Dennis Crabtree (NRC-HIA) and John Percy (U. of Toronto)
Astronomers know the appeal that astronomy has to Canadians of all ages. Astronomy education and public outreach (hereinafter EPO) includes the many ways in which we inform, educate, and inspire people of all ages, about our science. It includes outreach to teachers and students, to support formal education. It includes informal education and communication to the general public, including teachers and youth. We won’t detail the wide range of benefits to society of astronomy EPO as most of this audience are (or should be) aware of these.
Our community must not take youth’s interest in astronomy for granted. As the white paper points out, youth’s interest has shifted to areas such as climate change, renewable energy, and the environment. Our claim that astronomy is a the gateway science for youth may not longer be true.
Communicating astronomy is also an obligation for those fortunate to be supported by public funds (most of us) in their pursuit of an astronomical career. Each of us has a role to play whether that is giving public lectures, writing popular astronomy articles for a local newspaper or online magazine, maintaining a blog, or even supporting your graduate students in public outreach efforts.
The CASCA EPO Committee submitted a white paper for LRP2010, Engaging Canadians from Main Street to Parliament Hill, which very briefly reviewed the past ten years of EPO, presented EPO goals for the next decade and made four specific recommendations with respect to LRP 2010. (We encourage everyone to read the white paper and send feedback to the LRP panel) The bottom line is that while some of our community’s past efforts have been quite successful, we still have a lot of work to do to achieve true success in our EPO efforts.
EPO, in all of its different forms, is an absolutely essential part of the LRP, for several reasons.
We must communicate the importance and excitement of astronomy to politicians, as we have done successfully through the Coalition for Canadian Astronomy. We must inform and excite the taxpayers who support our salaries and our research; it is part of our responsibility to be accountable. We must convey our enthusiasm for our work; if we are not enthusiastic, why should anyone else be? In the school curriculum, there is an emphasis on the "STSE" nature of science: science, technology, society, and environment. It is equally important to inform politicians and the public of Canadian astronomy's contributions to technology, and the many applications of astronomy to our lives and to our environment -- not just the many scientific breakthroughs in our science. In short, we should increase public awareness, understanding, and appreciation of our science -- these being three different but equally important goals.
Astronomy EPO has the potential to raise the level of scientific literacy in our country that is presently rather low. This is unfortunate, given the importance of scientific literacy to our economy, our environment, and our personal well-being. We have a special responsibility to reach out to underserved communities. Astronomy EPO can attract young people from these communities to careers in science and technology, and also increase their level of scientific literacy.
Not only must we increase the public and decision maker’s knowledge of astronomy, we must inform them about Canadian astronomy. Astronomy is arguably Canada’s strongest science and yet the public and media are generally unaware of our achievements. This ignorance of Canadian astronomy should come as no surprise as there is no good source of information about Canadian astronomy on the Web and very few stories on Canadian astronomy in the media, print or online. It is in our community’s best interest to engage in a marketing strategy to make information about Canadian astronomy widely available and to ensure that our science, technology developments and achievements are visible in the media. These were the prime motivations behind the concept of the AstronomyCanada.ca website.
There are many Canadian astronomers, both professional and amateur, that are doing a lot of good EPO work on a volunteer basis. IYA2009 was a great success in Canada and clearly demonstrated the benefits of pro-am partnership in communicating astronomy to Canadians. Maintaining and developing this partnership is one of the key elements to a strategy for astronomy EPO in the next decade.
For Canadian astronomy EPO to reach the next level, the issue of funding EPO effort must be overcome. The EPO activities have been very successful with the modest funding which has been available from the WESTAR fund and successful PromoScience grants.
As noted in the LRP white paper, Canadian astronomy needs to identify sustainable funding for core EPO effort. The white paper recommended resources for a full-time CASCA EPO office which could be hosted by a Canadian institution. The EPO office would consist of at least one person plus volunteer/contract effort.
In the original LRP, it was suggested that a certain fraction of the cost of each facility should be allocated to EPO. This approach will address the EPO needs of each new facility or project, but does not alleviate the need for sustainable funding for an EPO office.
Astronomy EPO needs coordination and partnerships with the amateur community, science centers, and other parts of the astronomy EPO "community". Canadian astronomy has an excellent education website cascaeducation.ca; we should maintain it. We should also work with organizations with established EPO expertise and leverage their programs. This includes Canadian programs such as Let's Talk Science, and Scientists in Schools, as well as international programs such UNAWE and Galileo Teachers Program.