Welcome to Eisenhower Fellows

Marcelo Knobel: The Incredible Experience of Eisenhower Fellowships

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During eight weeks I lived a sort of a dream, one from which it is difficult to wake.  I was the Brazilian representative in the Multi Nation Program of Eisenhower Fellowships.  Since 1953, this American nonprofit organization has been dedicated to the promotion of peace and understanding through dialogue among potential world leaders.  When I tell people about this program, they do not believe me.  It is indeed hard to believe, for beyond covering the financial cost of the trip for both me and my spouse, this fellowship allowed me to develop an extensive, personalized program of visits to 11 American cities, where I had more than 90 meetings, conversations and interviews.  Besides the travels, I also had the incredible opportunity to meet 24 other Fellows from different countries, different professions, all of them fantastic individuals with an enormous desire to improve the world.

During my fellowship I tried to better understand what can generically be referred to as American scientific culture, including formal (schools) and informal (science centers and museums) education; the public perception of science; scientific publishing and the promotion of science; as well as academic research in these areas.  In order to do so I visited numerous science museums, I met with teachers and members of government agencies, and I had conversations with researchers in the areas of public perceptions of science and scientific journalism.  I have certainly returned with a better understanding of these topics, but I have also become aware of their enormous complexity and, as is often the case, came away with questions I had not even imagined before.

There’s a great debate taking place in the

United States about education and, in particular, scientific education.  There has been an important contradiction in the American educational system: there are no national minimum curriculum parameters, but rather these are all determined locally.  In other words, each community or state determines what students will learn.  Recently, however, the current administration launched a program entitled “No Child Left Behind.”  This program has a number of debatable features, among them a national test to determine, at least in principle, the quality of the education provided in different states, although each of them has different parameters for their curriculum.  Each state conducts its own test.  When the results of these state tests are compared with the extremely limited available data from other national tests, the end result is disastrous.  States with weaker science curricula develop easier tests and achieve strong results on the local level, but terrible ones on the national level.  In other words, the

United States is facing an unrealistic situation – trying to discuss national parameters in a society where education is decentralized to the extreme – and is therefore facing great resistance.

In the area of informal education, the situation is also very complex and interesting.  The fact that schools feel compelled to produce good results on the exams has inhibited extracurricular visits to science centers and museums.  At the same time, these science institutions deal with the daily dilemma of survival, and desperately need more visitors.  It is difficult to lump all these centers and museums together, for they are far too heterogeneous.  There are museums that depend greatly on school visits (at the New York Hall of Science, for example, these visits make up approximately 60% of attendance) while others depend on a more diverse public (at The Sciencenter in

Ithaca, only 10% of attendance is made up of school visits).

A few museums receive financial assistance from their city or state governments, such as the

St. Louis

Science

Museum and the

Denver

Science

Museum.  Most, however, do not receive any governmental support.  Almost all museums depend in part on projects submitted to the National Science Foundation (NSF) for funding (between 10 to 20% of their budgets) but rely essentially on sales of tickets to the public and from their stores and restaurants for revenue.  A fundamental source of financial resources is derived from philanthropic grants, an area that is extremely well developed in the

United States.  These donations by individuals, foundations or companies, however, are generally applied to the renovation or enlargement of existing buildings or to new construction.  This has created a new set of challenges, for larger facilities imply higher operational costs.  In this way, museums have grown, with some reaching an annual budget of more than $35 million, including Chicago’s

Museum of

Science and Industry and the

Boston

Science

Museum.  In order to maintain such budgets, museums need to attract more and more public, living in a cycle of constant tension and always on the lookout for blockbuster exhibits and alternative forms of funding.  They can become excessively commercial and end up diverging from their missions of promoting quality science, research in the area of public communication of science, and innovation in the practice and programs of informal science education.  I don’t know how long this situation can last, but my feeling is that most science centers and museums in the

United States exist in an unstable equilibrium, one in which, for instance, a brief economic recession could pose enormous threats to their survival.

Besides visiting numerous science museums, I also visited exhibits and projects related to the promotion of nanoscience and nanotechnology.  The NSF has created a national network with a budget of US$20 million in which several science museums collaborate to develop nanoscience exhibits and promotional materials.  I visited some of these exhibits as well as projects in development and encountered some interesting ideas.  However, I confess that I was happy to learn that our project, NanoAventura, though already two years old, is still quite innovative and unique.  While trying to be as objective as possible, I believe that it is a project with international significance, for we have been successful in finding a language proper to our young audience, with the right dosage of goals, learning content, and fun. The same can be said about Oficina Desafio, for in all the places I had the chance to show our work everyone marveled at the concept and the practices we have been creating here at UNICAMP in the Museu Exploratório de Ciências.

Finally, I visited universities and research centers where I met with many researchers and, in particular, spoke with three Nobel Prize winners (two in Physics and one in Chemistry).  During my leisure time I also had the chance to get to know the cities I visited, their art museums, their cultural activities, and their restaurants.  I returned with numerous questions regarding American society: its values, the immigration debate, the issues of war and violence, its minorities, and its culture.  But I also gained a perspective on our life here in

Brazil – and, in particular, at UNICAMP – with respect to our daily practices and our complexity.  I am still working through much of what I’ve experienced, and I have certainly not yet digested this great quantity of information.  But I am certain that it was a unique experience, one that changed my life and the way I see the world.Marcelo Knobel is a professor at the

Institute of

Physics Gleb Wataghin (IFGW) and director of the

Museum of

Exploratory Sciences at UNICAMP.  His trip to the

United States was chronicled in the blog “Diário de bordo: cultura científica EUA 2007”.

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