Scope and History
While there have always been individual scientists interested in educating the public, science outreach has recently become more organized. For example, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) now requires all of its projects to organize suitable outreach activities. Also working to inform the public are organizations such as Communicating Astronomy to the Public and Washington Declaration on Communicating Astronomy to the Public that organize conferences for the public on science issues and make efforts to put outreach on a more general institutional footing.
Recently, an increasing number of projects have been hiring designated outreach scientists (part-time or full-time) that handle public relations on for their project. There are also specialized outreach providers such as the Education branch of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado and the Education and Public Outreach Group at Sonoma State University which offer to organize a project's outreach activities on a contractual basis.
In addition to outreach by research institutions, an important part of informal science education are outreach programs such as science museums and science festivals.
Read more about this topic: Science Outreach
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