EFFECTIVE PLANETARY OUTREACH NEEDS MORE THAN JUST PLANETARY SCIENTISTS

There are general practices that scientists can adopt to become better informal educators, and many of the skills they gain from this carry over into being better formal educators when teaching classes and facilitating workshops, as well as communicating with their peers. Some scientists are very good at outreach thanks to a combination of personality, experience, and training. Many more would benefit from working to improve their outreach skills and doing more of it. However, even scientists trained and skilled in outreach are no substitute for experts from other fields.

Physical scientists have a bad habit of trying to do everything “in-house.” For example, recent efforts to examine diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) in our workforce are often performed by geo- and space scientists, who are trained to analyze quantitative data relating to the physical universe. These should instead be conducted by social scientists who are experts in qualitative data analysis, and are trained to design and administer studies relating to human beings, analyze the data, and make recommendations based on those results. Outreach is another example in which the geosciences and planetary community must acknowledge that experts from other scientific fields, academic disciplines, and professions are needed.

Though our backgrounds combine science, spacecraft missions, education, and education research, our multidisciplinary perspective helps us recognize our own limitations and seek out collaborators in areas we are not experienced in. In this presentation we will share some observations of past and current practices and give recommendations for partnering with social scientists, professional educators, and experts in inclusivity and accessibility to improve public engagement and K-16 educational support in planetary science and space exploration. We strongly advocate hiring and/or collaborating with these specialists from the start and paying them fairly for their time, e.g., including them in grant proposals.