Engage

Chelsea MacLeod’s Talk

Phil — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 16:45:58 +0000

Chelsea MacLeod is using astronomical surveys and statistics to study the variability of quasars.
Check it out!

Earth as an Extrasolar Planet

Phil — Mon, 17 May 2010 16:14:57 +0000

Tyler Robinson will finish off our first season of talks explaining how he looks at Earth as if it were viewed from another solar system. The talk is this Wednesday (5/19) from 7-7:30 in PAA 118 followed by about 30 minutes of questions and discussion. As always, no science background necessary, and please tell everyone you know!

To wet the appetite, here’s what Carl Sagan had to say about this topic:

Record crowd for talk about urban plants

erichilton_pc — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 00:25:38 +0000

Last Wed, Apr 21st, Katie Murphy told the large audience (over 50 people – our biggest yet!) all about her work on urban plants. She mixed in some of the lessons she has learned working as a landscaper in the Seattle area with what she has learned in her research and classes. We are lucky to live in such a green city as Seattle, but even around here we are losing lots (and I mean *lots*) of trees and green spaces.

Katie’s talk had a great crowd of people from both the university and the general community, many of whom had a fair bit of experience gardening, but all of whom know what it’s like to live in an urban area and to see the way that people use their yards and in particular the parking strip to grow grass or plants.

We are very glad so many people were able to come out and hear about Katie’s research. We are also delighted that a young scientist like Katie had the opportunity to share her work. Her research is not only scientific, but also deals directly with policy (what are the rules that the city should have regarding planting vegetables in parking strips?) and people. All scientists need to be able to explain their research and to explain the effects of what they study on people. But scientists like Katie who work directly in public areas need to be especially good at clearly explaining what science can tell us about our decisions. So thanks to all who attended and gave Katie the opportunity to work on this very useful skill.

We are hoping to build on last week’s crowd and have great attendance at Chelsea Macleod’s talk on May 5th called Survey Science: The Universe at our Fingertips.

Charlotte Christensen’s Research

Phil — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:39:26 +0000

In case you missed the talk (we’ll the videos up as soon as we can*) you can read all about it!

Greg Scheiderer stopped by: http://www.examiner.com/x-30469-Seattle-Astronomy-Examiner~y2010m3d18-In-search-of-missing-molecular-hydrogen

*If you have a passion for video editing and don’t require any compensation besides a beer or two, we’d love the help! Email us (webmaster at engage-science.com).

Our New Logo

erichilton_pc — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:29:52 +0000

There are many elements to a good webpage. They include a good URL, a nice design, a blog, and, very importantly in the age of branding, an attractive logo. When I was in Portland, where my good friend and incredibly talented designer/artist/musician/animator Christopher Doulgeris lives, we sat down with a pad of paper and started brainstorming for a new logo. We came up with the general idea of writing out “Engage” using various symbols of science. It took a bit of work to convince me that this wasn’t going to be silly, really juvenile, or hackneyed. Christopher made a powerful argument: “Science symbols aren’t cliche to non-scientists, and in fact often let us know what to expect.” After asking Facebook for some advice, I was all for it. The next morning I wrote to the other organizers of Engage and told them the idea. They liked it. Christopher very quickly put together the wonderful logo you see now. The most amazing part is in the details. The cluster of stars to form the ‘E’ reminds us that Engage started in astronomy, one of the oldest sciences. And that beautiful ‘N’? The original idea was for some ivy or some other representation of botany. Rachel suggested a much better idea. Instead of using ivy, an invasive plant that many in the Pacific Northwest rightly dislike and spend hours removing, why not use Arabidopsis thaliana, which is one of the most widely studied plants in the world? Christopher found a nice picture and turned it into an ‘N’. That first ‘G’ is not just a ‘G’. It’s actually a 3D modeled double-helix bent around into the right shape. The ‘A’ of course is a beaker, and the ‘G’ a microscope, both classic symbols of science. The final ‘E’ is made of chiseled rock, a reference to the Earth Sciences.I hope you all like our logo as much as we do and appreciate the attention to detail that Christopher put into it.

You can see some of Christopher’s musical work at http://christopherdoulgeris.com/

Engage Featured in University Week

erichilton_pc — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:38:22 +0000

Rachel and Eric were interviewed for an article in the University of Washington’s News and Information publication, University Week. The article is available at http://uwnews.org/uweek/article.aspx?id=56140
We’re hoping that the article will raise the visibility of Engage and help spread the word about our free biweekly talks. The article talks about our motivation for creating the speaker series as well as our plans for the upcoming fall seminar.

The Science Speaker Series

Phil — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:42:35 +0000

A few of us organizers are graduate students in the Astronomy department at UW. We’ve been giving shows in the campus planetarium since we arrived on campus. Last year was the international year of astronomy and we opened the planetarium to the public for a series of shows that each presenter wrote on their own.

It was excellent opportunity: being able to talk to the UW community about our passions was not only great practice for our future as scientists, but was a really fun and engaging experience. We graduate students got together and thought about what to do with the excitement we garnered from the community about our shows and how to keep the spirit going (we had over 1000 ticket requests for 40 seats per show, and more than 600 emails on our email list). We floundered until at a Forum on Science Ethics and Policy book club where we read “Unscientific America” and “Don’t be Such a Scientist.” The outcome: a free series of science talks – now including topics outside of astronomy – with no attendance limits or tickets required. The focus of each talk will be cutting edge science in terms your entire family can understand. The half hour talks will start with the basics of our field, cover questions we are trying to answer during our time at the UW, and end with time for you to ask us any questions you may have.

We’re a bit biased towards astronomy this year, but we will build off this solid foundation next year and expand to a wider range of departments, when these talks will be part of a graduate student seminar on giving public science lectures. We hope to improve our abilities to share our knowledge through clear language and stunning visualizations, while bringing you information on the most active areas of research being conducted today.

All this year, doors will open at 6:45, talks begin at 7:00, and we’ll have the room until 8:00. They will be in the Physics Astronomy Building on the floor below the planetarium in room 118.

Look around our new site for mini-bios of each speaker, longer descriptions of each talk, and soon we’ll have videos of the talks for you to view again or catch if you missed.

We hope you will join us, and help us by telling your friends and families, and giving us feedback to help us grow as science communicators while serving the community that allows us to do what we love.

Welcome to our new site

engage — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 05:16:07 +0000

Hi!

Welcome to the new Engage site! We’re still working to make this site able to do all we would like and upload some edited videos of our science talks. For now, check out the pages listed at the top of this window, sign up on our email list, and become a fan of us on facebook.

Please let us know what you think either in comments or by emailing:

more information email: info at engage-science.com
website issues email: webmaster at engage-science.com