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It is my understanding that this new STEM budget also affects NOAA
Education in the same way it affects NASA. It will be interesting to see
how this all plays out!

Ann

-- 
Ann Wasser
LiMPETS Coordinator
Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History
(831) 648-5716 ext. 14 office
(831) 747-7475 cell
www.limpetsmonitoring.org
www.pgmuseum.org

On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 6:33 AM, Anita Davis <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related
> institutions.
>
> *****************************************************************************
>
> Hi All,
>
> I want to follow up on this posting about the proposed changes to STEM
> education funding, to hopefully clarify a bit about what this may mean for
> members of this community who access and use NASA science content in their
> work. Please note that though I do work in the NASA EPO community, I am
> absolutely not representing NASA in this post, and am representing only
> myself.
>
> If enacted as is, the proposed budget will zero out the Science Education
> budget at NASA. In NASA, education and outreach are inextricably linked -
> they are education and public outreach (EPO). If the EPO budget goes to
> zero, here are a few things that will be lost:
>
> - All of the Science EPO staff --every single science mission will lose
> all of its education and outreach dollars (from Mars Rovers, to James Webb,
> to Sun Missions, Earth Missions), apparently meaning all of that staff. The
> science missions are not allowed to restore these funds from their own
> budgets.
> - NASA Museum Alliance
> - Night Sky Network
> - NASA's contribution to efforts such as Earth Science Week
> - Much of the Scientific Visualization Studio, which creates so many
> wonderful visualizations
> - NASA public affairs efforts will be hampered, as they work in tandem
> with EPO, and EPO staff provide much of the content for the public affairs
> staff
>
> NASA has pulled back the recent EPOESS grant call - no information yet
> about if it will be restored.
>
> Perhaps you are wondering if NASA could simply find additional funds from
> other aspects of it's work and augment the EPO budget. With the direction
> NASA HQ has been given, this will not be allowed. NASA Centers are also not
> to do this, nor can individual missions.
>
> The overall federal education budget actually increases the funding for
> education nation-wide. There is much in the request that is quite positive,
> and the goal of better coordinating science education across agencies seems
> very reasonable. At the moment there is no plan for how this budget would
> actually work - that is, no indication of how NASA science content would be
> actively brought into the programs the budget creates. One barrier that
> remains is that legally neither NSF, Smithsonian nor Dept of Ed can offer a
> grant program for which NASA could compete. How NASA and other science
> agencies are to work with these 3 agencies to ensure the science content is
> brought into the new programs is not clear at this time.
>
> For those who are interested in learning more about this budget, there are
> a number of documents and websites with a variety of components, including
> the budget overviews from the science agencies including NASA as well as
> the Department of Ed, NSF and Smithsonian.
>
> The White House Office of Science  & Technology Policy, provides a
> document on the context for this budget request, called "Preparing a 21st
> Century Workforce Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM)
> Education in the 2014 Budget."
>
> http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/2014_R&Dbudget_STEM.pdf
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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>
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For information about the Association of Science-Technology Centers and the Informal Science Education Network please visit www.astc.org.

Check out the latest case studies and reviews on ExhibitFiles at www.exhibitfiles.org.

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