Rice’s David Alexander talks about the K-12 program he launched

Solar Week: enlightening girls about science

BY JADE BOYD
Rice News staff

Saturday marks the spring equinox, one of just two times during the year when the tilt of Earth’s axis is aligned with the sun so that day and night are equally long. Since 2000, both the spring and fall equinoxes have also marked something else — the beginning of Solar Week. Solar Week is a Web-based educational classroom program that uses games and other activities to teach upper elementary, middle and high school students about general science using the sun and its effects on Earth.

Solar Week is the brainchild of David Alexander, professor of physics and astronomy, and organizer of this year’s Space Frontiers lecture series, which marks the 50th anniversary of Rice’s involvement with the human space flight program. Rice News spoke with Alexander recently about the origins and growth of Solar Week.

Rice News: Where did the idea for Solar Week come from?

Alexander: In the mid- to late 1990s, while at Montana State in Bozeman and then Lockheed Martin in Palo Alto, I was working on a NASA-funded project called the Yohkoh Public Outreach Project (YPOP). This was one of the first concentrated, broad Web-based public outreach programs centered on data and science from a solar mission. In the process of developing YPOP, we had frequent discussions about the impact of the site and whether it was “worth the money.” In those days, we measured impact simply by the number of hits to our site, with no regard for whether the hits all came from the same person or not.

I was at a talk on education at Stanford University by Isabel Hawkins, who was then the director of the Center for Science Education at University of California at Berkeley Space Science Lab, and she was asked whether there were gender-specific programs available on the Web. I don’t remember Isabel’s answer, but this got me thinking that one relatively simple way of having an impact was to focus on underrepresented groups in the sciences. And one such group is girls and women.

This led to Solar Week, where the focus was still on the sun and what it can teach us about general science, but with a slightly different approach that was to combine activities with games. A different topic is chosen for each day of the week as a way to introduce a Q-and-A session with solar scientists, all of whom are women. The basic idea is to use the presence of and interactions with women scientists to dispel the stereotype that only men do science and to provide role models for the girls.

Rice News: What do you hope students will get out of the experience?

Alexander: The main point is still to learn some basic scientific principles and concepts using the sun and solar data as an “attractive hook.” People generally like astronomy, and the solar data is simply spectacular. It’s an ideal way to get people in the door and to teach them science. The emphasis on activities and games makes it more fun and instructional, and it provides a more interactive approach to learning. In addition, they get to interact directly with world-class scientists, all of whom are interested in encouraging more young people to consider exploring the physical and mathematical sciences.

Rice News: Why limit this only to women scientists?

Alexander: While participation is open to girls and boys alike (and adults of course), the fact that the participating scientists are all women is deliberate and designed to break down stereotypes and provide role models. Each scientist provides a bio where we ask her to focus not on what they do but on how they got interested enough to pursue a career in the sciences.

We also add some personal information about their hobbies and interests, especially those from when they were younger. Over the years, a lot of the conversations between the students and the scientists have been about dancing or horse riding rather than the sun. This shows the girls are seeing a bit of themselves in the scientists, which hopefully provides encouragement for them to go on into science.

Rice News: Did you ever imagine that this would become a recurring national event?

Alexander: Well, it was designed that way. The hard work is in getting people to participate and then to come back. Solar Week has been run typically twice a year since 2000. From 2003 to the present, Solar Week has been run out of the Center for Science Education at UC Berkeley under the direction of Karin Hauck. Had I known at that time that I was moving to Rice, I might have held on to it, but Karin and her colleagues have done an outstanding job of keeping it going, promoting it and improving it. The fact that it is still going strong more than a decade later is a testament both to the ideas behind it and to the enthusiasm and dedication of Karin and her colleagues. Solar Week is now a regular part of NASA’s annual Sun-Earth Day celebration.