The following topics are covered within the Science and the Next Generation Theme

  • Modernization of scientists training

  • New generation of science advocates

  • What is science professional career path?

  • Skills, training, and work integrated learning

Conference Presentation for Empowering Youth

Day 3 – November 15th 2019

Takeaways and recommendations: 

Empowering Youth Through Self-led and Experiential Learning

Organized by:  Ingenium – Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation

Speakers: Christina Tessier, President and CEO, Ingenium – Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation

Moderator: Céline Auclair, Co-Founder, First Peoples Innovation Center; Mary Anne Moser, President and CEO, Telus Spark Calgary; Diana Wang-Martin, Chemistry teacher, STEM Teacher Advisor and International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program Coordinator, Glenforest Secondary School

Takeaways:

  1. Storytelling and creativity are ways to engage the whole child in science.
  2. People are encountering science emotionally: let that inform how we educate around science.
  3. The First Peoples Innovation Centre, in Gatineau PQ, has developed the first Indigenous Fab Lab in Canada, which offers five months of paid training for 16- to 30-year-olds. Among the key principles and outcomes:
    1. As students learn, they teach the group. There is no traditional teaching and learning, like sitting in a lecture and taking notes.
    2. The Fab Lab’s pillars are identity pride and social innovation.
    3. There is a 75% success rate: graduates go back to school, create their own business, or find a job.
    4. Graduates become ambassadors for the Fab Lab.
  4. Young women in hands-on science environments need gender parity or better to feel comfortable and become engaged.
  5. Ottawa’s Science and Technology Museum offers STEAM Effect, a 3-month program that pays youth a stipend to work on community problems that are driven by participants.

Actions:

  1. Give high school students the opportunity to apply what they learn in the classroom outside the classroom, and to build soft skills. (e.g., The student-run Xplore STEM Conference teachers leadership, communication and collaboration skills, and links students with senior students and mentors.)
  2. Bring into schools opportunities for project-based learning.
  3. Find applications that are curriculum replacements, rather than additions. (e.g., Mole Day Project: students baked recipes using chemical quantities and formulas; Grade 11 students taught chemistry to students in grade 8.)

Day 3 – November 15th 2019

Takeaways and recommendations: 

SING’ing Indigenous Technoscience: An Encounter with the Summer Internship for INdigenous peoples in Genomics Canada

Panel Organized by: Jessica Kolopenuk, University of Alberta / Université de l’Alberta

Moderators: Jessica Kolopenuk, Assistant Professor Faculty of Native Studies,University of Alberta; Julia Krolik, Founder, Pixels and Plans | Art the Science

A series of recorded interviews with SING Canada participants and faculty explain why Indigenous-led technoscientific research and training are vital for operationalizing Indigenous knowledge in science policy. Using art exhibition as a medium to transport the stories of SING Canada and its people, the CSPC audience met and heard from the next generation of Indigenous scientists and policy makers: those who are changing national and international
conversations about genomics.

Watch the video here: https://vimeo.com/374590520

Day 2 – November 14th 2019

Takeaways and recommendations: 

The Role of the Next Generation in Science Diplomacy

Organizer: Fonds de recherche du Québec (FRQ)
Speakers: Gabrielle Simard, Scientist in Residence, Délégation générale du Québec à Munich; Rémi Quirion, Chief Scientist of Quebec; Jean-Christian Lemay, Scientist in Residence, Québec Government Office in London; Patricia Gruver-Barr, Research & Innovation Attaché, Québec Government Office in Boston

Moderator: Jean-Christophe Bélisle-Pipon, PhD, President of the FRQ’s Comité intersectoriel étudiant; Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard Law School

Takeaways:

  1. Quebec has proactively opened offices in the U.S. and Europe to establish better links with the global scientific community. Most of the staff have a scientific background, which gives them an advantage in building useful relationships with their counterparts in other countries.
  2. Depending on their field, many scientists are well placed to assess topics of interest to them, notably institutions or organizations that have been created to serve a particular research need.
  3. These science diplomacy channels have enabled Quebec’s chief scientist to diversify the activities of his office in ways that he could not have considered without these multinational linkages.

Suggested Actions:

  1. Some panellists suggest that government officials should work closely with science diplomacy posts as they can identify opportunities within the research community that may not be obvious to others.
  2. Place early career researchers into these positions to bring a fresh perspective on how to establish new relationships with prospective research partners in other countries
  3. Encourage scientists to take up international posts as a way to explore other career options, which may include a life outside the lab.
  4. Federal government representatives, such as those in the office of the chief science advisor, should develop their own science diplomacy initiatives based on the success of the Quebec’s example.