Calling all scientists! Please help connect kids with science!

Are you a scientist in or near Stillwater, Oklahoma? 

Would you like to share your research with a curious and appreciative audience?

Would you like your work to inspire a new generation of scientists and science supporters?

Would you like your work to inspire a brand new song?

If so, please participate in "Born to Do Science!"

*** Our 2011/2012 season is scheduled!! But you can still respond to this post to participate in the 2012/2013 season. Thanks! ***

This is a program for kids (3rd-6th grade) and families which I present at the Stillwater Public Library. Each month I bring in a volunteer guest scientist to share their research with the kids. I think it's important for kids to meet scientists face to face, find out what they do, and learn something about the process of scientific investigation! 

If you haven't presented your work to kids before, don't worry. It's my job as host to learn about your research and figure out how to present it to our audience. I have a Master's degree in mathematics, a deep interest in science, and more than 20 years experience communicating to kids as a children's musician. My past guests and I have successfully presented some very sophisticated topics, including bacterial biofilms, wheat genomics, x-ray crystallography, luminescence dating, stress hormones, phototaxic bacteria - you get the idea!

You can see photos and descriptions of past programs on the website: http://www.borntodoscience.com/

I will also write and perform a brand new song inspired by your research to help introduce the topic. You can check out some past songs here: http://montyharper.bandcamp.com/album/songs-from-the-science-frontier

If you aren't sure that your research topic will work for kids, please don't rule yourself out. Talk to me first, and maybe we can find a way to present it.

Your time commitment would include the following:

1. A 30-45 minute phone conversation with me sometime soon to help decide the focus of our program, title, and description, for publicity purposes.

2. A one to two hour interview with me about your research, one month before the program date. This is to get me started on a song and a plan for the program.

3. As much time as you choose to spend preparing hands-on materials and/or visuals and answering follow-up questions between the interview and the program.

4. About 90 minutes for the program itself.

Below is the schedule for our fourth season. Please contact me if you'd like to participate in season five!

Programs will be held the following Saturdays at 10:00 AM at the Stillwater Public Library. 

(tentative titles)

September 17 - Vaccination Innovation

October 15  - The Intrepid White-Footed Mouse

November 19 - Secrets of the Universe

December 17 - Popular Teens - Friendly or Mean?

January 21 - This is Your Brain on Words

February 18 - Digesting Sunshine

March 10 - My One and Only Vole

April 21 - Predators, Prey, and the Games They Play!

May 19 - The Fungus Among Us!

If you are interested, please contact me! I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have, hear about your research and help you decide if it would make a good "Born to Do Science" program.

Thank you!!

Contact:

Monty Harper

(405) 624-3805

monty@montyharper.com

Born to Do Science Cafe!

I'm starting a science cafe here in Stillwater, OK! What's a science cafe you ask? It's a series of events where a scientist speaks to the public. For more information, check out the Nova Science Now science cafe website.

I'll be doing four events to start with and I'm in the process right now of lining up some scientists! My science cafe will of course be aimed at families with kids. We won't water down the science but we will try to make it accessible and interesting for all ages.

My goals for the kids who come to these events are:

1. They will talk to someone who is passionate about their work; someone doing something important to help make the world a better place.

2. They will feel that at some level they can understand the science we're discussing.

3. They will feel that this is something they could do themselves if they wanted to - asking good questions and pursuing the answers.

That's it - nothing lofty. ;-)

If you'd like to help make this happen, please write and ask me to add you to the mailing list. I'll be sending out more details soon.

Born to Do Science

Howdy,

Welcome to my science blog. In a moment I'll explain the "Born to Do Science" mission, but first let me tell you a bit about myself.

My name is Monty Harper. I'm a children's songwriter. I've been writing and performing songs for kids professionally since 1993. I've recently become very interested in "The Public Understanding of Science."

I loved science as a kid. When I was little I thought I might become a scientist. I won my school science fair in 7th grade. But I got a bit disillusioned with science in high school and college in the 1980's. It seemed all the doable stuff was already done. Science knew all about electricity and magnetism, relativity, quantum mechanics, evolution, and DNA.

It seemed the only good questions left were the impossibly hard ones: "What came before the Big Bang?" or "How did life get started on Earth?" I believed that being a scientist meant teaching, plugging numbers into equations, or pondering the imponderable.

Boy was I was wrong, wrong, wrong about that!

Scientists have been very busy since then. Now we have the memrister, String Theory, evolutionary computation, and nanotechnology. We've sequenced the human genome, and we may be about to discover the Higgs Boson. The list goes on and on and on. It's totally mind blowing!

I think maybe it was the way science was taught that led me astray. We didn't learn to ask questions. Our textbooks presented the well-established facts. We repeated lab work and experiments that had been done a million times already. The results were completely predictable. You could read ahead in the lab book to find out what would happen. Any surprises had to be due to our own bungling!

Happily, my children's songwriting has brought me back to science in a very good way. I've been asked to write songs about outer space, dinosaurs, oceans, and insects. Researching these topics I found out just how much science had advanced since I gave up on it back in the 80's! Writing the songs has renewed my sense of wonder about the natural world.

So when my wife gave me an iPod Shuffle for Christmas a couple of years ago, one of the things I filled it with was science-related podcasts. I've been soaking it all up like a sponge! The pace of discovery these days is incredible! I love it! Every new story is fascinating to me, and all this input has been very inspirational to my songwriting self.

But the shear coolness of science, as huge as it is, doesn't quite get at the reason I'm starting this blog.

Many folks are alarmed at the current lack of respect for science in our public discourse. I often hear statements like, "We need to engage the public and get them excited about science, especially our young people!" And that's when my little heart goes pitter pat and my mental hand shoots up and I say in my head, "Me, me, me - I have something to offer here!"

Yes, public appreciation of science is vital to making the best public policy decisions. But there is also a deeper reason I'm interested in helping bring science to the masses. Science is the tool that allows us to collectively understand the universe we live in, including our own selves. It's arguably our greatest endeavor, our grandest adventure. Striving for knowledge is part of what it means to be human. Access to the scientific process is our birthright. We were born to do science!

My mission with this blog is to help make science fascinating and vital and cool and relevant to kids and families who might not otherwise give it a second thought. Sure, it's important to learn all the well-established science facts in school. But there's so much more to it than that. I want to put kids right out on the cutting edge where new science is happening now! I want to inspire them to think, to wonder, to ask questions, and to make science a permanent interest in their lives.

I'm not sure yet exactly what form this project will take. But plans are percolating. I know it will involve new songs. There may also be live events and conversations with actual scientists.

I'm glad you found me. Thanks for reading this. Please leave a comment. Please write to me if you have something to offer. Please tell your friends. Please be patient as I'm doing this with my "spare" time. And please stick around to see what happens!