UA News

Matt Adamson is unfailingly enthusiastic when it comes to finding new ways to excite people about science.

Did Biospherians have sex inside the "bubble"?

Matt Adamson, coordinator of education and outreach at Biosphere 2, says this is one of the more predictable questions asked by visitors to B2.

Tour groups move through the 3.15-acre enclosure every hour. If those rates continue, there soon will be 150,000 visitors to B2 each year. Most visitors are either middle schoolers or middle-aged.

Biosphere 2 has long been a curiosity.

In the 1800s it was part of a ranch but then went through several ownership changes before becoming a conference center in the 1960s, first for Motorola, then for The University of Arizona. Space Biospheres Ventures bought the property in 1984 and began construction of the current facility in 1986 to research and develop self-sustaining space-colonization technology. Two missions, between 1991 and 1994, sealed Biospherians inside the glass enclosure to measure survivability. Behind this highly public exercise was useful research that helped further ecological understanding.

In June 2007, the UA was given a three-year lease and assumed management of Biosphere 2. The agreement to pay a $100 annual fee to owners CDO Ranching and Development may extend to 10 years.

In addition to questions abut the site's former inhabitants – questions that tend to fall in the reality TV vein, concerning matters of psychological and social intrigue – visitors also want to know if B2 research is funded by tax dollars. (It isn't. Expenses are paid by visitor revenue and a 10-year, $30 million grant). Or they want to know if B2 has a stance on global warming. (Um, is inquiry a stance?)

But what B2 visitors really want to learn about is science. Adamson says it is often the interactions between guests and scientists that push our collective thinking ahead. For example, when Adamson was talking to a tour group about decisions like how much acreage within a biosphere should be used for crops versus how much for biomes, a visitor asked: If biospheres were to be used to populate space, would agricultural and biome plants even grow in a micro-gravity environment?

Good question.

These conversations about science are the whole point of Biosphere 2. Well, half the point. Of course, the major raison d'être is the research itself, especially since given B2's unique size and features, it can support fieldwork that can't be done anywhere else. But at B2, the research and the outreach go hand in hand.

As a case in point, consider the fact that in addition to conducting cutting-edge research, all B2 researchers are required to engage in some kind of scientific exchange with the public. For some researchers this means public presentations or exhibits; for others it means chatting with tour groups about their work as the guests move through the biomes. For most, it means all of the above.

To enhance the frequency and depth of these informal interactions between visitors and scientists, one of the apartments inhabited by the biospherians of the early 1990s is being remodeled into an interactive lab space. Guests will be able to watch scientists in the act of collecting or analyzing data. Better yet, they will be able to ask questions about what they see.

The Hillslope project also encourages visitor participation. The Hillslope experiment is a central, large-scale, institutionwide, interdisciplinary water and soil experiment under construction in what used to be the agricultural zone where biospherians grew their food.

Guests will be able to interact with instruments, directing a robot, say, to measure rainfall in Quadrant X. Data from the site will be shared as it is gathered.

Why the emphasis on education and outreach? Adamson, who comes from a family of educators and began his own career as a kindergarten teacher, explains that there is a lot to be gained from widespread scientific literacy. When voters and policymakers are better informed, they are better able to navigate complex decisions.

And here Adamson, who is unfailingly enthusiastic, grows even more bright-eyed: What if B2 could be a model of a new kind of science? What if scientists didn't work in isolation, communicating only with other scientists, but functioned at the center of public awareness, working visibly on common problems and concerns? What if communication about science between scientists and nonscientists could be more reciprocal and interdependent, like life within a biosphere?

Adamson wears about 17 hats in pursuit of this ideal. He makes sure the 11 tour guides – who don't work from a script and are encouraged to model their presentations on their own expertise and the interests and questions of the guests – still present a consistent program. He runs Science Saturday, which is a monthly daylong science fair where guests can browse exhibits and try hands-on activities like operating a hover car.

Adamson also oversees "Let's Talk Science," a lecture series led by professors. This fall, the series will focus on topics related to weather and climate.

Then there is the K-12 field trip program that includes hands-on, standards-based activities, with a focus on water. Adamson also oversees undergraduate students, who are often science or math teachers-in-training and who facilitate field trips and participate in other outreach activities, such as Science Saturday booths that demonstrate the use of scientific instruments.

Adamson is also a member of the B2 Management Committee, which makes operations-related decisions, updates exhibits and reviews visitor experiences. Then there is his grants committee work, plus his work with the B2 Institute Science and Society Fellows, who will practice disseminating their research to the public through browse sessions, press releases, general public lectures and exhibits. And then there's the Web site that has to be updated.

If it already sounds like Adamson works several full-time jobs, consider that roughly 80 percent of his time is devoted to the Arizona Center for STEM Teachers, or ACST, which was created through a three-year, $1.5 million grant from Science Foundation Arizona. ACST is devoted to the professional development and retention of science, technology, engineering and mathematics teachers.

ACST offers three short courses every year on topics ranging from evolution and environmental science to optics and astronomy. About 50 teachers from around the state attended each weekend course and a 17-day, residential Summer Institute.

This year's Summer Institute enrolled 35 teachers. Each received a $2,500 stipend, a Mac laptop computer, standards- and inquiry-based curriculum that is ready for immediate classroom implementation, and a year of coaching and mentoring by a lead teacher.

The teachers, selected from a pool of well over 100 applicants, participate at no cost other than what they give in time. The teacher-driven program is meant to motivate and inspire teachers, while making them feel valued as professionals.

My conversation with Adamson has me thinking about the ways in which communication can further and deepen our understanding. I realize that I wouldn't be a writer if I didn't already believe that to be true.

Biosphere 2 is located on Oracle Road (Highway 77) at Mile Post 96.5. Tours are available seven days a week during visiting hours, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Some areas of the Biosphere 2 tour are occasionally closed because of ongoing research.

For more information on the Biosphere 2 Creative Science Writing Internship, contact Mitchell Pavao-Zuckerman, mzuckerman@arizona.edu, or visit www.b2science.org.
_________________________________________________

Esmé Schwall, a master’s degree student in the UA’s creative writing program, was awarded $3,200 under Biosphere 2’s Creative Science Writing Internship in May. The eight-week internship is offered to highly qualified graduate students in the creative writing program who have “a strong interest in honing their abilities to communicate science through creative writing, and who draw inspiration for the creative process through interaction with scientists, the scientific process, and observation of a world-class research center.”