RISE Rap

It’s been a tumultuous 18 months for the Broader Impacts Criterion (BIC), the NSF merit review standard that gets a lot of grant-seeking scientists and engineers thinking about including plans for education, outreach, and diversity.  First, Congress asked the NSF to explain exactly what it means by "broader impacts," and how it monitors compliance.

Science museums and their audiences often benefit from sub-awards provided by research centers which choose to address the NSF Broader Impact Criterion through partnerships for education outreach.   Therefore, the National Science Board’s current review of this criterion (commonly known as “BIC”) alongside its companion criterion “Intellectual Merit,” is of particular interest to the science museum and entire informal science education community.

    The demos and banners have been put away; the thank          

    you notes have gone out, the reports filed, and NanoDays    

    2011 is now a pleasant blur receding into the collective  

    archive of organizational events, while you, perhaps,

Have you forged a great partnership with a couple of local research centers for your NanoDays 2011 festivities? Plan now to keep the relationship alive and growing beyond April, continuing to serve your audiences, your partners and your home team. It’s easy to do, and the benefits could be HUGE.

Get together with your research center liaison and discuss ways of continuing the most rewarding aspects of your outreach activities.

Small Steps; Big Impact: A guide for science museum leaders developing partnerships with university based research centers has been published online at risepartnerguide.org.   The online format facilitates visitors in selecting topics of great

NSF's Broader Impacts Criterion (BIC) gets a provocative re-examination in a special issue of the British journal Social Epistemology, and in that issue, the NISE Net's focus on science museum - research center partnerships is included as a model for authenticating and reinforcing the intentions of the BIC framers.

A new systematic framework for unifying and defining nanoscience was put forth at the 2009 NSF NSE grantees meeting last week in Arlington, Virginia.

Partnerships between nano and materials research centers and science museums are well and thriving, as evidenced by a round of talks delivered at the Fall 09 MRS Meeting “Materials Education Symposium,” curated by NISE Net friends  Eric Marshall and Julie Nucci in honor of  Stanford’s Marni Goldman.  The panel on partnerships was put together by the NISE Net’s Rae Ostman, and it hi

We've already had snow in Boston, and the fall conference season is upon us, with some excellent opportunities for those interested in learning more about researcher - ISE partnership craft. First up on the schedule, the Association of Science-Technology Centers conference, which provides a splendid opportunity to get away to Fort Worth for Halloween (Oct 31 - Nov 3).

The National Institutes of Health maintains a 30 billion dollar portfolio of health and biomedical research, a yearly budget that roundly trumps that of the National Science Foundation (about 7 billion) and the National Nanotechnology Initiative (1.6 billion). Although NIH has no “Broader Impacts” criterion in its RFPs, it does expect researchers to contribute to education and outreach. This is fairly fertile territory for science museums to explore, perhaps through nurturing relationships with local NIH-funded research institutes. Now there's an interesting new development.