TEEN SCIENCE CAFÉS: A MODEL FOR ADDRESSING BROADER IMPACTS, DIVERSITY, AND RECRUITMENT

Teen Science Café programs are a free and fun way for teens to explore science and technology affecting their lives. Through lively presentations, conversation, and activities to explore a topic deeply, Café programs open doors for teens to learn from experts about exciting and rewarding STEM career pathways. The programs are local and led by teens with the help of an adult mentor.

The Teen Science Café Network (teensciencecafe.org) provides mentoring and resources, including small grants, to help organizations get started with and then maintain successful "teen café" programs.

Through membership in the Network, more than 80 Teen Science Cafés have sprung up across the country, from rural towns to major cities. They serve a critical need for teens – meeting and engaging with STEM professionals, learning about their career paths, and seeing their passion for the work they do.

Teen Science Café programs can offer geoscience departments a substantive, yet low cost, way to meet the challenges many of them face: finding ways to increase enrollment, helping faculty satisfy the broader impacts requirements of funding agencies, connecting with the surrounding communities, and providing opportunities for faculty and graduate students to learn how to communicate their science effectively to the public audience. The typical experience of scientists who have presented in teen cafés throughout the Network is that the communication skills learned spill over into their courses, proposals, and presentations to administrators and program officers.

A department might partner with one or more organizations in their surrounding communities—libraries, for example—and engage its faculty and its graduate students—and even its undergraduates—in providing geoscience programming across multiple disciplines to local teens. Besides the internal benefits to the department's personnel and the value of establishing connections with community organizations, the impact of such engagement might well be attracting students to the department.

We seek geoscience departments interested in this concept that are willing to join the Network and participate in a study of how Teen Science Cafés may impact undergraduate recruitment to their departments.