aimee stern
sb admin | October 21, 2010From the White House, to an Expo hosted by Lockheed Martin and put together by 850 leading science organizations, to over 50 satellite events across the nation, everyone from pre-schoolers to grandparents will be celebrating science this weekend at the USA Science and Engineering Expo --October 23-24, 2010.
The USA Science & Engineering Festival, which has developed and hosted most of these events, is expected to draw more than a million people to the first and biggest weekend of science the people of our nation have ever seen.
Welcome to the week of firsts for science education.…
kcollins | August 16, 2010~~By Aimee Stern
Connecting with the general public and hopefully future scientists and engineers is one the major goals of the USA Science & Engineering Festival. We want to light a spark, to convince students that these fields are not only those of the future but just plain fun.
Forty stage shows on three enormous stages will feature science comedians, dancers, musicians, magicians and even rappers. What does a science rapper sound like? Come and listen.
Science and engineering are still really complicated fields and what graduate students and scientists do to reach the top of their…
kcollins | May 13, 2010
By Aimee Stern, Festival Communications Director
"Fighting a forest fire with 1000 eye droppers." That's how David Washington, acting CEO of Change the Equation, a non-profit, described the current effort to improve STEM (science, technology, education and mathematics) education in the United States.
There are hundreds of programs around the country addressing the nation's need for improving STEM education, but there is no centralized repository of information about them. The problem? Others can't learn from their success or failures.
This discussion was part of a larger meeting at the…
kcollins | February 22, 2010Francis Collins and Larry Bock
I was attending the AAAS annual meeting last week in San Diego, and Dr. Collins was speaking to several groups at the conference. After living in Washington, DC for almost a decade, and having worked for various federal agencies, I am used to the reverence people have for senior federal officials.
In DC, the head of an organization like NIH is essentially the CEO of a big company who has people who meet with people like me. My professional contact with federal officials at Dr. Collins' level has been limited to a quick introduction and handshake before a…