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

Committee Members Attending
Victoria McGovern, Chair
Ben Patrusky
Paul Raeburn
Joann Rogers

Committee Members Not Attending
Julie Benyo

Sigma Xi Staff Liaison
Laura Nigro

Invited Sigma Xi Guests
Jim Baur, FY07 President
Phil Carter, Executive Director
Ros Reid, Editor, American Scientist
Chris Brodie, Associate Editor, American Scientist
Roger Harris, Director, Membership and Chapters Dept.

The committee meeting convened at 9:00 am on Saturday, 23 June 2007, following an informal two-hour dialogue with Sigma Xi leaders and Honorary Members the preceding day. The discussion topic was What initiatives should Sigma Xi be taking to advance the public understanding of science? facilitated by the PUoS chair. (See accompanying/attached notes)

The chair invited her fellow Committee members to offer their feedback and practical advice on PUoS activities planned/proposed in the coming year, as well as additional input of new ideas.

Going Forward in FY08
Moving forward with development of PUoS, the basic strategy will be to raise Sigma Xi's exposure in the public domain while minimizing the expense of doing so and by leveraging results that the Society has already achieved. A guiding principle is that activities to be pursued will either have funding attached, or a strong funding potential, to cover staff time and operational expenses. Toward this end, the following major initiatives are planned:

Science Café Partnership with WGBH-NOVA scienceNOW
In May, key Sigma Xi staff visited key WGBH staff (including PUoS Comm member Julie Benyo) to reaffirm this organizational partnership, resolve any legal challenges, and proceed with the ongoing work of the partnership. Our Science Café collaboration encompasses

• A new website under construction to proclaim, encourage and support café development by sharing event calendars, best practices and how-to resources (launch expected in July)
• A "soup to nuts" Science Café Kit (expressly for SX members and chapters, but some general ideas exported to the public website)

Committee members encouraged Sigma Xi to assert its right to full co-branding credit (i.e., logos, name placement) on any WGBH media that carried or referenced Sigma Xi content. Sigma Xi MarCom staff should step in at this point to assist this process, including creation of use-of-name guidelines. The Committee also suggested we collect basic demographic info from café participants, which could yield both new organizational partners and clues to capturing more individual participants.

Virtual Science Café Partnership with PRI-The World
In June, Public Radio International and Sigma Xi submitted a joint proposal to NSF to partner on "Science and Technology: A Global Enterprise." This would expand PRI's science coverage via The World daily radio news program, emphasizing global impacts and implications. These science segments would segue into as many as two to four virtual science cafés per month, to be moderated by guest expert topic hosts lined up by Sigma Xi. PRI invited Sigma Xi to be its key outreach partner for this initiative on strength of our successful "live" science café partnership with WGBH (which co-produces The World along with PRI and BBC World Service).

Sigma Xi would serve as an objective broker of vetted guest expert topic hosts to moderate the online cafés. Sigma Xi membership would be a highly desirable, though not requisite, attribute of individuals invited to serve as hosts. The more important attribute would be securing moderators who can "tell their story" well. They, along with the members of the selection/vetting panel who choose invite them, would effectively constitute a "brain trust" that could be drawn from to "populate" other key Society activities (e.g., Distinguished Lectureships, live science cafés).

The project plan includes a meta layer of research questions of presumed interest to NSF, as well as formative, implementational and summative evaluation stages. Committee members advised linking the actual sci-tech news segments and subsequent online cafés to relevant articles of American Scientist and other appropriate Sigma Xi content online. Society President Jim Baur cautioned that SX partnerships with other organizations that legally bind us in any way must always receive board approval.

Sense About Science
Two Sigma Xi staff have now conferred with agents of this UK-based program that "promotes good science and evidence for the public." Sense About Science (SAS) especially strives to educate the general public about the critical role of peer review, in response to unqualified pronouncements made by celebrities, politicians and other high-profile spokespeople who are not versed in the scientific method. SAS alerts expert, highly credentialed commentators who then release clarifications or corrections to the original statement. In contrast with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), SAS pro-actively responds in a swift and very public manner to unfounded claims. The organization has good relations with science writers and editors across the media.

Sigma Xi could complement this sort of activity with our own expertise-and likely add credibility to the overall venture. We are currently in discussion with SAS about how such an organizational collaboration might proceed. This in turn could strengthen the Society's relationship in the UK, which is consistent with our strategy of trying to establish chapters there (currently there are none). Here in the USA, it could create a whole new class of opportunities for Sigma Xi to obtain high visibility by performing a public educational service. An approach of positive reinforcement vs. punishment was advised. Assembling topic-specific experts for SAS (perhaps generated by the PRI-SX initiative) could also feed a roster of guest presenters for live science cafés. All of the above would draw from Sigma Xi's extensive membership base. Thus, the possibility for multi-directional synergy exists.

The Committee expressed its support in principle for pursuing such a collaboration with SAS, which would ultimately need approval by Sigma Xi's Board.

Affiliate Program
This initiative launched officially in July 2006. Target market is those individuals who do not qualify for traditional peer-reviewed membership in Sigma Xi based on quantitative research accomplishment, but who nonetheless wish to be formally connected with the Society in support of the scientific enterprise. Like members, Affiliates receive a subscription to American Scientist along with most of the other services and benefits. In contrast to members, they receive their own custom newsletter for and about Affiliates. To date, members and chapters have not heartily embraced the Affiliate concept. Still, pending availability of human and financial resources, Sigma Xi will maintain this program and now strive to undertake the next phase: pro-active outreach to prospective Affiliates (e.g., clinicians, lab techs and science teachers, and widows and widowers of long-time members).

Each of the three categories of Affiliateship-Friend, Professional, Student-is completely self-selecting on the part of the registrant. I.e., there is no conferral of Affiliate status by peers or superiors, as with Members. It follows that Affiliate dues, unlike membership dues (which are set via the Nine-Point Motion during the General Assembly), may be adjusted/discounted "at will," to create special incentive offers to target markets.

Committee members expressed their strong support for the general concept and premise of Affiliates, and for Sigma Xi putting up the "big tent" (i.e., not relegating formal involvement in the Society to those who qualify for traditional membership). The Committee encouraged staff to pursue all planned program activities, noting that Affiliates could serve as powerful grassroots advocates for Sigma Xi and for science in general, engaging members of their own community. The Committee expressly asked that the Board of Directors provide resources and allow mechanisms for encouraging members to support the Affiliate Program. It also encouraged Sigma Xi to explore creative discount options on Affiliate dues.

Media Training for Researchers
Sigma Xi (American Scientist ) editorial staff and members of CASW have in the past talked about collaborating to train researchers in communicating effectively with the media. Such a program could add value to membership in the Society, as well as give any researchers the tools to interact better with the public. In particular, such training could help build a USA advisory team for Sense About Science.

Outside funding to train researchers to talk with the media is not easy to come by. Such a Sigma Xi media training program will likely need to start small; hence, participants should be carefully chosen for their potential, marked by a passion for telling others about their work and ideas. Our role would be to teach them how to tell general audiences about what they love to do. Participants should also represent diversity. Even a small initial number of trainees, if well chosen, will have a viral effect when they become communication leaders and go on to train others in good communication behavior. "Watch one, do one, teach one"; i.e., train the trainers.

The Cold Spring Harbor courses might serve as a good model, using Sigma Xi Honorary Members as guest instructors. The general higher-level concept is to create effective voices for science that model science communication and lead by doing it well. Also, the newly formed local group Science Communicators of North Carolina (SCONC) was launched to pool ideas, action and available funding for this sort of training in this region. By shaping communication training around specific disciplines, Sigma Xi might attract funding from discipline-specific entities (e.g., the American Meteorological Society, which currently funds a Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer on global warming). This would be balanced against the learning benefits of a mixed environment. Regardless of the model adopted, program goals should be clear.

[Sidebar: the Committee also acknowledged the administrative resistance sometimes encountered by tenure-driven researchers in academia, against spending their time to promote PUoS instead of securing grants or publishing in peer-reviewed venues. In response to this, Sigma Xi could facilitate a dialogue within academia about the value of science teaching and promoting PUoS.]

In conjunction with a training program, Sigma Xi could publish its own primer, ala Union of Concerned Scientists' 2006 Guide to Talking with the Media. This might be done as a "reverse" companion piece to guides for science writers, like the one produced by the Society for Environmental Writers for discussing risk. Sigma Xi could then disseminate such guides through its members and chapters. Funds for writing and low-cost desktop publishing of this type of educational career-development product might be easier to secure (ballpark cost $10k total); large research neighbors of the Sigma Xi Center (e.g., EPA, NIEHS, CDC) might even subsidize this, knowing their own researchers would get copies in the end. Sigma Xi would do well to conduct some market research to determine how to customize our service in order to serve niches that other similar organizations and initiatives do not.

UNSEG and Climate Change Town Halls
Sigma Xi expended significant staff resources to study and report on climate-change adaptation and mitigation. This activity was commissioned by the UN Dept. of Economic and Social Affairs and funded by the UN Foundation. There is a possible opportunity now to leverage this effort and expertise by collaborating in "town meetings" on climate-change public policy with AmericaSpeaks. This non-partisan organization conducts deep deliberative forums (aka "town halls") on various topics of public interest, to engage citizens in governance. Sigma Xi could potentially contribute to AS' proposed climate-change town halls by developing discussion guides, providing discussion moderators and outreach assistance (via chapters), and connecting and selecting members of the science advisory panel. According to an NSF staff person consulted in late April, such a collaboration might qualify for NSF funding via the Science and Society solicitation if it also posed and investigated hypotheses about how access to science information impacts public policy development.

However, the Committee did not think that AS's interests aligned with Sigma Xi's interests and they questioned the benefit of such a collaboration to the Society (other than exposure). Members also expressed concern about a perceived lack of control by Sigma Xi and the potential risk to the Society's reputation by venturing too close to advocacy and politics. Committee members advised more consultation with AS, to better ascertain what it sought from Sigma Xi through the partnership envisioned and what Sigma Xi would want in return. The Committee also advised staff against expending much time to explore this further.

Citing the proposed PRI-SX initiative as a model, the Committee generally encouraged Sigma Xi to piggy-back with other organizations that already have the infrastructure and processes in place for activities which overlap with the Society's own interests. Furthermore, Sigma Xi should seek out complementarity with other organizations and initiatives (e.g., CASW, Science Service). One way to accomplish both might be to convene a small group of like-minded science-communication executives in a central venue (e.g., Washington, D.C.), to discuss common outreach goals. Science societies, museums and centers could all be represented in this.

Committee members also encouraged robust, targeted publicity/promotion of Society output and opportunities (e.g., like Science in the News Daily picked up by NOVA scienceNOW). Sigma Xi staff expect this will improve once we complete upcoming migration to a new content management system.

Updates on Completed / Suspended / Retired Activities

A sheet of brief summaries was provided (see accompanying document), with updates on the following:

• PUoS Proposed Name Change
• Image and Meaning (IM2.x) Workshops
• Assuring a Globally Engaged Science & Engineering Workforce (GEW)
• Rising Above the Gathering Storm
• Teaching Evolution in the Schools
• PCST Conference 2008
• MediaResource Service (Because the current usage is so very low and infrequent, the Committee recommended that we formally discontinue the service and publicize as much, but also invite science-expert seekers to continue submitting questions in the event we can assist on certain cases. The Committee further counseled that this service is a public relations function and thus it would be inappropriate to charge a fee.)

Misc. Committee Administration

• FY07 PUoS Committee Annual Report is due on 1 Aug 07. The staff liaison will prepare a draft for the Committee's review and feedback, based on condensed FY07 PUoS Committee Meeting minutes, which will be finalized first.
• FY08 PUoS Committee Roster currently has two open slots available to fill. With exception of one member who elected to step off before year's end, all FY07 PUoS members have accepted the chair's invitation to continue their service for FY08. This status has been formally relayed to FY07 President Jim Baur. Science museum administrators, bench scientists and skilled science communicators are all good types of candidates for this committee. Only Full Members of Sigma Xi (including Honorary Members) are eligible to serve with a vote on committees of the Society (although non-eligible others may serve in a non-voting advisory capacity). The Committee enthusiastically tendered cell biologist Ursula Goodenough as a candidate. Corinth Auld, Floyd Malveaux Sue Wilder, Todd Boyette (recommended by departed PUoS Committee member Holden Thorp) were also added to the preliminary list of candidates and/or advisors.
• FY08 PUoS Committee Meeting is being budgeted as a teleconference, rather than a face-to-face gathering, in order to reduce costs. This is the case with most or all of the other Sigma Xi FY08 committee meetings. PUoS Committee members expressed opposition to this, since bonds are better formed and information better communicated in person. Also, full-length meetings done via teleconference are typically less effective and more tiring. Costs could be reduced by timing face-to-face meetings so that participants fly in and fly out on the same day.

  PUoS members suggested combining the customary face-to-face meeting in June with FY08 Publications Committee Meeting, supplemented by a separate PUoS teleconference in Jan/Feb to prep any Committee business for the spring Board meeting. The staff liaison will come back to the Committee shortly with feasible dates for the dual face-to-face meeting and will also plan to re-contact the Committee in late 2007/early 2008 to schedule the advance teleconference.

• AAAS Award for PUoS nominations deadline is 15 August.
• Invitation to join COPUS / Request to Endorse "2009 Year of Science" is awaiting an official response from Sigma Xi, which would likely require a Board action. COPUS is requesting only that the Society join the coalition (no charge for this) and publicize as much to our members and chapters, to encourage their participation at the individual level. Several major organizations, including AAAS, AIP and AGU, do not appear on the participant roster. COPUS originated with UC-Berkeley's Museum of Paleontology as a grassroots response to the Intelligent Design controversy. Before advising either way, the Committee requested further information about COPUS-in particular, feedback from Publications Committee Chair Fred Spilhaus, who is also executive director of AGU.

New Business
No new business was introduced, and the formal meeting was adjourned. Informal discussion then segued to CASW-SX's ongoing relationship around conducting "brown bag" discussions with science researchers. The Committee (out of formal session) supported the continuation of this partnership.

Draft II Minutes prepared by
Laura J. Nigro
18 July 2007