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Non-science students enrolled in astrophotography classes created by scientists at the University of California, Riverside reported a better understanding of how to use a telescope and camera and how to process images, according to a recently published paper about the class.
In addition, after taking the classes, the students, most of whom were UC Riverside non-STEM (Science, Technology. Engineering, Mathematics) majors, were eager to take up astrophotography as a hobby, opening the path to become future citizen scientists and amateur astronomers, groups which historically have analyzed a lot of astronomical data and made numerous discoveries.
The idea of the classes was to engage students majoring in fields such as social sciences, humanities, business and arts in science. Astronomy is considered by many a gateway into science. More than 200,000 non-science majors enroll in an introductory astronomy class every year in the United States, but this will likely be their only interaction with a natural science during their undergraduate studies.
Astrophotography is a great way to teach science in a visual and hands-on manner, De Leo Winkler said. It also provides a way to break through the mathematical anxiety that many non-science majors experience.
https://ucrtoday.ucr.edu/43195
[Paper]: Astrophotography, a portal for engaging non-STEM majors in science
[Also Covered By]: Phys.org
I believe that Amateur Radio, Amateur Radio Astronomy, Amateur Rocketry (and similar activities) also has the potential to attract people, from all walks of life, to STEM subjects. Do you people think that this could be the best way to attract people to STEM disciplines ?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday December 27 2016, @02:46PM
I believe that Amateur Radio ... Do you people think that this could be the best way to attract people to STEM disciplines
Ham radio is weird in that lots of teens get licenses and are super active, then life intrudes and activity level drops somewhere between a little and all the way down to zero, and then after retirement like clockwork up goes the antennas at 65 yrs and some old dude will be on the air a hundred hours for every hour a 40-something dude can eek out to get on the air, so it incorrectly looks like most hams are 65+ or 22- and not much in between, although actually numerically your average ham is more or less the average population distribution, maybe biased to much higher IQ segment.
Well anyway the point of the above is over the last almost 3 decades I've talked (... or digital, you get what I mean) to many thousands of hams over the air and they're all interested in the STEM-ish hobby of ham radio but maybe only a quarter are into STEM professional work disciplines.
Obviously it depends strongly on mode, purpose, band, time of day... but most hams you talk to are not going to be into STEM as a job.
I'm just saying its indirect at best. Most STEM people are into some combination of Trek, Star Wars, anime, (hard and/or soft) Sci Fi, cosplay, DnD, "technical hobbies (ham, photo gadget collector, arduino wrangler", however most people into anime or star wars or the rest, are not STEM people.
I think everyone who knows how to design a bias circuit for the transistors in a class AB RF amplifier knows what cowboy bebop is, but virtually no one who know what cowboy bebop is knows EE stuff.
(insert pretty obvious analogy of Venn diagrams and relative population sizes and overlaps here)
Maybe an even better analogy is I bet 100% of rocket scientists played with model rockets as a kid, but only a microscopic fraction of model rocket experimenters become professional rocket scientists.
I'm just saying that if you pursue that strategy for recruitment, you have to be chill with the idea that 99% failure rate of converting hams to EE, will still produce more EE than there are jobs for them. We already graduate far more EE than we have jobs for them, so they do other stuff. I've never worked in the field I've always done "computer stuff", there's just no jobs, or they want 15 years of avionics experience and a MSEE for an entry level job where someone knowing ohms law would be overqualified. Because they can. Because there's way too many EE being produced for the very few jobs they're trained for.
Arguably we have too many STEM grads already and need to cut back quite a bit, not boost production until no one with a degree can get a job and when they do via supply and demand its $7.25/hr. I don't think ham radio is necessarily a problem or a solution. It is a hell of a fun wide ranging STEM-ish hobby, however. And for most people with EE knowledge or skills, that hobby is the only way they'll ever get to apply those skills because there's simply no jobs out there.