Paving the Road to Broader Impact: California Center for Ocean Sciences Education Excellence (CA COSEE)

It's hardly surprising that new requirements to address how their research will have impact beyond academia send many ocean and earth scientists reaching for the aspirin. Sympathetic to the increasingly heavy demands on researchers' time, we at California COSEE work to make scientists' education and outreach efforts easier, more effective and more rewarding. Strategies we'll describe include: a) identifying and efficiently meeting the needs of the individual scientists and educators we serve; b) finding the right ``tool'' for the job, i.e. connecting scientists with the educators and organizations best positioned to incorporate elements of their research into widely-disseminated resources for teachers, students and the public; and c) building institutional and community-scale support for scientists' outreach contributions. We'll describe specific CA COSEE-facilitated collaborations between scientists and educators, as well as share lessons we're learning about the catalytic process we've undertaken. The value of the services we provide in terms of leveraging limited resources and forging partnerships that ultimately make ocean research relevant to non-scientists will be reflected in the quality of education resources generated as well as scientists' changing attitudes toward outreach. We invite all those interested, especially ocean scientists (including technical staff and graduate students) and informal science educators to visit { www.cacosee.net}, and click on { Engaging Scientists}.