Science for Everyone

Penn Arts and Sciences is again partnering with the Philadelphia Science Festival (April 22-30, 2016), which annually brings more than 100,000 people together to celebrate the region’s historical strength in the sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). From the development of ENIAC, the first general purpose electronic computer, to the large hadron collider at CERN where the Higgs boson was discovered, Penn continues to be a leader in STEM fields—and in educating people in Philadelphia and around the world.

Penn Arts and Sciences’ Associate Dean for the Natural Sciences Larry Gladney sees citizen scientists taking an ever-bigger role in our scientific future. “The big telescope collaborations of the future are going to make a more concerted effort to bring citizen science to the forefront, because the datasets are so huge,” says Gladney, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor for Faculty Excellence and professor of physics and astronomy. “It’s possible to look at datasets and ask questions without a Ph.D. and postdoctoral training. And the large number of questions that can be asked by a big enough population will inevitably find some interesting things that we haven’t considered or didn’t expect.”

Gladney says models for this exist in astronomy, where a large number of amateur astronomers are already well-equipped and searching the skies for new comets and asteroids. Particle physicists also work with global citizens through QuarkNet, which teaches people how to analyze data from CERN that has been cleaned of artifacts and errors. “In a lot of cases, the ’bumps‘ they spot are just statistical artifacts, but in some cases they’re particles that are known but unexpected in this particular dataset,” Gladney says. “And sometimes they represent real discoveries.”

Beyond the Science Festival, Penn cultivates more scientists, citizen scientists, and citizens who are interested in science with programs run by individual graduate students and faculty to those sponsored by Penn Arts and Sciences and the University. Gladney cites the Moelis Access Science program, which sponsors Academically Based Community Service (ABCS) courses and related activities through Penn’s Netter Center for Community Partnerships; and Young Men and Women in Charge (YMWWIC), based in Chester County, Pa., which introduces middle and high school students of color to STEM careers through partnerships with colleges and private companies.

Several departments also work with Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute. Penn’s Department of Physics and Astronomy is involved in a new program called City Skies, which will give interested, underserved populations in the city a chance to look at and learn about the night sky. “Most people actually can’t find the Big Dipper on the sky on a summer night,” says Gladney. “This will bring telescopes out into the community, hitting them where they live.”

Penn’s physicists and astronomers have already set telescopes up on the Walnut Street bridge over the Schuylkill River for passers-by to use, Gladney says. “We’ll take telescopes and binoculars to schoolyards, we’ll take them to public parks, and we’ll set up shop with a booth and ask people to take a look. You can see the rings of Saturn and at certain times of year you can see Mars. You can just look at the full moon. Normally when you look up [in the city] you can barely see a few stars. ”

For Gladney, outreach like this is imperative to create not just new STEM specialists but also the non-scientists who care about science and will support it: “If we can’t get the public to be interested, then expecting continued funding for basic research is kind of a pipe dream.” The American Physical Society and other organizations recently conducted surveys and focus groups around the U.S. to learn how much the public understands about what basic scientific research has made possible. Only about 10 percent had an idea, but the really surprising finding was that even when people learned how basic science had led in technology used in smart phones, airplanes, and electronics, only 35 percent were interested.

“Some of our instincts about what should motivate people were not correct,” says Gladney. “GPS absolutely depends on Einstein’s theory of gravity, but people don’t care about that. It’s done. It’s the past.”

What does inspire people is hope for the future, but that puts scientists in an unfamiliar role. “It’s a different story than the one that scientists are naturally inclined to tell because we don’t like predicting things,” says Gladney. “But that’s what people are interested in.”

He looks at the growing partnership between environmental sustainability and the humanities, embodied by the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities, as one model. “We’re not great at it yet but we are better at outreach and getting the people involved than we used to be,” he says. “We blog, we tweet, we Instagram. We have to tell a better story about what we do and why it’s important to people.”