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NASA SCoPE at AGU: Fueling Curiosity, Fostering Diversity
In December 2023, approximately 24,000 scientists from around the world gathered together in San Francisco, California to attend the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting. During this meeting, the NASA Science Activation team NASA Science Mission Directorate Community of Practice for Education (NASA SCoPE), facilitated key activities with the following goals:
- Broaden participation and representation of scientists attending the conference through travel grants.
- Provide science communications training to these early career scientists awarded travel grants.
- Provide opportunities for scientists in the NASA SCoPE community to connect with NASA Science Activation teams during a social mixer.
- Support NASA SCoPE Seed Grant Awardees presenting about their work with NASA Science Activation teams.
- Recruit new members to the NASA SCoPE Community.
Throughout these efforts, a wide variety of NASA Science Activation teams were involved, most notably, the Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics (STEM) Ecosystems team and the National Informal STEM Education (NISE) Network team, who shared opportunities and best practices for partnerships with organizations.
Dr. Chris Mead, NASA SCoPE internal evaluator, interviewed scientists who had been awarded the travel grant and said, “Not only did they find value in making connections with NASA Science Activation teams, but the affiliates really valued the science communications training. One awardee put it immediately to use in preparing her AGU presentation. A second said he previously had trouble explaining to non-scientists why his research was important and that the training gave him some new ways to think about that challenge and strategies to employ in future.”
NASA SCoPE is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number 80NSSC21M0006 and is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio. Learn more about NASA SCoPE and educational outreach opportunities: https://scope.asu.edu
