Session K05: Outreach in Formal and Informal Settings

How To Teach 10 Million People About Black Holes

Streaming services and on-demand distribution now dominate entertainment and media. Social media and video sharing platforms, especially YouTube, are the new front line for science popularization. For the past 6 years, I have worked as a writer and scientific consultant for several YouTube channels, such as Kurzgesagt In A Nutshell and PBS Digital Studios, having contributed to dozens of educational videos which have accumulated several hundred million views. In this talk, I will share some lessons learned from these experiences and describe some best practices for online outreach.    

Dwight Nicholson Medal for Outreach (2021): The Lamat Institute: Re-Imagining Leadership and Mentorship in Astronomy

This is a new era in astronomy and astrophysics on every measurable axis where fundamental breakthroughs are being made with astonishing frequency.  The entire Universe is our laboratory and analysis of these data has transformed our understanding of our place in the cosmos. Despite these strides, one of the greatest challenges to the astronomical community has been building environments where people with historically marginalized identities (Black, Indigenous and Latinx) can thrive. This critically limits the pool of innovative minds who may gain exclusive access to cutting edge research and thus, who can shape the future of the field through transformative science, mentoring and professional leadership. The overarching goal of the Lamat Institute has been to invigorate the field through training and workplaces that reflect equity-advancing values and allow the full human diversity of our nation to meaningfully and maximally contribute to the field. Cultivating equitable access has allowed the program to dramatically increase equitable participation. In this talk I will first offer an introduction to Lamat's mentoring philosophy and design principles and discuss the ability of REU programs to facilitate long-term student success. I will then proceed to give a broad overview of the program activities  and talk about how the program continuously  work to modernize  its core structures, such as its approaches to selection (from standard practices to an equity-based holistic review), mentoring (from master-apprentice models to evidence-based practices such as mentoring networks), teaching (from traditional lecture to inclusive pedagogy and research-based instruction), and community engagement (from unidirectional broader impacts to mutually beneficial community partnerships).