to guess what may or may not be on the agenda, something critical always comes up for discussion among our Academic and Outreach Affiliates each April.  Let me say that this year’s meeting on April 12 (yes, Yuri’s Night) at Ball State was a challenge for me, just from a physical standpoint.  I’d only slept one night in my own house this month, after weeks of substantial travel beginning with the National Space Grant Directors’ Meeting in Washington.  Where did my body think it was … Shanghai?  Seattle?  No matter what, it’s time to get up and start the day’s activity in Muncie. 

The podium says Ball State, so I must be in Indiana today.

At one point during the day, we discussed an unfortunate element of life in bureaucratic organizations: “conservation of meetings”.  No matter what, it seems that meetings expand to fill the time allotted, even if nothing important is being discussed.  I don’t like those meetings, and because I appreciate the commitment and dedication of our Affiliates and Board Members, I try to make sure we don’t have them.  With Indiana Space Grant Consortium (INSGC) business, that’s not hard.   As you can see, the Affiliates even want to work through lunch, discussing INSGC stuff, and connecting with each other.

INSGC Affiliates discussing during lunch break

Of course, the first criterion important to avoid those meetings is to ensure we all understand why are we meeting?  There are frequently operational details that we can cover at a meeting, and update elements, such as our award announcements.  However, as Angie Verissimo, our Operations Coordinator, frequently reminds me, there are lots of operational details included in sending out scholarship offers or initial program awards.  Spending time in the bottom-level details is not always the best use of time in our meetings, but it is important for people to know that these details are being addressed.  So, we did make some “First Award” selections of some of our 2013-14 INSGC portfolio.  (Details of those awards will be presented here soon, after the students and investigators have been informed.) 

The top-down view of awards, however, was also an issue of considerable concern among our affiliates.  The national news isn’t good.  Problems in federal funding.  Congressional concerns and surveillance on program activity.  Cascading effects of The Sequester (perhaps a monster from some late night horror movie?) restricting agency expenses.  Fortunately, these problems aren’t affecting INSGC right now (sequestration decisions are directed at employees, not our INSGC award), but as we discussed, we must not ignore these broader concerns as we work to create the best INSGC possible in the future as well. 

How do we do this?  Among our discussions during the day was an examination of what we expect affiliates to be and do, including expectations for what it means for an affiliate to remain in good standing.  Years ago, we put together processes and expectations for how to become an affiliate (voting up)…  but the concerns in 2006 were not about confirming criteria for whether someone could remain an affiliate (voting down).  A working group including Academic Affiliate, Advisory Board, and Outreach Affiliate participants will be working on this important task over the coming months. 

We also discussed how we create and maintain INSGC in the context of the recent headline news stories about a GAO report highlighting duplication of programs and waste, including how multiple STEM education programs might be consolidated across agencies.   In this context, it’s interesting to talk about INSGC as a prototype for a multi-agency, multi-domain affiliate network.  The emphasis here is to highlight our capabilities in an expanded context—across STEM disciplines.  There is an importance that our partners see us as part of a broader engagement of STEM education and applications. One participant mentioned that we can expand this scope, and not even change our acronym—we can be the Indiana STEM Grant Consortium! 

But wait, some might ask (and some did, at the Affiliates Meeting).  Doesn’t “Space Grant” limit what we focus on in terms of STEM?  You know, the aviation technology, the astronauts, the astronomy, the satellite dynamics?  That’s what gets funded by INSGC!  Well, I suppose that some of that is a reminder of the old story about the blind men and the elephant.  If you’re a particle physicist, for example, you think a lot about particle physics, and you notice particle physics applications, and you even pick up particle physics references in the general world.  (Come on, admit it.  You all saw the title of this entry and thought about quarks.  It’s okay.  I wanted you to.)   But in our annual performance data report, INSGC reported on projects for enzyme reduction for biology applications, and nanotechnology camps for K-12 students and their teachers, and a course on groundwater analysis and modeling. 

One of the concerns that became clear is that there is a lot of worry that, in some future INSGC funded by the Smithsonian or NSF to address some expansive view of STEM engagement, everyone would be asked to juggle all of those balls, recognize all of those features, and do all of those tasks.  In other words, “I can’t wrap my head around all of that stuff.”  Well, I don’t think that everyone needs to do that.  When I went in for shoulder surgery, I was glad my surgeon spent most of his time focusing on tendons and supraspinatus muscles and those details.  When the aircraft is descending through storms, I’m glad my pilot is devoting attention to Doppler radar and flight management systems and airspeed indicators.  You want people to work the details of their specialty.  But it’s also valuable to have a broad view, looking forward. What if we helped with undergraduate student retention?  What if we helped support a new framework for K-12 preservice teacher apprenticeships in science museums?  What if we did motorsports?  Actually, we’re involved in all of these—something that we discussed as Engagement for Execution.  Perhaps it requires someone a bit strange to want to connect all of that.  But as this picture indicates, maybe I’m the right kind of strange… or at least different.

BSC “Rocks Out” when discussing INSGC connections

Coming soon, a brief description of the range of student project and program awards (and student majors) we fund at INSGC.  This description is not just for those other people.  It’s to help us remember how broad we already are, and how many people we can touch around the state. 

All STEM is Local

As I start this entry, the National Space Grant Directors’ meeting is beginning in Washington, DC.  However, I’m on a plane from Indianapolis to Atlanta, not due to arrive at the meeting until approximately 6:00 tonight.  What’s going on?

Over the course of February, we at INSGC have scheduled visits with seven of our nine Congressional representative offices—not in the House Office buildings on Capitol Hill, but in the home district offices.  Normally, an educational visit on Capitol Hill (civics lesson alert) is approximately 10-15 minutes with a staff representative of that House member.  There are people in front of you, and people waiting after you leave.  Sometimes, the “staffer” is from the state; sometimes not.  In any case, you’ve got to be able to speak very directly and with focus on a specific point.  The staffer takes notes, and maybe the House member will hear about it, soon.  You’re one of the issues that day.  

But, what happened when this year?  I’ve made it to Danville and Bloomington and Mishiwaka and Indianapolis (twice) and Terre Haute… and learned a lot.  Most of the meetings have been with district directors; twice I’ve met with the House members themselves.  These people are very tuned in to the local elements of STEM Education in their district—retention among underrepresented males; the need for content and expertise to support a local school planetarium center; the role of internships in workforce development.  These meetings have frequently been 30-45 minutes, or even more.  And in so doing, I’ve re-learned an important lesson famously spoken by another House member, Thomas “Tip” O’Neill. 

I’m an engineering professor and researcher, not a policy wonk.  I can’t even keep straight which political party is supposed to be red or blue.  (This is true—I needed two election cycles and a mnemonic to get it right.)  But, it is evident that STEM is a local issue.  I have heard the topic raised throughout the state, in a variety of contexts.  Schools.  Training programs.  Replacing old manufacturing jobs.  I took a tour of a new aluminum production facility yesterday, where one of the nation’s largest extrusion presses is being installed.  What sorts of employees need to be hired there?  Technical skill sets, maybe not a four-year engineering degree, but competence with programmable logic controllers and the algebra and materials science to understand quench rates and weight per linear foot and requirements for self-monitoring, “quality circle” work environments.  That’s not old-school unskilled labor, either. 

And so, I’m late to DC because I spent much of Thursday morning participating in an Indiana STEM Action Coalition for Today (I-STEM ACT) “leadership workshop” at the Project Lead the Way national headquarters located in Indianapolis.  I now have a list of those STEM disciplines highlighted by the Commission on Higher Education that are tied to Indiana economic growth and focus.  Interestingly, the presenter was asking whether or not this was useful to the attendees.  I said that yes, it’s very good to highlight “This is what STEM means and highlights in Indiana… and it’s all relevant to NASA.”  Well, what about fisheries, the presenter quipped.  As it turns out, I was part of the NASA NSCORT on Advanced Life Support at Purdue about a decade ago, and one of the research projects was about fish as part of a sustainable recycling and life support system for long-duration spaceflight.  Fisheries help us talk about systems engineering, and carbon balances, and energy conversion, and oxygen cycles—all things of critical importance to NASA’s Human Research Program (looking at human spaceflight) and Science Mission Directorate (examining Earth’s climate and ecosystems).  So, yes, even fisheries. 

Stay tuned.  As our motto says, we want to Engage STEM Education for the State of Indiana.  If STEM is local, what does that mean for Indiana STEM, and the Indiana Space Grant Consortium?  We do plan to find out, and we welcome companions on this exploration