4-H National Youth Science Day

Good evening all,

I had the good fortune to be back in a classroom this morning, albeit with fifth graders. Today was National Youth Science Day put on by 4-H: (https://www.4-h.org/NYSD/) It is a very different organization than I would have imagined, and while based out of USDA, much less Ag based and more 'community youth group-ish' than I thought. Last week I went to the 4-H National Headquarters in MD, just north of DC. They had gathered a group of us to discuss Climate Change, a focus that 4-H is looking to tackle as part of a nationwide campaign. Part of their effort to "Create A Million New Scientists: A Million New Ideas" is this NYSD. Today was the kick off and ostensibly 100,000 students nationwide performed the same experiment and jumped off from there. It was on biofuels, specifically creating ethanol from yeast and sugar and since I am in the office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy...I left last week's meeting and called the office to find out why we weren't intimately involved with putting this whole thing on!!??!! I did get myself and one of my bosses who has worked extensively in the biomass program invited to a DC classroom today to observe and make some 4-H connections. I am seeing their "Million New Scientists" and DOE's "10 Million Energy Literate Youth" as somewhat overlapping goals. Connections to pursue.

I then made my way to the Wilson Center (http://www.wilsoncenter.org/) where all of the Einstein Fellows had been invited for a luncheon discussion. The Wilson center is a big think tank that does research on and informs policy issues - one of which is education. They provided us with their current position and priorities on education as they see it. They then opened the table to hear from us on our experiences and expertise on what should be done to improve math and science education in the US. It was a lively discussion, heated at times, that went on for well over two hours. Ben (the other Fellow from OR) and I had to excuse ourselves a bit early as we had an appointment on the Hill at Senator Wyden's office. Ben had arranged for us to get a tour of the Capitol. Complete with passes to sit in on the galleries of both the Senate and House while in session. Mildly underwhelming as there were only a couple of congressmen in each house this afternoon, but the space itself and all that it implies was impressive enough. The building is beautiful (the Library of Congress is still better!), the history quite extensive but the coolest thing was riding the subway car thingy from the Senate building over to the basement of the Capitol. Oh, how I love secret passageways!!

Tomorrow is back to my cube to get some actual work done, and there's PLENTY to work on, to be sure.

I will say again that I'm open to requests for more information about any given topic I bring up, or don't mention but is on your mind. Just say the word.

ciao,

-Jonathan