Wright Center for Science Education at Tufts University

Annual Reports

Academic Year
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ACADEMIC YEAR SUMMARY REPORT, 2000-2001
for the
WRIGHT CENTER FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION

The Wright Center, now in its ninth year of operation since its founding in 1992, has had a highly productive year-perhaps its best year to date. Having grown rapidly in its first six years, the Center has now stabilized in size and scale; space has become a premium within the group and room for further growth seems unavailable. Currently, the Center has an in-house staff of eight employees; in addition, several Wright Fellows are in residence each year, and approximately 40 mini-Fellows flux through the Center annually. The Center's total operating budget, given its many collaborations and partnerships, is now approximately a million dollars annually. This is in keeping with our Strategic Plan, filed with the university in the mid-1990s.

We always repeat our mission statement in our many reports: The Wright Center is dedicated to the creation and sharing of novel instructional techniques and interdisciplinary resources for pre-college
teachers. Through its fellowships, workshops, seminars, and a variety of public-outreach activities, the Center provides leadership in the training and retraining of science teachers to use innovative methods to stimulate young minds. In short, we aim to improve science literacy at all levels, from grade school to grad school.

Basic funding for the Wright Center is generously provided by the Fondation H. Dudley Wright of Geneva, Switzerland; these funds yield an underlying foundation and administrative infrastructure for the Center, upon which all programs, activities, and salaries rest to some degree. Other sources of funding come from the private sector (such as the Foundation for the Future of Seattle and the Future Generations Alliance of Kyoto), from the federal sector (such as NASA's Space Grant Consortium at MIT, and the Smithsonian Institution at Harvard), from the state sector (such as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and nearby cities and towns), and from the corporate sector (such as Paramount Communications and Pearson Publishers of the UK).

The centerpiece of the Center continues to be the Wright Fellows--talented pre-college teachers chosen internationally for their original accomplishments in science education. Each Fellow spends a sabbatical year, pursuing a program of his or her interest that addresses their proposed projects designed to improve science literacy, as well as fulfilling a functional duty meant to share with others the nature and results of their projects. Innovation and dissemination remain the twin objectives of this Center-the former to highlight novel methods of science education, and the latter to share those methods with larger groups of teachers world-wide. Fellows have come from 18 states and several foreign countries. Next year, we shall welcome our first Fellow from Africa.

The Center's network of teacher workshops remains one of the most productive aspects of the work done here. More than 200 secondary-school teachers from all over the world attended 8 different workshops this past summer, some conducted at Tufts and others exported to sites beyond. These included teacher workshops on space science (with partner Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory), biology (with Harvard Medical School), anthropology (with the Foundation for the Future), environmental science (with MIT), geology (with University of Maine), and chemistry (with the College of Sofia, Bulgaria). Each of these workshops, as well as others noted on the Center's Web site, was limited to about 25 talented teachers; many, many other teachers were turned away. Approximately half of all teachers hailed from New England, and the other half from beyond, including from Britain, Thailand, Uganda, Switzerland, Ghana, Holland, Canada, Brazil, and several other foreign countries. Many of these workshops are overseen by Senior Wright Fellow Donna Young from Maine.

The Wright Center has now mounted 78 teacher workshops during the past 8 years, each one typically 3-4 days in duration. Each is run exclusively by the Wright Fellows in residence at the Center, giving them an opportunity to disseminate curriculum projects developed during their fellowship year. And each workshop involves many former Fellows who come back to the Center each year to further share the fruits of their work and the testing of materials in their classrooms. We continue to believe that our teacher workshops remain the most efficient and effective means to disseminate our in-house programs and activities among a wide spectrum of teachers from around the globe.

The Wright Center ramped up its product development during this past year. Several new and exciting tools for the classroom were released, among them these samples:

CD-ROM on the interdisciplinary subject of "cosmic evolution," which acts as the intellectual theme of the Wright Center; this CD, burned in quantities of thousands, contains original text, art, imagery, animations, and movies, all produced in-house.
CD-ROM on "astronomy resources," produced in support of the Center's annual space science workshop and containing a wealth of teacher-friendly materials.
Glossary of terms in support of our attempt to produce a common science language to aid those teachers who teach in an integrated, interdisciplinary manner.
CD-Rom on "biology resources," oriented around an inquiry-based approach to science education, fostering cooperative interactions among students.
Movie entitled "Cosmic Origins," produced partly in-house and stressing again our integrated brand of science education across the spectrum of all the natural sciences.
22 Innovative Curriculum Reports, each produced by a team of mini-Fellows who developed short educational modules while working closely with the Center staff and resident Fellows.

This past year saw the full-scale resumption of the Teacher/Scholar, or "mini-Fellowship," program. Originally funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, this program is now partly underwritten by the Foundation of the Future of Seattle, as well as by the Fondation Wright of Geneva. This program brings to the Center pairs of teachers from a given school system--usually one of them a science teacher and the other a non-science teacher-giving them an opportunity to develop curriculum modules, teacher guides, or technological tools for the classroom. The length of stay of a mini-Fellow is negotiable, typically spanning from a week to a month, but not requiring a full-year commitment. The program is now producing a steady stream of short classroom activities, suitable for use throughout the natural sciences, and easily adaptable to any school system; each is packaged by Cathleen Banister-Marx, the Center's Curriculum Editor. We are expecting another 40 mini Fellows during the 2001-02 academic year, under the able leadership of John Banister Marx, a Senior Wright Fellow from Arizona.

The Science Visualization Lab, a cutting-edge testbed for the Wright Center's digital products (and resembling MIT's Media Lab), was heavily revamped during the past year. Media Technologist Nick Deamer and Progammer Steve McDonald now work in the Sci Vis Lab, building an array of high-tech digital products, including short movies, science documentaries, high-resolution animations, electronic maps and texts for classroom use, and many other innovative technological aids for teachers willing to experiment. Contract work in the self-supporting Sci Vis Lab is done for various partners, including NASA, Smithsonian, PBS, BBC, Paramount and other global telecommunications outlets, thereby striving to improve science literacy among intelligent adults in addition to talented teachers. The Wright Center continues to "push the envelope" regarding technology in the classroom, helping to pioneer multi-media products for educational use.

The Web site of the Wright Center continues to be hit heavily and well, as educators from around the world stay abreast of our many varied products and programs. Our award-winning site is maintained, and was originally built, by the Center's Media Coordinator Scott Battaion, a former Fellow from Montana. This Web site--http://www.tufts. edu/as/wright_center/index.html--maintains extensive archives of the Center's past activities, provides announcements of ongoing programs, streams video from the Sci Vis Lab, and hosts live Webcasts for distance learning. Our many digital efforts are aided by the Center's satellite downlink terminals on the roof of Tufts' Science & Technology Bldg.

We look forward to hosting once again the Wright Lecture Series at the Boston Museum of Science in the fall of 2001. This event has become the most widely attended lecture series in the museum's history, attracting thousands of people eager to enter into a dialogue about frontier science presented in an unorthodox format that stresses the human side of science. In this way, we additionally fulfill our twin objectives to improve science literacy among the general adult population, as well as among talented pre-college teachers. Our close working relationship with the Museum of Science is a model program of cooperation between two talented groups of educators, thanks to the outstanding leadership of museum president David Ellis.

Our long-time Program Coordinator, Leora Weinstein, left the Center to raise her family; she was temporarily replaced by Jason Freeman, who is now returning to Harvard's Kennedy School. Recently, we have acquired as our new Coordinator, Djyldyz Shabdanalieva, a former director of the World Bank Projects Division in the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Republic of Kyrgyz.

The director of the Wright Center, Eric Chaisson, had personally one of the most productive years of his career. In addition to several articles published in the scholarly journals and popular press, his technical monograph on Cosmic Evolution: The Rise of Complexity in Nature was published to considerable acclaim by Harvard University Press. He gave a dozen invited talks, from physics colloquia to educational panels, in addition to after-dinner presentations to Tufts alumni reunions. And the 4th edition of his college-level textbook, Astronomy Today (coauthored with S. McMillan), was released by Prentice Hall, complete with a whole suite of multi-media tools; gratifyingly, this book remains the most widely used astronomy textbook in the nation.

The year 2000-01 was clearly one of the Wright Center's most productive to date. Our budgets are up, our many programs robust, our tentacles reaching out nationally and internationally. With support of the university, the Center remains a genuine force in science education.

submitted by Eric J. Chaisson
Wright Center Director
July, 2001

ACADEMIC YEAR SUMMARY REPORT, 1999-2000
for the
WRIGHT CENTER FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION

The Wright Center has now completed its eighth year since its founding in 1992. Having grown rapidly in the first six years, the Center has now stabilized in size and scale. It currently has a staff of six full-time employees, in addition to several Wright Fellows in residence each year. The combined operating budgets for the Wright Center, given its many collaborations and partnerships, is now approximately a million dollars
annually.

It is useful and instructive to repeat our mission statement: The Wright Center is dedicated to the creation and sharing of novel instructional techniques and interdisciplinary resources for pre-college teachers. Through its fellowships, workshops, seminars, and a variety of public-outreach activities, the Center provides leadership in the training and retraining of science teachers to use innovative methods to stimulate
young minds.

Basic funding for the Wright Center continues to derive from the Fondation H. Dudley Wright of Geneva, Switzerland. Other sources of funds come from the Harvard-Smithsonian Institution (SAO), the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (Dept. of Education), the Foundation for the Future (Seattle), the Massachusetts Space Grant Consortium (MIT), and NASA (Washington), among others. Contract work in our Science Visualization Laboratory is done for various partners, including NASA, SAO, PBS, BBC, and
Paramount Communications.

The centerpiece of the Center continues to be the Wright Fellows--talented pre-college teachers chosen internationally for their original accomplishments in science education. Each Fellow pursues a program of his or her interest that addresses their proposed project aimed to improve science literacy, as well as fulfilling a functional duty designed to share with others the nature and results of their project. Innovation and dissemination remain the twin objectives of this Center--the former to highlight novel methods of science education, and the latter to share those methods with larger groups of teachers world-wide. Full-time Fellows this year hailed from California, Massachusetts, and Oklahoma; many other teachers from around the globe were in residence for shorter periods of time.

One of our principal accomplishments this past year was the continuation of the fabulously successful Wright Lecture Series at the Boston Museum of Science. These lectures, reportedly the most popular in the 100+ year history of the museum, stretch over many nights during each odd-numbered year (with the series switching to Geneva in the even years). As always, these evening programs of science-for-the-public address the interdisciplinary scenario of cosmic evolution, which is the intellectual theme of the Wright Center. Speakers are chosen from around the globe and this year included Nobelist Steven Weinberg, MIT's Philip Morrison, Harvard's Andy Knoll and Andrea Dupree, SETI's Frank Drake, among others. This year's lectures and panel discussions were attended by more than 2000 people and were Web-cast live over the Internet to thousands more; the video archives of these lectures can be viewed on the Wright Center's Web site. The Museum of Science remains one of the Wright Center's best partners, helping us to expertly host these lectures for the teachers and citizens of New England.

Among other highlights of this past year were the Center's annual workshops for secondary-school teachers. In all, we mounted 8 such workshops, half of them at Tufts and half "exported" to other locations in the United States and Europe. Some 250 teachers and nearly 100 speakers convened over the summer months to share in the work of the Wright Fellows; nearly 20% came from overseas including Britain, Switzerland, Holland, Canada, Mexico, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South America, and even Pago Pago! Most of the topics of this year's workshops were interdisciplinary in nature, including "Biotechnology," "Astrobiology," and "Multiple Intelligences." Having done more than 70 such workshops during the 1990s, the Wright Center feels that these 3-day gatherings continue to be the most efficient and effective means to disseminate our in-house programs and activities among a wide spectrum of teachers from around the world.

Of major note were two teacher workshops given in Sofia, Bulgaria. Hosted by former Wright Fellow Magdalena Tsavkova, these two workshops replicated the essence of a chemistry workshop given the year before at Tufts. The result was a huge success, with teachers attending from throughout mid-Europe. Thus, ambassadors from the Wright Center, equipped with tools and methods developed at the Center, now go forth into foreign lands, thereby attempting to raise the level of science literacy and to offer professional development to teachers well beyond the United States.

A close working relationship developed this year with the nearby Malden School System; supported by the Mayor's Office there as well as by Tufts, the Wright Center is now helping teachers at the Ferryway School to create new interdisciplinary science tools. Likewise, our partnership with the Ecole Moser of Geneva and Nyon grew magnificently this past year; a delegation of that school's officials, including its rector M. Henri Moser, visited the Wright Center extensively in the fall; this was followed by many visits by science teachers from the Ecole Moser to attend our Center's summer workshops. These are the beginnings of fruitful relationships with innovative school systems locally and afar, thereby once more sharing the workings of the Center nationally and internationally.

Another of the Wright Center's new partners, the Foundation for the Future, based in Seattle, Washington, contracted with the Center to make a short educational film on the history of the Universe. "Cosmic Origins" was co-produced with the Palfreman Film Group, using archival footage from the BBC and WGBH/Nova, original footage shot mainly at the museums at Harvard and Yale, and custom-made animation produced in the Wright Center's Science Visualization Lab. The other major effort in the Sci Vis Lab this year included the production of original video animation for our in-house move "The Arrow of Time," now nearly done, as well as a major CD-Rom/Web site on "cosmic evolution" that forms the intellectual backbone of the Center. These and other digital educational products--mostly in the form of CD-Roms--are now forthcoming from the Center at increasing rates.

The year 1999-00 was clearly one of the Center's most productive; our budgets are up, our programs robust, our tentacles reaching far and wide. With the Teacher/Scholar ("mini-Fellowship") program about to be reactivated, given new funding from the Foundation for the Future and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the flux of science-education talent in and out of the Wright Center will doubtlessly become dizzying at times--which is exactly the positive problem we had hoped to create by the year 2000.

submitted by Eric J. Chaisson
Wright Center Director
July, 2000

ACADEMIC YEAR SUMMARY REPORT, 1997-98
for the
WRIGHT CENTER FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION

During the sixth year of its existence, the Wright Center intentionally stabilized its programs and activities. The Center had grown rapidly in its first few years and the decision was made to pause for a year or two to assess programming before continuing its potential growth. During the past year, the Center had a core staff of five full-time employees, several full-year Wright Fellows, and about a dozen mini-Fellows. We expect to remain roughly this size during the next academic year.

Our mission remains intact as from the start of the Center in 1992: The Wright Center is dedicated to the creation and sharing of novel instructional techniques and interdisciplinary resources for pre-college teachers. Through its fellowships, workshops, seminars, and a variety of public-outreach activities, the Center provides leadership in the training and retraining of science teachers to use innovative methods to stimulate young minds.

Funding continues to derive mainly from the Fondation H. Dudley Wright of Geneva, Switzerland. Other funding is secured from several of our academic partners, such as the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, NASA's Space Grant Program, and the American Association of Variable Star Observers, as well as a wide variety of industrial partners, such as York Films London, the Adler Planetarium, and the Discovery and Learning Channels.

The main philosophy of the Center remains the same: select as Wright Fellows highly accomplished and experienced secondary-school teachers, honor their diverse interests and talents, and let their creativity flourish. The result is a rich spectrum of innovative programs and activities of value to pre-college teachers worldwide. Fellows in residence this year hailed from Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island and California; new incoming Fellows will soon be arriving from Maine, New Hampshire, Arizona, and Europe. Mini-fellows continue to flux through the Center for shorter periods of time, consulting with the staff and full-year Fellows, while developing new and innovative curriculum modules.

During this past year, Wright Fellows mounted a number of multi-day workshops for high-school and middle-school teachers from across the nation, as well as from Europe and the Middle-East. Such workshops continue to be a most efficient and effective means to disseminate the work of the Center; all workshops were oversubscribed. These included:

three biology workshops held at different sites in the state of Massachusetts; on Cape Cod, on the shore north of Boston, and in the western part of the state near New York. These were run by Fellow Leo Kenney.
a technology workshop held in South Carolina, under the direction of Fellow Eric Ryan, and co-sponsored by the MIT/NASA Space Grant Program.
an oceanography/biology workshop held at Tabor Academy on Narragansett Bay, under the direction of Fellow Susan Nourse, and co-sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
the traditional Frontiers of Science workshop held at the Governor Dummer Academy (GDA), emphasizing interdisciplinarity in science education.
an art/science workshop held also at GDA, run by Fellow April Hobart and funded out of income earned by the Center's Science Visualization Laboratory.
a space science workshop held at GDA, run by Fellow Donna Young, and co-sponsored by the American Association of Variable Star Observers.

The Wright Center also takes as part of its mission the need to share good quality science discussions with the general public. During the fall of 1997, the highly popular Wright Lectures returned to Boston. (These are held in Boston in the odd years and in Geneva in the even years.) Superb speakers drawn from across the country participated in an innovative format that invited audience involvement. Very large crowds were attracted to the Boston Museum of Science, which remains one of our best partners; the Museum has excellent facilities for this kind of event, a talented staff, and is most eager to help us in our attempt to improve the science literacy of all adults.

The Center's Media Coordinator, Scott Battaion, continued to build and refine an already robust Web site. This cyberspace method is fast becoming the principal means to announce and summarize Center programs. It is already several hundred pages deep, including real-time video streaming and a variety of hands-on activities. Newly appointed Program Coordinator, Leora Hurwitz, is also aiding in the push to embrace technology as a key vehicle in all our activities.

High-level work continued in the Center's Science Visualization Lab. The lab's head, Dana Berry, is now aided by artist/biologist April Hobart. Together, they have produced a wide spectrum of broadcast-quality animations for numerous major telecommunications outlets. Major programming was completed for the new Adler Planetarium in Chicago, animation segments were finished for a new TV series of the National Academy of Sciences, significant rendering done for Caltech's Jet Propulsion Lab, for NASA, for BBC, and for the Discovery Channel. New programming has been undertaken for NASA, via SAO and MIT, on behalf of the upcoming AXAF mission in space. Work continues apace on our principal in-house project, the film "The Arrow of Time."

Center director, Eric Chaisson, managed to finish up three books for publication: a 3rd edition revision (with S. McMillan of Drexel Univ.) of his widely used college-level astronomy textbook, published by Prentice Hall; a 2nd edition of an award winning book about the Hubble Space Telescope project, published by Harvard Univ. Press; and a collection of essays (co-edited with T.C. Kim of Kyoto) to be published by Gordon & Breach, based on a meeting hosted by the Wright Center at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on "Science, Education and Future Generations." During 1997-98, Chaisson also taught a course at Harvard on "cosmic evolution," and co-taught at MIT a freshman seminar on "space science."

Looking to 1998-99, we are forcasting a very strong year, as we anticipate having perhaps the most talented group of in-house staff and Fellows in the history of the Center.

submitted by Eric J. Chaisson
Wright Center director
July, 1998

ACADEMIC YEAR SUMMARY REPORT, 1996-97
for the
WRIGHT CENTER FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION

For the fifth consecutive year, the Wright Center for Innovative Science Education maintained its upward spiral of growth during the 1996-97 academic year. Funding, personnel, programs and resources all continued to rise, as we completed the most productive year in the Center's young history. We have now reached (three years ahead of schedule) most of the goals and aspirations articulated in our 1994 "Strategic Plan for the 1990s at Tufts' Wright Center."

During this past year, our combined budgets neared the million-dollar annual operating level. Although the majority of this funding owes to the generosity of the Fondation H. Dudley Wright of Geneva, significant amounts now derive from partnerships created in the past few years with organizations such as Paramount Communications, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and NASA's Space Grant Consortium. This growth pattern could be continued indefinitely if desired, for the work that needs to be done, and sustained, to reform science education is considerable and ongoing.

As has been the case throughout my term as director, the Wright Center has emphasized the twin ideals of innovation and dissemination in science education. And, as has also become traditional, we continue to feel that an excellent way to achieve those ideals involves close working relationships with master teachers at the pre-college level. Accordingly, this year, the number of Wright Fellows in residence (both full-time and part-time) increased to 32 middle- and high-school teachers, approximately half hailing from the New England area and half from beyond.

The Wright Fellows continued to spearhead the projects and activities for which the Center has become well known--especially our many varied teacher workshops. We believe that such workshops are the most efficient and effective means to share novel educational programming and curriculum development among influential groups of teachers nationwide. During the past year, the Wright Center ambitiously mounted 18 such workshops; all were oversubscribed.

The following partial list exemplifies the kinds of workshops offered and the breadth of Wright Center programming; all were co-sponsored by one or more of our partners, and together reached hundreds of teachers throughout the world:

Wright Fellow Leo Kenney (Massachusetts) headed up our premier workshop on "Frontiers of Science Education" at the Governor Dummer Academy, near Gloucester; this workshop is co-sponsored by the Academy and highlights many of the year's Center-wide activities.

Kenney gave 6 workshops on his specialty, the biology of vernal pools; these workshops attracted teachers from several Greater-Boston school systems and were co-sponsored by the Massachusetts Fish and Wildlife Commission.

Wright Fellow Scott Battaion (California) led 4 workshops on the classroom use of the World Wide Web; co-sponsored by TERC, these workshops served hundreds of teachers mostly from America's southeastern states and the islands.

Former Wright Fellow Britt Hammond (North Carolina) led a workshop on biotechnology at the Boston University Medical School; this week's activities were co-sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, whose grant we share with the Tufts Biology Department.

Wright Fellow Donna Young (Maine) continued our tradition of hosting a major workshop on space science and aerospace engineering; this workshop, held at Tufts, was co-sponsored by the Space Grant Consortium based at MIT.

Young also led workshops on astronomy at the Kurt Bosch Institute in Sion, Switzerland; co-sponsored by the American Association of Variable Star Observers, Cambridge, Massachusetts, this workshop was attended by about a hundred Swiss teachers.

Former Wright Fellow Jamie Larsen (Arizona) ran another of our "exported" week-long workshops in Flagstaff; this one focused on ethnobiology and was co-sponsored by the Museum of Northern Arizona.

Former Wright Fellow Ronnee Yashon (Illinois) offered her very popular two-week-long workshop on the ethical and legal aspects of the human genome project; co-sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

And, as a further experiment in innovativeness, the Wright Center's artist-animator Dana Berry organized a three-day workshop on art and science, "Art, Science and the Visual Form," which attracted a huge applicant pool of teachers (many of whom had to be turned away); this workshop was co-sponsored by the Hayden Planetarium of New York City's American Museum of Natural History.

Results of these workshops and of other activities of the Wright Center--as well as regular announcements of upcoming programs--can best be seen on our robust Web site, which features interactive science videos and hands-on activities for teachers and students. Increasing numbers of Wright Center educational reports and science visuals are now included on that site, and can be downloaded at URL: <http://www.tufts.edu/as/wright_center/index.html>

This Web site, which was built and is maintained by Wright Fellow Scott Battaion (California), was recently honored by the AT&T Nextwave telecommunications group as one of the best educational Internet sites in the United States.

Video production work in the Wright Center's Science Visualization Lab (SVL) continues to reach large audiences. Significant telecasts of our science-education animations/simulations were seen throughout the year on CNN, ABC, NBC, BBC, CBC, PBS, as well as on the cable networks Discovery Channel, Learning Channel and NASA-Select. Major computer projects were undertaken for York Films (London), the Adler Planetarium (Chicago), and the National Academy of Sciences (Washington). And work continued on the Wright Center's in-house film project, "The Arrow of Time." Dana Berry continues to lead the SVL with much distinction and dedication; his work is in great demand in the telecommunications world.

On the scholarly front, several members of the Wright Center were hard at work during 1996-97 on educational publishing projects:

Wright Fellow Linda Samuels (Massachusetts) wrote a book on women in science, highlighting ways to encourage middle-school girls to study science.

Samuels and Tufts biology senior April Hobart co-wrote and illustrated a science book for elementary-school children. Both of these book projects are now pending at major commercial publishers.

Dudley Herschbach (a Nobel-Prize-winning chemist from Harvard) spent part of his sabbatical year at the Wright Center writing an introductory college-level chemistry textbook. He was also influential in brokering a partnership between the Wright Center and the National Academy of Sciences, where he heads up the National Commission on the Public Understanding of Science.

Eric Chaisson (Wright Center director) and Prentice Hall Publishers issued an electronic version of his widely used introductory college-level astronomy textbook; this media edition comes on a CD-Rom, has 4000 hypertext links to help the student navigate around the book, and has 400 HTML links out to the Web.

Chaisson and Tae-Chang Kim (Japan) edited, and had accepted for publication at Gordon & Breach Publishers, a collection of essays resulting from the 1996 Boston Forum, a meeting on "Science, Education and Future Generations" held at the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and co-sponsored by the Future Generations Alliance Foundation of Kyoto.

The Wright Center's Teacher/Scholar Program brought to Tufts 26 "mini- Fellows" for short stays of a week or two. All these high-school teachers came in teams and developed an innovative curriculum project stressing interdisciplinarity. Some of this year's teachers, their school systems, and their projects were:

Jeri Cupero and Bradley Guth, Port Sulfur, Louisiana, "Shakespeare and Science." (This project was a wonderful mix of science and humanities.)

Judy Lankford and Sandra Voita, Orlando, Florida, "Sizzling Science Buddies." (This project showed how high-schoolers can help teach third graders.)

Marcia Zablekis and Penny Finch, Barstow, California, "Vernal Pools in the Desert." (This project outlines hands-on biology projects doable nearly anywhere.)

Gareth Kucinkas and Richard Lee, Poland, Maine, "Marbling Papers: Blending Science and Art." (This project bridged the art and science gap for high-schoolers.)

The Teacher/Scholar program is co-sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and is run by Ronnee Yashon, the Wright Center's Educational Coordinator. Yashon also gave dozens of talks at nearby schools, as we continue to develop a rich and varied network among local school systems.

The Wright Center's close association with Governor Dummer Academy continued to bear fruit. The interdisciplinary science curriculum (high-school) project, Science 2000, completed and polished for the 9th grade, has now moved into the 10th grade. Major efforts are now underway to write an innovative textbook and develop an associated CD-Rom; these will become essential vehicles in the dissemination of the Science 2000 curriculum to larger numbers of schools.

As we look to the next year, in addition to maintaining and improving many of the above programs and activities, the Wright Center greatly anticipates our fall lecture series at the Boston Museum of Science. The Wright Lecture Series is co-sponsored by the Museum and has become our most successful public-outreach event; it is held at the Museum in the odd-numbered years, complementing the Wright Science Colloquium held in Geneva in the even years.

Our twin objectives of innovation and dissemination serve the Wright Center well. We have clearly developed some winning formulas for each, and the response from our customers--the pre-college teachers--seems to be overwhelmingly positive. Much of this success derives from our proactive management stance that minimizes talk and emphasizes action.

submitted by Eric J. Chaisson
Wright Center Director
June, 1997

ACADEMIC YEAR SUMMARY REPORT, 1995-96
for the
WRIGHT CENTER FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION

During the 1995-96 academic year, the Wright Center for Innovative Science Education continued to grow. Funding is up in all sectors, as programs, personnel, and resources expanded for the fourth consecutive year. The Center's net annual operating budget now exceeds three-quarters of a million dollars, roughly half of that granted by the Fondation H. Dudley Wright of Geneva. All our combined activities accord well with our previously filed Strategic Plan for the 1990s.

The heart of the Wright Center continues to be its fellowship programs for secondary-school science teachers. Several Wright Fellows were in residence full-time for the entire academic year, and another 18 mini-Fellows passed through the Center for smaller periods of time. Full-time Fellows hailed from Arizona, California, Texas, Washington (state), as well as from Greater-Boston; each was chosen from a highly talented pool of applicants from across the nation. Next year's Fellows will be shortly arriving from California to Maine, with many based in New England.

The Wright Fellows often fulfill their functional duties at the Center by organizing teacher workshops for hundreds of other science teachers who come to Tufts during the summer months. Teacher workshops hosted by the Wright Center this year included:

Biotechnology Workshop for Science Teachers, co-sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, held at Tufts' Sci/Tech Center and at B.U.'s CityLab.
Frontiers in Science IV Teacher Workshop, co-sponsored by Governor Dummer Academy, and held mostly at the Academy in Byfield.
Space Science Workshop IX, co-sponsored by the MIT-NASA Space Grant Consortium, and held at Tufts' Sci/Tech Center and at Harvard Observatory.
Scientific, Legal and Ethical Aspects of the Human Genome Project, co- sponsored by Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and held at Tufts' Sci/Tech Ctr.
Genethics II, co-sponsored by Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and held at Tufts' Sci/Tech Center.

In addition, in April, we arranged an historic first: a workshop held exclusively on the World Wide Web. In conjunction with the Marine Biology Lab at Woods Hole and the Friday Harbor Lab in Washington (state), the Wright Center orchestrated two days of student-teacher activities in Cyberspace; six digital cameras delivered live Internet telecasts from the main workshop sites on the East and West coasts to hundreds of high schools across the nation, as well as into Europe, Asia, and the Middle-East. Local participating schools included Somerville high school, the Governor Dummer Academy and the Waring School in Gloucester; live chat sessions on the Internet were donated by America On-Line, and the workshop's Web page (http://www.pacificrim.net/~bydesign/tidepool.html) was visited by thousands of teachers worldwide who participated vicariously in this virtual workshop.

Further teacher workshops were hosted by the Wright Center at-a-distance, as this year we began "exporting" our teacher workshops beyond Tufts. As with all our workshops, these were organized basically by Wright Fellows--in this case, former Fellows who have now returned to their home school districts.

These workshops included:

Web Science for Teachers, held at the University of California, Berkeley.
Midwest Science Teacher Conference, held at University of Iowa, Iowa City.

The Teacher/Scholar (mini-Fellowship) program, co-sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, in conjunction with Tufts' Biology Department, also flourished during this past academic year. Here, teams of relatively local teachers--one a science teacher and the other a humanities or social studies teacher--came together to create an interdisciplinary product that stresses the connection between the two disciplines of the participating teachers. The product--usually a curriculum guide--is then published and distributed by the Wright Center. Representative reports in this year's Innovative Curriculum

Series included:

"How Who We Are Biologically Affects Our Identity: The Deaf Experience," written by teachers from The Learning Center for Deaf Children in Framingham.
"Poliomyelitis: The Era of Fear," written by teachers from Dracut High School.
"Using Fossils to Teach Evolution," written by teachers from Milton High Sch.
"Endeavour: An Interdisciplinary Project for Biology and Geometry," written by teachers from Goffstown Area High School, New Hampshire.
"Marine Biology and the Arts: Sculpting the Artificial Reef," written by teachers from Tabor Academy, Narragansett Bay.
"I Ask, I See, I Tell ... The Process of Storytelling in Science and Traditional Creation Myths," written by teachers from Horace Mann School, New York City.

Activities in the Center's Science Visualization Laboratory continued to go very well. Now staffed by two full-time computer animators, this hi-tech lab produces broadcast-quality video products for several "customers," including NASA, the BBC, WGBH/Nova, the Discovery and Learning cable channels, among free-lance firms working generally with PBS and other non-profit educational multi-media outlets. (The Wright Center and Tufts now receive on-screen credits weekly on the Discovery Channel and NASA-Select, and more sporadic credits on CNN, ABC, as well numerous PBS affiliates.) Our partnership with Paramount Communications also continues apace; our first-year's video deliveries were met on-time and within budget, at which point Paramount will now package our product onto CD-Roms, which if successful in the marketplace will generate a revenue-stream back to the Wright Center. All parties remain excited about this real-world partnership, as Paramount intends to continue working with us to produce educational products of a multi-media nature. In addition, video work continues on a spectrum of in-house media projects--including, for example, a series of 5-minute geology videos for use in the classroom, a 10-minute video about the Wright Center itself, and a 15-minute video on evolution for use by science teachers.

The Wright Lectures have now become a highly acclaimed series aimed at the general public--held in the even years in Geneva and in the odd years in Boston. This past fall, at the Boston Museum of Science, the Wright Lectures once again drew record crowds for four evenings of science discussion by leading scientists from across North America. This innovative lecture series has become perhaps our most well established public-outreach program, serving thousands of inquiring adult learners on the American and European continents annually.

Numerous members of the Tufts community participated this year in the widespread efforts of the Wright Center. Just a few examples will suffice:

June Aprille and Daniel Dennett were featured speakers at the afore-mentioned Wright Lecture Series in Boston last fall.
Several Tufts faculty members, including Jan Pechenik (Biology Dept.), Mary Jane Shultz (Chemistry Dept.), David Hammer (Education Dept.), Uri Wilensky (Child Development Dept.), Ron Thornton (Center for Math/Science Teaching), among numerous other Tufts staff, participated in our many teacher workshops and conferences.
We worked closely with our first undergraduate student, April Hobart, a junior biology major, who was the driving force behind the Center's new educational wall poster on the Human Genome project. Ten thousand copies of this new poster were printed and will now be distributed free of charge to teachers nationwide, along with our other popular educational posters.
Several candidates for the Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT - Education) interacted with the Center, both in their practice-teaching obligations as well as, again, in several of our teacher workshops. Wright Fellows often acted as mentors for some of the MAT students.

On the scholarly front, the Wright Center hosted last fall an international conference on science education at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge. Sponsored by a Japanese industrialist, "Science, Education, and Future Generations" was simultaneously translated into Japanese and English, and was filmed by Japanese NHK (Asian PBS) for broadcast back to Tokyo. Attendees included several Nobel Laureates, as well as leading businessmen, scientists, philosophers, theologians, and several school teachers. The proceedings are now being edited by the Wright Center for publication next fall by Gordon & Breach Press.

The Wright Center was also honored this year in the form of a Phi Beta Kappa National Lectureship for its director, who traveled the country giving nearly 50 talks at colleges and universities. Additional keynote addresses were given in Europe and Asia on topics related to science education. Some 40 visits to Greater-Boston schools were made by Wright Center staff, all with the intent of spreading the flag of the Center and of Tufts worldwide.

Many other programs and activities of the Wright Center can be found on our robust home page: www.tufts.edu/as/wright_center/index.html. We find gratifying the continued growth of the Center at a time when the budgets of so many other centers and departments are strained. We contend that the action-oriented management approach embraced by the Center is the principal reason for this upward spiral of productivity, credibility and fundability.

submitted by Eric J. Chaisson
Wright Center director
June, 1996

ACADEMIC YEAR SUMMARY REPORT, 1994-95
for the
WRIGHT CENTER FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION

During the 1994-95 academic year, the Wright Center for Innovative Science Education continued to expand its programs, resources, and personnel. The Center, housed in Tufts' Science & Technology Building, now numbers about a dozen full-time employees, roughly half of whom are Wright Fellows. In addition, ten more master teachers (mini-Fellows) were in residence at various times during the academic year--from weeks to months at a time--including three teachers from Switzerland and one from Moldova. Next year, including these mini-Fellows, the number of personnel on the payroll could approach thirty talented educators. Our current annual operating budget is nearly three-quarters of a million dollars, about half of that underwritten by the Fondation H. Dudley Wright of Geneva. All of our activities are in accord with our previously designed Strategic Plan for the 1990s.

One part of the Center has settled into a highly successful pattern: Wright Fellows are chosen nationally (and now even internationally) to spend a full-year in residence at Tufts, thus enhancing their innovative methods of teaching science; their work is then disseminated largely by means of teacher workshops, among other educational products. Again this year, we offered several such workshops, each co-sponsored by a funding partner, including:

Biotechnology Workshop for Science Teachers, co-sponsored by the Carolina Science Survey, held at Tufts' Sci/Tech Center and Boston University's City Lab.
Frontiers in Science III Teacher Workshop, co-sponsored by Governor Dummer Academy, and held at the Academy.
Space Science Workshop VIII, co-sponsored by the MIT Space Grant Consortium, and held at Tufts' Sci/Tech Center (and nearby geological field sites).
Current Perspectives in Human Genetics for Science Teachers, co-sponsored by Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and held at Tufts' Sci/Tech Center.
More than 20 one-day workshops were also given to groups of teachers throughout the year, mostly at schools in the New England area.

Another part of the Wright Center is still in the experimental stages. This is the work and activities of the Science Visualization Laboratory. Here, we have built a first-class facility capable of producing broadcast-quality science animation, and thus have taken the first step toward full production of television programming from Tufts to the world. Work is now underway in conjunction with WGBH/Nova, the BBC, Japanese NHK, the Discovery and Learning channels, and NASA, among other free-lance firms, as well as in partnership with Paramount Communications. (The Wright Center now receives on-screen credits weekly on Discovery Channel and NASA, and more sporadic credits on CNN, BBC, PBS, and other global telecommunications outlets.) The most exciting and satisfying work in the Science Visualization Lab, however, is of our own making, such as the educational movie we are now producing exclusively in-house on the Arrow of Time. The greatest potential for rapid growth and global influence of this multi-media lab is our developing relationship with the Yazaki Foundation of Kyoto (which will be underwriting an international conference this fall on Science, Education and Future Generations, hosted by the Wright Center and held at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.)

During this past year, we have had two major objectives: First, we have aimed to establish partnerships with industrial firms, both profit-making as well as their non-profit foundations. The above-mentioned contract with Paramount has set a precedent, for here we are creating educational products that will be taken to market (much as a faculty member would author a book), and if successful create a revenue (royalty)stream back into the Center. The Center is now discussing a number of profit-making, entrepreneurial partnerships with other commercial firms, mostly in the publishing industry, such as with Addison-Wesley and W.H.Freeman. And we have a number of proposals pending at industrial-based non-profit foundations,such as Merck Pharmaceutical Co. and Intel Corporation. These latter efforts are meant to establish a whole new avenue of science-education at the elementary-school level, much akin tithe work currently done in the Wright Center at the middle- and secondary-levels.

Our second major objective has been to establish better links with our own faculty here at Tufts--and here we have had considerable success engaging our colleagues. During the past year, for example, the Wright Center:

worked closely with the faculty of the Biology Department (notably Feldberg) to help win a large grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and we are continuing to work with that faculty in the execution of educational activities associated with that grant.
involved the faculty of the Geology Department (Reuss and Ridge) in some of our activities, such as their active participation in our Space Science Workshop (which this year had a planetary sciences theme), and in the construction of a new educational wall poster.
also involved other faculty such as Tufts biologist Pechenik and educator Hammer in the Frontiers of Science Workshop.
collaborated with members of the Child Study Department (Wertlieb, Feldman, Wilensky), taking the lead in proposing a new science-education institute for elementary-school teachers.
collaborated with CEM personnel (Gute et al.) in the formulation of a major proposal to the EPA.
arranged for heavy participation by the faculty in the Center's Open Night program of monthly lectures. (Members of the Tufts faculty included representatives from the Dept. of Biology [Aprille and Feinleib], Chemistry [Shultz], Philosophy [Smith], Engineering [Rodriguez], and Urban and Environmental Policy [Krimsky].)
also arranged for two Tufts faculty members (Dennett and Aprille) to be prominent speakers in next fall's Wright Lecture Series at the Boston Museum of Science.
worked with some members of the Education Department to discuss the possibility of a doctoral program in science education (Thornton et al.) and to arrange for summer office space at the Wright Center (Wright).
proposed to the Physics Department to teach two undergraduate courses, one based on the nation's most widely used astronomy textbook, co-authored by the director of the Wright Center.
sought large-scale funding from a major west-coast foundation to establish a regular science-education television program that would forcefully bring into the public domain much of the work done by Tufts' science and engineering faculty.

At a time when Centers, at universities nationwide, are evaporating rapidly, it is gratifying to know that the Wright Center at Tufts is continuing to move along on a steady upward course of productivity, credibility, and fundability.

submitted by Eric J. Chaisson,

Wright Center director

June, 1995

ACADEMIC YEAR SUMMARY REPORT, 1993-94
for the
WRIGHT CENTER FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION

During the 1993-94 academic year, the Wright Center expanded its programs significantly. The Center doubled its operating budget, tripled the number of Wright Fellows in residence, and quadrupled the workshops offered to science teachers nationally. Most of these activities are underwritten by the Fondation H. Dudley Wright of Geneva.

The Wright Center is now well-established in the Science & Technology Center at Tufts. We have built a Teacher Resource Library that provides a wide spectrum of classroom materials to secondary-school teachers, have equipped suitable quarters for visiting Wright Fellows to pursue their innovative work, and have put into place an infrastructure that aids science/mathematics teachers from around the world.

One of this past year's most significant accomplishments has been the construction of a Science Visualization Laboratory. Here, high-end workstations are networked to state-of-the-art video facilities in order to produce broadcast-quality animation and computer simulation. Such animation has become an efficient way to deliver good, solid science in a way that children (and their teachers) understand. Mr. Dana Berry, a master computer animator for the Hubble Space Telescope project, joined the Wright Center this spring in order to lead these efforts, which are jointly sponsored by the Wright Foundation and by Paramount Communications.

Another of this year's highlights was the inaugural Wright Lectures at the Boston Museum of Science. Meant for the general public, as well as for pre-college teachers and their students, these lectures used an innovative format that had multiple scientists interacting in panel discussions which, in turn, involved the audience. The subject matter was the grand scenario of cosmic evolution, an interdisciplinary synthesis of all the sciences that form the intellectual rationale for the Wright Center's activities. The Wright Lectures were extremely well received, drawing the largest crowds for a lecture series in the history of the Boston Museum.

Our teacher workshops, held mostly during the summer months, remain extremely popular. This year, we mounted eight such workshops ranging from aerospace engineering to biology and ethics, and including a number of workshops on interdisciplinary science topics. Teachers attending our workshops now come from around the world, including Europe and Asia, although most of the attendees come from New England. The workshops are co-sponsored by several different organizations, such as MIT, NASA, NSF, the Governor Dummer Academy, and the Stratford Foundation.

The heart of the Wright Center continues to be its Fellows, most of whom spend a sabbatical year in residence. These are "master teachers" who have demonstrated unusual expertise and commitment to science teaching. This year's Fellows hail from Chicago, Washington (DC), India, and Switzerland, as well as from nearby greater-Boston. Each Fellow continues to develop his/her innovative classroom techniques which have made them master teachers, and each also gives back much knowledge and expertise to other pre-college teachers who benefit from our novel educational products, curricula, and activities.

submitted by Eric J. Chaisson,

Wright Center director,

June, 1994

ACADEMIC YEAR SUMMARY REPORT, 1992-93
for the
WRIGHT CENTER FOR SCIENCE EDUCATION

The 1992-93 academic year was the first year of Wright Center operation under the leadership of a full-time director. Dr. Eric J. Chaisson arrived at Tufts from Johns Hopkins University in September, 1992. A number of programs and activities were swiftly put into place. These include seminars, workshops, and a variety of educational products, among other accomplishments detailed below, designed to aid secondary-school science teachers.

Of foremost importance, relations were established with our principal funding organization, the Fondation H. Dudley Wright of Geneva. After much discussion and several site visits, we now have an excellent working relationship with the Foundation Board; those visiting Tufts during the year were Mssrs. Ion Bals and David Faust, members of the Board, and Ms. Sheila Tobias, advisor to the Foundation. It is important that we understand the goals and objectives of the Foundation so that we can build a true and lasting legacy to Dudley Wright, and the fact that the Wright Center at Tufts now communicates directly with the Foundation in Geneva has improved relations considerably.

The heart of the Wright Center is its fellowship program. Each year, we search the nation for the best teachers of secondary-school science--master teachers who have developed innovative instructional methods and science/math curricula--and grant them a full-year sabbatical at Tufts. This year we had two outstanding Wright Fellows in residence--Ileana Jones, chair of the science department at the Winsor School for Girls in Boston, and Walter Stroup, a master teacher at the residence--Ileana Jones, chair of the science department at the Winsor School for Girls in Boston, and Walter Stroup, a master teacher at the Belmont Hill School (and doctoral candidate at the Harvard School of Education). Matching Wright Foundation funding with that from other agencies, next year we shall double the number of fellows in residence at Tufts.

The Wright Fellows drive the activities of the Center. As practicing and experienced teachers, they are the ones who know best the kinds of resources that will actually be used in the classroom. Their year-long fellowship of study and upgrading, coupled with their functional duties whereby they build a product or organize a workshop, will help disseminate Center resources to many other pre-college teachers.

Some of the programs and activities that were initiated during this academic year include:

-- A weekly seminar on science education. Attended by about a dozen people--mostly Tufts faculty--this seminar was sustained throughout the entire academic year. The objective was simple: to get into the same room, on a regular basis, scientists, engineers, and educators, for discussions aimed at improving the quality of science instruction at the pre-college level.

-- Workshops for science teachers. We co-sponsored a number of workshops and symposia that brought together hundreds of master science teachers from across the nation. For example, we allied with MIT to offer an intensive, 3-day workshop on space science and aerospace engineering; with the Coalition of Girls Schools to mount a day of discussions regarding the reasons for the large attrition rate among women in the physical sciences; and with the Governor Dummer Academy to explore in a 3-day workshop innovative methods in science teaching.

-- Educational products for science teachers. Among the useful products built this year were a set of three educationally oriented posters and accompanying teacher guide, a new interdisciplinary curriculum (with soft-ware) based on the concepts of energy and entropy, and a variety of hands-on activities and materials suitable for use in the classroom.

-- Scholarships meant to encourage teachers to teach in a more systemic fashion. A paper entitled "General System Theory: Toward a Conceptual Framework for Science and Technology Education for All" (by Chen and Stroup) was accepted for publication in the Journal of Science Education and Technology. This paper articulates our efforts to develop interdisciplinary curricula, organized by major themes, that actively address issues of science, technology, and society.

Using the management philosophy of leverage with other organizations, the Wright Center has joined forces with MIT's Space Grant Consortium, a NASA project designed to bolster educational programs and outreach activities from the university level to the pre-college level. As such, Tufts is now a Space Grant College and therefore receives funding sufficient, each year, to host a workshop for a hundred teachers, to pay half the salary of a Wright Fellow, and to produce a substantive educational product related to aerospace science. Thus, one Wright Fellow concentrates his or her functional duty on this collaboration.

The Center also receives funding from the Stratford Foundation, and in the fall of 1993 will begin the Urban Science Initiative, working closely with nearby high schools in Medford and Somerville, as well as with the Martin Luther King High School in Boston. One or two of our Wright Fellows will conduct this program as part of their functional duty, putting into practice in the classroom the novel ideas and innovations for which they were chosen as fellows.

The Wright Center also has a close working relationship with the Governor Dummer Academy, where there is another science-education program funded by the Wright Foundation. Here, we also share a Wright Fellow, who spends part time at Tufts and the rest at the Academy, thereby bridging our two groups. The teachers at the Academy who are developing a whole new interdisciplinary curriculum have the benefit of the input and advice provided by the science faculty at Tufts, and we at Tufts gain from having a place to try out several new products and activities of interest to science teachers.

During the course of the academic year, the Wright Center moved into newly designed quarters in the Science & Technology Center at Tufts. We are therefore surrounded by a large collection of scientists and technologists who will increasingly provide input into our many programs and activities. Our fellows will especially benefit from a year embedded within a fast-paced research environment. And the centerpiece of our new home is a Teacher Resource Library where pre-college teachers are invited to congregate and to borrow a wide spectrum of materials for use in their classrooms. Ms. Ellen Boettinger-Lang, a skilled program coordinator from Johns Hopkins, has recently joined the staff to manage all the activities of the Center.

By the end of this first academic year, the Wright Center had submitted proposals to federal and private agencies for much additional funding. In this way, Wright Center funds are used to secure more funds, the intent being to allow the Center to carefully grow into a first-class funding. In this way, Wright Center funds are used to secure more funds, the intent being to allow the Center to carefully grow into a first-class program of science education that will meaningfully help legions of pre-college teachers nationally and internationally.

submitted by Eric J. Chaisson

Wright Center Director

June, 1993