National Citizen Science Event to be Hosted by EAPS
03-21-2018
Writer(s): Logan Judy
A major citizen science event is coming to campus, and will be hosted by EAPS.
The GLOBE (Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment) Program is an international science and education initiative that encourages students and the public to participate in data collection. Now more than 20 years old, the program has partners in more than 100 countries. The North American region of GLOBE will be convening at Purdue University for their annual meeting, a first for the university.
“This gives us a unique opportunity to be able to highlight and showcase our work to a very large audience,” said EAPS K-12 Outreach Coordinator Steven Smith. “If we can excite people and show people the cool things happening here at Purdue, hopefully that will resonate and stay with them.”
The event will consist of three meetings in the same week. First, there will be a “train the trainer” event to equip teachers and other instructors in soil analysis. Some of these participants are Indiana teachers, who will then be able to teach GLOBE Soils labs in their own schools.
Second, the GLOBE United States Partner Forum will have a daylong meeting discussing how to help partners across the entire country accomplish their goals. GLOBE international committees will give their annual reports as well.
Finally, there will be the North American Regional Meeting, a major citizen science event that includes presentations, posters, and research across a broad range of organizations and disciplines. These will be in forms such as “lightning talks,” in which presenters have six minutes to give a brief description of their citizen science projects. The program sponsors for the United States will be in attendance, which includes NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration), NSF (National Science Foundation), and the U.S. Department of State.
“There will be a wide variety of projects going on in GLOBE to inform the community about,” Smith said. “There will also be networking time where these presenters can have posters of their projects and interact and network with each other. This will provide tremendous opportunity for our department to talk and interact with several scientists from all over the world.”
The Purdue Department of Chemistry is also contributing to the event, including the regional meeting’s keynote speaker. More than 50 attendees are expected to attend the events, which will take place March 26 through March 29.