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Adam Johnston
I’m excited to promote an event this week: This Friday at Tracy Hall Science Center at Weber State University, we’re hosting our annual “Physics & Phriends” Open House. Starting at 6 p.m. and extending for three hours, there will be planetarium shows, demonstrations, mini lectures, hands-on experiences and a whole host of rooms where you can contemplate subatomic and astronomical scales, the geology of the planet and single-celled critters under a microscope slide. The physics website has more information for this free, family-focused event, including directions.
But more than just promoting the gathering, I want to highlight what it’s all about. Open House started many years ago when a group of us in the Department of Physics & Astronomy thought it could be fun to host an event for the general public. We picked a Friday night when other things weren’t going on in our lives or on campus and sent out a few posters and a press release. To our astonishment, 600 people showed up. It was only then that we thought harder about the space and the fire marshal, but it was clear that this model is something that works for us and a lot of you. We did the same thing the following year with a little more planning and a few more rooms and a thousand folks joined us. Other than a few years when we were figuring out how to navigate a pandemic, this has been an annual celebration bringing in lots of people.
To say that we “plan” it is a little generous, given that we’re throwing it together alongside jumbles of classes and university obligations. It’s usually in the fall, but sometimes we move it to the spring. Once there was a band; often there are rockets. We try to schedule it around dark skies for telescopes but also good weather, but that’s pretty much impossible. We have some people who come year after year, so at least there’s some reliability and perhaps a following.
In the years since we first started this, it became clear that we could use our newer building and all of its spaces, as well as a host of other scientists. So, with Tracy Hall — a spread-out and spacious structure for both lab work and gathering — it’s easy to engage the public and allow folks to see their investment of tax dollars. Even more important to me is the fact that we can include a wide array of faculty and, most especially, students. We give them a little pizza and a T-shirt, and they show up en masse. The “and friends” part of our promotion is to indicate that this has become an inclusive effort, and in the process, I get to know more about the studies of people who spend time out in the field, stir up goo or squirt stuff into test tubes.
This is the essence of community engagement. We, students and scholars, learn in our classes and labs and through reading and scoping and all of it, but those experiences become vibrant when we’re there side-by-side and engaging with families like yours. I learn more about my own work when I’m in a classroom or sitting next to kids while we contemplate how a balloon loses all its volume when it’s a couple hundred degrees below freezing. Alongside, our students get to experience that same kind of connection and deep understanding.
As chance has it, I’m writing this a day before the national election so that it prints the day after voting. It’s an awkward spot, and frankly, I’m really anticipating analysis from my fellow WSU columnist Dr. Leah Murray next week to make sense of Democratic processes. But, also, I take some solace in the fact that what is most important in our society happens at the hyper-local, interpersonal level.
What we provide as a public institution isn’t simply a place where the state pours concrete. And it isn’t even a location where we teach composition courses and philosophy seminars and engineering labs. These are true, but maybe most important is the investment in a public space like ours providing a point to come together, share our best selves, create an opportunity to learn something new. I hope you get a chance to take part, on Friday night or any other opportunity in the future.
Adam Johnston is a professor of physics and director of the Center for Science and Mathematics Education at Weber State University, where he helps prepare future teachers and supports educators throughout Utah.
This post was originally published on here
