By: Gina | November 24 2009 | Category: Issues in Education, NIH Resources, Scientists in the Community
 In response to President Obama’s new Educate to Innovate initiative and to support National Lab Day, the NIH Office of Science Education has added a new section to their Website - NIH Science Education Nation (SciEd Nation).
SciEd Nation is designed for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics students and professionals interested in learning more about or becoming more involved in K-12 education in the United States.
At SciEd Nation science, technology, engineering, and mathematics students and professionals can:
• Find out how U.S. students stack up to students around the world in reading, mathematics, science, and problem solving skills
• Learn about contemporary K-12 schools and the typical day in the life of a teacher
• Discover how to partner with teachers and schools to improve U.S. science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education
• Learn how to enhance tangible support for science education among colleagues, managers, and administrators
• Locate reference materials on education, education policy, communicating science, and partnership funding sources
• Read about successful partnerships and their strategies for success as well as download “How-To-Guides” for common partnership activities
Stay tuned as more tips and resources are added to SciEd Nation over the next few months.
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By: Cynthia, Gina | November 23 2009 | Category: Issues in Education, Science News
 NLD connects teachers, students, scientists and community volunteers for hands-on learning. (See White House release.)
U.S. students will now have more chances to do what comes naturally -ask questions, explore, and test life's boundaries to better understand their world when President Obama announces a National Lab Day today.
The first NLD, scheduled for May, 2010, will celebrate community hubs - collaborations among volunteers, students and educators. But it doesn't end there. NLD is a nationwide initiative to build new and foster ongoing hubs for the long-term. Through these hubs, students can design, build, experiment, and explore in a real laboratory.
What is a real laboratory? It's any place a student can explore, experiment, and test. We're not just talking about test tubes and beakers. A lab could be a laptop to a software designer, a mountaintop to a geologist, a computer link to a distant particle accelerator to a physicist, or a factory floor to an industrial engineer. It's a place where lessons in science, engineering, and technology can be designed to happen, or where math can come alive. It could be anywhere in the physical or virtual world.
The NLD Website will support hands-on learning across the country by serving as a place where educators and scientists will be able to connect to potential partners in their area and to find out what is happening around the country. The site will also help them find resources to support, improve, and streamline their efforts.
In April '09 President Obama said "I want us all to think about new and creative ways to engage young people in science and engineering, whether it's science festivals, robotics competitions, fairs that encourage young people to create and build and invent -- to be makers of things, not just consumers of things." NLD does just that.
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By: Gina | October 29 2009 | Category: Science Lite, Scientists in the Community, Tidbits for Teachers
 Like I said, I get bored easily. After a while, I got tired of investigating things that my boss wanted to study and wanted to try out some new ideas of my own. That meant I needed my own lab, which in turn meant I needed my own faculty position at a university. Getting one of those is not as easy as it sounds, but I worked hard and succeeded.
Great! Now all I needed was money. To get that, I needed to write a grant. Who would have thought that I would have to be a good writer to be a scientist? Between writing articles for scientific journals and applying for grants, I spent a lot of my time writing. Worse yet, my research involved doing experiments with mice and collecting blood from people. Both require special approval. I did lots of paper work to explain why it made scientific sense to study mice and collect human blood. I had to show how I was going to minimize any possible distress for the mice and protect the health and privacy of my human volunteers. As a new kid on the block, it was all pretty overwhelming, but I survived and got my lab going.
Of course, professors teach, too, so I spent a lot of my time doing that. I taught undergraduate and graduate courses and had students and postdocs in my lab doing research. In the summer, I even worked with some high school students. One fun thing about being a scientist is meeting people from all over the world. I had people from India, Iran, Egypt, Mexico, Russia, Serbia, and China working in my lab. I worked with other faculty from Nigeria, Romania, Germany, Canada, and Brazil, among others. Today, my three closest friends are a German, a Bulgarian, and an American.
There is a third part of being a university professor, but more about that next time.
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By: Gina | October 28 2009 | Category: Science Lite, Scientists in the Community, Tidbits for Teachers
 When it came time to leave my fellowship, I was still crazy about doing experiments in the laboratory. To keep doing lab work, I could choose between an industry and a university lab. (I didn’t know it at the time, but I could have considered one of the many government labs, too.) I decided on an academic job because, frankly, I still liked being able to play basketball in the middle of the day. I found a job working in a lab with a professor who was studying how genes get turned on and off. Oops! Did I change research areas again? Well, I get bored easily!
One of my best friends who also loved working in the lab took a job in industry. No more midday sports, but he had kids and wanted to work regular hours. It was perfect for him. Besides, industry usually pays better than academia.
Another friend still loved science but just didn’t want to work in a laboratory any more. She got a job in a university office that helps scientists patent and commercialize their discoveries. Her job was to work with the lawyers in the office to help them better understand the science behind the products and devices they were helping commercialize.
While I was looking for my job, I heard from a friend from my old theoretical chemistry days. He had become a full-time musician. He was applying all his computer skills to making electronic music.
Whew! We all got jobs, said our goodbyes, and moved to Seattle, San Antonio, Los Angeles, and Boston.
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By: Gina | October 20 2009 | Category: Science Lite, Scientists in the Community, Tidbits for Teachers
 Ever wonder what a scientist does all day? As a scientist, I have a pretty good idea. OK, at least I know what some of my scientist friends and I do. And what I do now is very different from what I did 10 years ago, which was different from what I did 10 years before that. There’s clearly plenty of room for growth and change as a scientist. Becoming a scientist does not mean you need to spend the rest of your life in the lab, but you can if you want. Some of my friends still do just that – working in the lab is their passion. But I, like many other scientists, have taken a career path that uses my scientific training not just to make new discoveries in the laboratory but also in ways you might never have imagined.
I want to share my story and those of a few of my friends and show you that being a scientist can be fun and challenging and take you in many directions. Look for my blogs on the next few Tuesdays and Thursdays:
- Work Hard, Play Hard: Life as a Postdoc
- Get a Real Job!
- A Day in the Life of a Professor
- Moving to Washington
- Retirement: Girls Just Want to Have Fun
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By: Dave | July 28 2009 | Category: NIH Resources, Science and the Arts, Science History, Tidbits for Teachers
 I was surfing the NIH National Library of Medicine's Website looking for visitor information, when I stumbled onto:
Harry Potter's World - Renaissance Science, Magic, and Medicine
Even if you haven't seen the latest movie, this online exhibit provides an interesting contrast between life at Hogwarts and the science of the 15th and 16th Centuries.
There are resources for teachers, too.
This exhibit will be traveling to libraries nationwide from September 2009 to January 2011, hopefully to a location near you.
BTW - if you're in the DC area, there are three more chances to see this sort of science fact versus movie fiction discussion live at Science in the Cinema.
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By: Cynthia | July 2 2009 | Category: Science and the Arts
![A mixed-media artwork showcased at the NIH juried art show by National Cancer Institute’s Jorge Bernal.”]](http://science.education.nih.gov/SciEdBlog.nsf/dx/Jorge-Bernal-Art.jpg/$file/Jorge-Bernal-Art.jpg) Hi, Cynthia is here. I have a fabulous job as a writer and editor for the Office of Science Education. Besides writing, I get to work on lots of other great science education projects in the office. My work is expanding now into Web site usability and development. Before this job, I worked as a biologist for several different NIH labs.
Art, in its myriad of forms, is a great passion of mine. For this blog, I will be posting on the merging of science and the arts. I especially enjoy exploring the many ways that the arts can enhance science education.
I’m certainly not the only scientist who loves art! Right now, the halls of the NIH Clinical Center are filled with art created by scientists and other NIH employees and some local artists for the 2009 NIH Juried Art Show. More than 500 artworks, including paintings, photographs, pottery, and textiles were submitted for the show. The article “NIH Juried Art Show Returns in May” published in the March-April issue of The NIH Catalyst describes the opening event, the art and the artists.
Princeton University has recently opened its third “Art of Science” exhibit. At the Web site, you can cast your vote for your favorite images. In this show, the artworks were not created for art’s sake; rather, they emerged directly from scientific research.
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By: Paul | June 19 2009 | Category: Issues in Education
With the new Secretary of Education Arne Duncan leading the way, the call for reform of the United States education system is resonating throughout the country. Teachers, unions, politicians, industry leaders, and interested citizens are voicing their ideas and concerns.
Last week, the Carnegie-Institute for Advanced Study Commission on Mathematics and Science Educationreleased its new report, The Opportunity Equation: Transforming Mathematics and Science Education for Citizenship and the Global Economy. In the report, the Commission argues the need to embrace a new reality in which the world has dramatically shifted, and as a result, an equally dramatic shift is required in educational expectations and design. The Commission points out that, knowledge and skills from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (often referred to as the STEM fields) are crucial to virtually every endeavor of individual and community life. They reason that every American student should be STEM capable through a reformed education system.
Education reform is not a new concept, but the suggestion that math and science be placed at the center of a reformed education system is ground-breaking and encouraging news. Certainly it would be a unique strategy to have math and science laced throughout a school¹s curriculum and not restricted to one period every other day.
The Commission makes several recommendations and challenges to the nation include:
- Establish common standards for the nation in mathematics and science standards that are fewer, higher and clearer along with high-quality assessments
- Improve math and science teaching
- Redesign schools and systems to deliver excellent, equitable math and science learning
This is a sizeable challenge. Do you think it is an achievable one?
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