Initiative Coordinators: Paula Tallal and Terry Sejnowski
 
In order to facilitate initiation of our research and education initiatives, while maintaining the bulk of our resources for science, the following implementation measures will be taken.
 
1) K-12 students and teachers: We describe our partnership with Reach for Tomorrow and the Preuss School in Initiative 7 (Diversity). We will reach K-12 educators (teachers and administrators) through lecturing in our corporate partner Jensen Learning Corporation’s “Brain Expo” for teachers. We will volunteer our time so that scholarships for teachers (especially at our partner schools) may attend for free. . We will also reach tens of thousands of K-12 educators annually through our corporate partner Scientific Learning Corporation’s website for educators www.brainconnection.com and electronic newsletter.  We will contribute a quarterly column called “Advances from the NSF Science of Learning Centers” that will summarize in lay terms new scientific publications of most relevance to K-12 educators. We will also encourage responses and discussion from K-12 educators to this column as part of our “inreach” program.  These outreach and inreach programs will not cost us anything but our time and will provide us with an ongoing mechanism for open and timely dialogue with K-12 educators nationally.
 
Through the UC COSMOS Summer Program, a workshop will be given to high school students on the temporal dynamics of learning. We intend to do one round of this each year, as it does not cost us anything but our time. Additionally, UCSD’s existing Neuroscience Outreach Team will develop and incorporate a unit on temporal dynamics of the brain for in their outreach to K-12 students and teachers. 
 
The Center Program Representative (Andrew Kovacevic) will facilitate these partnerships and arrange plans to ensure that the programs run smoothly. Center investigators will be responsible for entering all reporting data into the Center administrative database, in order to record and document these activities.
 
2) Undergraduates: First, throughout the award period, we will continue our strong commitment to directly involving undergraduates at each of our participating Universities in our research labs. Each laboratory will report their undergraduate research trainees and the projects on which they worked. Center investigators will be responsible for ensuring that this information is entered into the Center administrative database. Through the UCSD Educational Advancement Office, Michael Dabney will coordinate matching efforts between Center investigators and incoming students participating in academic enrichment programs. The Summer Undergraduate Science of Learning Institute will be put on hold until year 3.
 
3) Graduate students and postdocs: Starting in year 3 of the project, we will establish a new “Ph.D. plus” Graduate Program in the Learning Sciences, aimed at students in Cognitive Science, Computer Science, Engineering, Psychology, and Neuroscience. A major objective of this program is to insure that students will work with center faculty to gain a balanced coverage of at least two emphasis areas in our 2 by 2 table: Experimental and computational approaches to understanding and modeling the dynamics of learning in behavior or in the brain. This program will be initiated in year 3, pending the availability of funds.
 
Starting in year 3 of the project, bridge postdocs will spend a year in one lab of a research network and another year in a lab at another location. This cements relations within the network and transfers techniques and knowledge from one lab to another. The Center Program Representative (Andrew Kovacevic) will be responsible for assisting with travel and housing arrangements to ensure that this is possible.
 
4) Researchers: In years one and two, we will invite researchers from outside UCSD and our partner institutions to come to the Center to give talks. Planning will be facilitated by Program Representative, Andrew Kovacevic.
 
5) The public: Our premier mechanism for outreach to the public will be through The Science Network (TSN). In year 1, we will provide seed money for editing equipment, record our all-hands meeting and the lecture content at the Brain Expo for web export to teachers. These efforts will be ramped up as appropriate to the budget increments in later years. Roger Bingham of TSN will coordinate these efforts.
 
6) Translational activities: We will begin to show translation of our science to education through further development of the “Let’s Face It!” and RUBI projects.

 

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