METHODS

Program development: a model to foster science communication skills. In 2005, several Washington University faculty members invited SLSC staff to design a science communication component for a soon-to-be-submitted National Science Foundation (NSF)-Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) proposal. The general goal of the component was to train an annual cohort of graduate students in the cognitive, computational, and systems neuroscience (CCSN) pathway (ccsn. wustl. edu) to present general brain science and, in particular, their research to a large public audience, such as that of the science center. Not only would this program benefit the graduate students, but it would also bring current scientific research and processes to science center visitors. Concurrent with Washington University’s invitation, the same SLSC staff was involved in a growing number of Public Understanding of Research (PUR) initiatives within the Association of Science and Technology Centers, all encouraged by the NSF. Key among them was the seminal, invitational conference,“Museums, Media and the Public Understanding of Research,”(9) and collaborations that grew out of the conference (eg, Robotic Research in the Public Eye, Nanotechnology Informal Science Education Network, Portal to the Public, and others). After the NSF-IGERT proposal was funded in 2006, SLSC staff learned that Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry (MSI) had begun a similar program, MSI SciTech Chicago Outreach Pilot Exploration (MSCOPE), 6 mo earlier; it was the first such program in the United States. Serendipitously, one of the MSCOPE participants joined the SLSC evaluation staff in year 1 of the IGERT grant, contributing valuable program experience. The Science Communication for Brain Scientists program combined PUR techniques with existing training used for new SLSC staff. The program offered hands-on training, modeling, and personalized coaching in workshops. The workshops reviewed how scientists have been involved historically in PUR, who the “publics” are, face-to-face