Are ‘poop hands & green lizards’ the future of STEM engagement? #NationalScienceWeek

If 'poop hands & green lizards' or 'dino dandruff & asteroids' don't intrigue you, what will? These episodes illustrate the premise of Up & Atom, a radio show for young listeners. Broadcast on Sydney-based independent youth radio station FBi (94.5 FM), the 15-20 minute show aims to inform and entertain people in relation to the latest science discoveries. University of Sydney chemistry lecturer and researcher for Open Source Malaria Dr Alice Williamson hosts it. With her warm, Northern English lilt, she tries to promote Australian scientific work, especially that by underrepresented groups like women, wherever possible. Passionate about bringing science to the people (instead of them having to seek it out), in the case of Up & Atom, then, she brings it to teens and young adults who generally listen to FBi for its indie music and youth-based programming. This underscores her STEM communication focus. Unlike many proponents of young people engaging more with STEM, Williamson doesn't want to foist science on them in the hope they will only become programmers or physicists. "Of course we need people in STEM and we need diversity ... but one of the things I'm most keen about is for people in other disciplines to love and understand science ... like journalists, politicians and teachers," she said. "It's important to keep peoples' interest in those areas by looking at them in a different way." This means, for example, presenting on revelations relating to "crazy wild animals" on Up & Atom, or hosting Dear Science, a scientific 'agony aunt'-style show on ABC radio. Sometimes, the science education goes both ways. Someone recently emailed Up & Atom to inform the show about animal blood donation banks. Williamson herself was surprised by this ("I hadn't thought about it before"). Usually, however, she does the informing. Heavily involved in school outreach, she co-founded 'Breaking Good', which involves high-schoolers in making medicines. She's also in the process of developing a 'Hello Fresh'-style subscription science experiment kit for primary schools, where you can "order a box with all the components needed for experiments". Radio, which requires her to distill complex information into soundbites, without the aid of explanatory images, has aided her school outreach practice. "I have to find ways to make science stories relatable," she said. Up & Atom's question and answer format, where the host plays questioner, has also helped. In schools, Williamson assigns students that questioning role, which "teases out the story". Though she's just a drop-in school resource, she has some uncontroversial, STEAM-like suggestions on how schools can improve STEM education generally. "There are so many talented teachers. We need to do all we can to provide resources and training to teach science, and weave into other subjects too ... like literacy and numeracy, and even art and music." She thinks a change in our attitudes toward our capacity for science, too, is warranted. This week, while promoting Nano Lens, yet another citizen science project she's working on, she asked people, "Do you want to look like an artist or a scientist?" "They were happy to say they're not good at drawing but they like art. But with science, there was a disconnect between ability and enjoyment. "I don't think that necessarily has to be the case."