Darlene Cavalier, a professor of practice in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society, College of Global Futures, is principal investigator on Scale and Sustain SciStarter Ambassadors and Libraries as Community Hubs for Citizen Science. This $1,680,000 gift was awarded by Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
Says Cavalier: Thanks to the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s combined investment of nearly $2.6 million, with $1.68 million directed to ASU and close to $1 million invested in SciStarter, we are now poised to scale a national movement that transforms libraries into community hubs for public engagement in scientific research. This support recognizes that libraries are trusted, accessible places where Ambassadors can be recruited, trained, and supported to introduce SciStarter and citizen science not only in libraries but also in cafés, parks, schools, museums, and other "third spaces." It affirms SciStarter’s role as the digital hub that connects millions of people to thousands of research projects that genuinely need their help. I’m incredibly proud that together, we are empowering people everywhere to learn, do, shape, and share science in ways that strengthen their communities and advance real research.
A brief summary follows:
The proposed program will build on the partnership between Arizona State University (ASU), the largest public university in the U.S. by enrollment and repeatedly ranked #1 in innovation, sustainability, and global impact, and SciStarter, the largest online source of citizen science projects with an active community of more than 215,000 members. The team will leverage the expertise developed over the previous decade to expand and sustain a network of public libraries engaged in citizen science and a program of volunteer ambassadors supporting these local libraries. The project goals are, by the end of 2028, to grow the library network to over 2,000 participating libraries, the Ambassador program to at least 4,000 trained volunteers and the number of active members on SciStarter to over 500,000. The project will result in an informed, ready-to-act, distributed army of volunteers to respond to the needs of science and society in addressing the next big global or national challenge. The proposed project will support the recruitment and development of personnel to realize these goals, while a sister project will support the corresponding web development activities at SciStarter.
