Subject: Agenda and info for our meeting at 4:00 on Thur. 10th at 343 Lexinton Dr.

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 18:02:10 EST

Agenda for March 10th Meeting 2005
 
Item 1. Approval of minutes from the Feb. 3rd meeting.  (Mary)
 
Item 2. Financial update and report. (Ben)
 
Item 3. Website update and report from Darwin Day 2005 and plans for the  
rest of the calendar year. (Bob and David)
 
Item 4. Report of Grant application to the Informal Science Education  
program of NSF.
(preliminary info on this is part of this email). -- (Bob)
 
Item 5. Now is the time for us to seek additional funds -- Ideas anyone?  
(Everyone)
 
Item 6. Report on Bob's efforts to cooperate with Amanda on changing  a 
paragraph in the History of DDC on our website. (Bob)
 
Item 7. Request from Amanda for cooperation on the publication of "Darwin  
Day Collection Two." (Bob) Information on items 6&7 will be sent in a  separate 
email.
 
Item 8. Other items?
 
Item 9. Adjournment.
 
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Hi All: Our preliminary application to the Informal Science Education  
section of NSF is underway and it must be submitted by March 18th. The  information 
bellow is to give the Board an idea of where we are at this point  and give 
members an opportunity to both see and what we are applying for and  also a 
chance to ask questions. It is now a work in progress and David, Mary and  I are 
making contributions to it.
 
The bold black info is taken from the instructions from NSF and I've  
abbreviated them and put them at the beginning of each section to help me  keep on 
track. The bold blue info are David's suggestions. We have plenty to do  yet but 
I'm optimistic that we will get it out in good  style. 
 
1. COVER SHEET
 
a. Include the program solicitation number and check the  preliminary 
proposal (or preproposal) box.
 
Mary White will provide the info for the Cover Sheet section.
 
2. PROJECT SUMMARY
 
a. essence of the proposed project clear to the  reader.
b. Succinctly describe deliverables and demonstrate how they  achieve the 
intended audience and strategic impacts.
c. Address the characteristics of innovation and collaboration. 
d. It must explicitly summarize in separate statements the  project's 
Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts, including the Additional  Review Criteria (in 
Section, VI. A)
these are * What is the intellectual merit of the proposed  activity? ** What 
are the broader impacts of the proposed activities?  ***  Additional Review 
Criteria -- within Intellectual merit reviewers will  asses: + deliverables, ++ 
project design, +++ project team, ++++  Partnerships. **** Within Broader 
impacts, reviewers will asses: + Audience  (Impact), ++ Public audiences 
(Impact), +++ Professional (Impact), ++++ Impact  evaluation + clear measures and 
criteria to for defining success? ++ Strategic  Impact, 
e. Summary is limited to one single-spaced page.

The essence of the proposed project is to promote and deliver  informal 
science education in an economically efficient manner  to a broad spectrum of the 
general public at  the National (and International ?) levels.  To accomplish 
this we will need to substantially expand our  current model, that employs two 
(2) significant and innovative  elements, which we have tested and found to be 
very successful. First,  we have constructed a website that serves as an 
informal source of  accurate scientific information for a broad spectrum of the 
general public,  as well as for science educators at all levels. This website,  
darwinday.org, contains detailed information on the topics  of Charles Darwin's 
life, his contributions as an important scientist,  and evolutionary biology 
-- including the molecular mechanisms that  underlies the process of 
evolution. (A measure of the current success of  this website can be seen from the fact 
that over 1,100 other websites point to  it for information on these 
subjects.)  Secondly, (David's suggestion -- we are using e-mail and dynamic Web  page 
generation to encourage and publicize a variety of lectures, exhibits, open  
houses, discussions, dramatizations, and other events focused on the 
scientific  basis of evolution and Charles Darwin as a human being) ( the following 
would be  removed -- by using Darwin as a symbol, we are promoting an annual  
Celebration of Science and Humanity) on or near his birthday on February 12.  We 
accomplish this through informal partnerships and collaborative activity with  
many other groups throughout the USA, and in other countries. For instance,  
in February 2005 there were 143 informal  educational events open to the 
public, that took place  across America and in 12 additional countries around the 
world. These  events were attended by many thousands of participants, it is 
important to  emphasize that these events are annual celebrations and experience 
shows  that they are now being repeated each year. Samples of these informal,  
educational events can be seen on our website under  EVENTS. The funds we are 
seeking will be used to improve and  expand the content of our website and to 
greatly expand our outreach to  groups across the country and around the 
world who in turn develop the  educational celebratory events.  
 
The intellectual merit of this project is that, in addition  to its inherent 
scientific value, it addresses a timely and  current topic in the public 
arena, that of the authenticity of evolution as a  scientific theory and the need 
for the general public to learn more about  it. Our approach makes it possible 
to includes exciting new data on  the relationship between molecular genetics 
and evolution. For instance many  members of the general public have shown a 
strong interest in the structure  of DNA and function of the human genome (in 
personal health) and in it's relationship  to the genetics of all other living 
organisms on this planet. Therefore, we feel  confident that our approach to 
informal science education has been  shown to be an effective method for 
reaching out to those interested in  life-long informal learning and is ready for 
significant expansion. Through our  activities we encourage life-long informal 
education by making it  possible for the general public to access, not only the 
informal  educational opportunities on our website that they can visit  
online but also through attendance at numerous educational events  sponsored be 
University Biology Departments, Museums, Libraries and others  organizations that 
independently learn about our efforts from our  website (or through our 
nascent outreach  efforts). Individual public members can even  contemplate 
participating by sponsoring their own private or public  event.  
 
The broader impact of these activities can be seen in the  long-term effects 
of these ongoing informal educational opportunities. For  instance we have 
been able to build excitement around the fact that Darwin's  200th in 2009. Among 
other activities we are promoting a countdown to 2009  to achieve what we 
refer to as a Global Celebration. In this context large  numbers of the general 
public both in the USA and around the  world will be informally educated as we 
encourage professional  individuals and institutions to develop an informal 
programs to  Celebrate Science and Humanity and to invite the public to attend.  
 
The funds we are seeking in this application are to cover expenses for  the 
following personal and items:
 
     1. Website maintenance and expansion: We will need  to increase our 
current Web programmer from 1/2 time to full time to (a)  cover increasing website 
content and structure development  and  maintenance needs (b) post new items 
under the "What's New"  section. (c) handle increasing incoming email related 
to the website and (d)  coordinate and post translations of our website into 
other  languages as they are received from volunteers translators. Currently  
volunteers from 4 countries have contacted us to do these translations  and we 
will be solicit many more by using the Web  site.       
 
     2. Greatly expanded outreach efforts focused  on domestic and 
international learners: To accomplish this we will need to  hire two new full-time 
professional communicators. One would handle  the University outreach desk and the 
other would handle the desk  dedicated to media, museum, library and primary 
and secondary education  outreach. To date most of our outreach effort has 
consisted of contacting  professional scientists and soliciting their voluntary 
cooperation in the  development of informal public educational events, that 
their universities  sponsor and that they themselves spearhead. (Example of these 
educational  events are presented in the Project Description Section  bellow.) 
 We invite them to visit our website and offer them  non-monetary assistance 
on how to initiate an 'event' appropriate for their  institution. From our 
past experience we recognize that to accomplish  the expansion we anticipate, 
these two-way email communications will  require an individual to address each of 
these markets.
 
3. Don't forget the External Evaluator.?
 
4. To accomodate the anticipated expansion we will need to purchase an  
additional Computer.

 3. PROJECT DESCRIPTION

a. The narrative is a condensed version of the project description  for the 
full proposal 
b. Limited to 6 single-spaced pages.
c. Identify the essential features of the project in terms of  * impact,  ** 
innovation and ***collaboration as described for a full  proposal.
 
Brief Description of Our  Organization:
 
Our organization, 'Darwin Day Celebration', is a website-based  nonprofit 
educational 501(c)3 corporation registered in California  and our URL is 
_http://www.darwinday.org_ (http://www.darwinday.org/) . This 
Corporation is governed by an all volunteer Board of  Directors consisting of 
five members (currently with one vacancy) that  meets regularly once a month 
to act on issues related to our operations. The  Chairman of the Board and 
President of the Corporation is Robert J. Stephens Ph.  D.; the VP is Arthur 
Jackson, Community Leader; the Secretary of the  Board is Mary White Ph. D.; and 
the CFO is Benjamin Wade, a Business  Executive. In addition we have a 13 
member Board of Advisors, consisting of  internationally recognized scientists, 
educators, philosophers and writers,  available to assist us with questions 
relevant to the content of our website and  promotional methods. The advisors are 
Edward O. Wilson Harvard University;  Eugenie C. Scott, National Center for 
Science Education; Daniel C.  Dennett Tufts Univ.; Patrick Bateson, Provost, 
Cambridge Univ.; Stven  Pinker, Harvard Univ.; Richard Dawkins, Oxford Univ.; 
Helena Cronin, London  School of Economics; Michael Shermer, Cal. Inst. of 
Technology; Steve Jones,  Univ. College London; Carl Zimmer, Science Writer; William 
Calvin, Univ. of  Washington; Robin McKie, London Observer; and Colin Tudge, 
London School of  Economics. All of these people are listed on our website 
under the NavBar  heading of 'About DDC.' A long list of 'Supporters' begins at 
the  bottom of the Homepage and continues with a link at the end of this list on 
the  Homepage.
 
The Corporate and working offices of Darwin Day Celebration are  located at 
2682 Middlefield Rd. Suite P, Redwood City, California 94063.  Our Phone # is 
650-701-1948 and our Fax # is 650-369-7215.
 
Impact:
 
Experience during the past four years has shown us that the model that we  
have developed and tested on a modest scale permits us to target a broad base of 
 both the public and professional audience in an effective and efficient 
manor.  This audience includes science teachers and students at the primary and  
secondary levels, the general public and professional educators as  well as 
research professionals. In fact as we are able to expand we  have the potential 
to reach a significant portion of each of these  audiences.
 
At present we do not employ an external evaluator but we are  exploring how 
best to include this service in our application. We do  however currently have 
a positive sense of the effectiveness of our  approach even at the modest 
level of promotion. For instance  website activity analysis by Webalizer shows 
that our peak activity  this past month reached 3082 hits per day and in addition 
we know that we have  generated at least 143 informal educational events this 
year and that most of  these are now occurring on an annual basis. Our sense 
of the average attendance  at these informal educational event is definitely 
more than 100 and  could be as high as 200 several events attended our members 
toped  300. Our application will definitely anticipate formalizing our ability 
to  acquire accurate counts as we continue to expand. A strong indicator of 
the  impact we are currently generating however, can be see from the fact that  
our website, according to "linkPopularity.com an independent Link  Popularity 
Service" shows darwinday.org is linked as follows by three of  the most 
popular Search Engines: 1020 links by Altavista; 1020 by Yahoo and  1334 by MSN a 
very good showing for our current level of  promotion.   
 
This impact is achieved through the use of  two specific approaches; first, 
we have constructed a website  that serves as an informal source of accurate  
scientific information for a broad spectrum of the general public, as well  as 
for science educators and professionals at all levels. Our  website, 
darwinday.org, contains detailed information on  the topics of Charles Darwin's life, 
his contributions as an important  scientist, and evolutionary biology -- 
including the molecular mechanisms  that underlie the process of evolution. (A 
measure of the current success  of this website can be seen from the fact that 
over 1,100 other websites point  to it for information on these subjects.)  
Secondly, by using Darwin  as a symbol, we are promoting annual Celebrations of 
Science and  Humanity, on or near his birthday on February 12. We accomplish this 
 through informal partnerships and collaborative activity with many other 
groups  throughout the USA, and in other countries. For instance, in February  
2005 there were 143 informal educational EVENTS open to  the public, that took 
place across America and in 12 additional  countries around the world. These 
events were attended by many thousands of  participants, it is important to 
emphasize that these events are annual  celebrations and experience shows that 
they are now being repeated each year.  Samples of these informal, educational 
events can be seen on our website  under EVENTS. The funds we are seeking will 
be used to improve  and expand the content of our website and to greatly expand 
our outreach to  groups across the country and around the world who in turn 
develop the  educational celebratory events.  
 
There is more to be added  here.
 
******************************************************************************
*************************

4. BUDGET
 
a. Include justification.
b. Support requested from NSF to be in the forms generated in  FastLane.
c. Yearly budget not required -- overall budget is  sufficient.
d. In funds other than that from NSF the budget justification  should 
identify the total projected budget.
e, include an external evaluator
 
The budget request should include salaries for 2.5 new hires + a modicum of  
equipment and supplies. The program supplies a full time volunteer in the 
person  of Dr. Robert Stephens Chairperson of the Board and President of the  
Corporation. The Board of Directors of this nonprofit Corporation is  unpaid and 
has regular monthly meetings to guide all aspects of the  corporation's work. 
Dr. Mary White will be the unpaid Principle  Investigator and will be 
responsible for overseeing the progress  of the ISE portion of the overall corporate 
activities. (Work is  needed on the Budget)  
 
5. SUPPLEMENTARY DOCUMENTS
 
a. To include these we have to have written permission from the  program 
officer.