PARENT SESSION
Symposium 15: The bringing together of professional ecologists and educators with citizen science
Organized by: KA Yee and P Marra
Wednesday, August 10, 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM, Meeting Room 517 C, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal

The UNH Outreach Scholars Academy: Professional development for scientists to work effectively with citizen groups.

Abrams, Eleanor^*,1, ¹ Department of Education, Durham, NH, 03825

ABSTRACT- As a land, sea and space grant university, the University of New Hampshire has a special interest in strengthening our success in outreach scholarship. We look to all of our faculty (tenure track, extension, research), especially our scientists, to successfully engage with external partners through scholarly outreach. However, often we do not provide the necessary tools and skills to achieve maximum success. The UNH Outreach Scholars Program is a year-long faculty development academy designed to enhance the success of our scientists in scholarly outreach. The academy has four key components: education, team building, mentoring and a team project which will teach the scientists how to conduct better outreach scholarship. Unique to this program is the inclusion of program officers from federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation and NASA to discuss funding opportunities for successful outreach scholars. Our evaluative data suggests that many of our scientists are not aware of how to successfully partner with citizens and many of them have experienced considerable difficulties in attempting to work with external partners. Through a series of discussions with a nationally known expert in outreach scholarship, the participating scientists stated that the academy has given them strategies by which to work with citizen groups more effectively and we will monitor the scientists′'′ success in implementing them in the upcoming years. Another source of difficulty that the outreach scholars academy has eased was how to evaluate their programs′'′ impact. Social scientists were teamed during with the scientists during the academy so that scientists would form relationships with experts who could help them formulate evaluation plans. Finally, mentoring by experts in outreach scholarship and the team projects helped to solidify the scientists notions of what was outreach scholarship, how could they work with external partners effectively, how could they evaluate their programs, and how the scientists and citizens could contribute to the knowledge base surrounding their work.′′

Key words: outreach scholarship, citizen partners, professional development