Community Engagement And AGU Celebrates 100 Years: The Role of Regional Videos Produced By Scientists And Students

It is challenging to engage the public with good, interesting science. We think that an excellent way to address this challenge is to create videos about the physical environments where we live together and share these with the public. The world is now awash in videos on social media - some about scientific topics - because the public wants this information. However, AGU scientists are increasingly distanced from this audience because we focus on creating new knowledge and communicating this to colleagues and students via peer-reviewed publications. Scientific publications are inaccessible to the public, often concern topics that are of little interest to them, and presume that the reader has a strong background in the subject. In spite of these barriers, the public craves scientific information about the natural world and outer space in the form of videos accessible through YouTube and social media. The public often does not know and may not care whether scientists or less-qualified people generate these. For truth's sake, science videos should be made or at least vetted by scientists. We decided to "take the bull by the horns" by applying for and receiving an AGU Celebrate 100 grant to generate videos about the natural world aimed at the general public and deliverable via social media platforms. Because of where we live, we focus on Texas and Oklahoma, home to 33 million US citizens. Our group (GeoScience Studios; https://utdgss2016.wixsite.com/utdgss ) has been making hybrid video/animations on geoscience topics since 2016, emphasizing ones that are 3 - 5 minutes long. A professor and several geoscience students working together are essential to this effort; the professional to ensure scientific accuracy and help students grasp the topic and the students to bring the video to life. In addition, students learn while they work by deeply engaging with the video topic. For our AGU Celebrate 100 grant, we are making 6 videos, concentrating on our region. At the time of writing this abstract, we have 4 in progress: Windy Texas and Oklahoma; ice Age Texas, West Texas Volcanoes, and Two Texans Tour Tibet. These will be posted to the GSS website and YouTube as they are completed and notices posted on AGU Member Community. We encourage others to make videos about their science and and share these with the public; we would be glad to help.