Report of the Committee on Public Understanding of Science
for the Year Ending June 30, 2006

Sigma Xi's "Committee on the Public Understanding of Science" recommended a committee name change to better reflect programmatic activities. The committee proposes that the name be changed to "Committee on Science and Society." The program area advised by the committee will become known as the "Science and Society Program."

Meeting of the Committee
The committee met June 16, 2006, at the Sigma Xi Center in Research Triangle Park, NC.

Activities and Business of the Committee

• The committee discussed the fundamental problems with the name of Sigma Xi's Public Understanding of Science program. It was the committee's concern that the name does not accurately reflect the program's focus, which is to equip and encourage scientists themselves to affect the public's understanding of science. This focus is evident in recent program activities like science cafés and the Image and Meaning series of workshops on the visual communication of science. Newer and increasingly accepted terminology utilizing "public engagement" and "public outreach" were deemed by the committee to be more appropriate. After further discussion the committee agreed that a more effective name of the program would be "Science and Society Program."
• The committee was introduced to the Science Café model that Sigma Xi is developing with WGBH in Boston. Sigma Xi and WGBH have forged a partnership to advance and provide coherence to the burgeoning science café movement. In February, Sigma Xi and WGBH jointly hosted the first national conference of science café organizers at the Sigma Xi Center. Sigma Xi chapters, museum representatives, outreach planners from public television stations, institutional public information officers and local café organizers all gathered to discuss best practices and the various models that make up the café movement.
• Another new project of the Public Understanding of Science program is the IM2.x series of image and meaning workshops. These workshops are aimed at improving the visual communication of science and technology. The workshops build off of the participatory conference called Image and Meaning 2 that was held last summer at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. In partnership with MIT's Envisioning Science Project and Harvard's Initiative in Innovative Computing, and with funding from NSF, Sigma Xi is facilitating the workshops. The workshops are designed to bring together scientists from many fields, graphic designers, artists, computing experts, science communicators and science-center professionals to work on problems in making and using images to enhance understanding of complex information. The first IM2.x workshop was held at the Sigma Xi Center in June, and the next is scheduled for Chicago in September.
• The committee discussed Sigma Xi's proposal to build a suite of effective early career-development workshops. These workshops would be targeted to the development of lab management skills which are not traditionally included in science and engineering curricula. The model under consideration would include one and a half days of grant proposal training, and a half day each of media training and presentation training. Sigma Xi currently offers a five day grant proposal training workshop in conjunction with a national training partner who will work with Sigma Xi to develop a more concise model. Currently Sigma Xi has no model to fulfill the communications training module. The committee discussed the requirements that the Sigma Xi should consider as it develops it media and communications training model.

Members of the Committee
Victoria McGovern, Committee Chair
Ben Patrusky
Paul Raeburn
Joann Rodgers
Holden Thorp