Outstanding Accomplishment Award Archive: Education and Outreach

Established in 1994, the Education & Outreach Award is given for efforts having a significant impact on and leading to improvements in scientific, mathematical, or technical education or for other efforts that significantly enhance the public’s understanding of scientific or technical issues.

The 2023 UCAR Outstanding Accomplishment for Education and Outreach is awarded to the UCAR Center for Science Education (SciEd) School and Public Programs (SPP) team for their Virtual Outreach Program. The SPP team, previously focused entirely on in-person education and outreach programming, was forced to rethink their focus during COVID-19 pandemic. The team immersed themselves in learning virtual education best practices and assessed the needs of K-12 teachers. They began and iterated over the process of research, learning, prototyping, and testing. Since SciEd Virtual Programs were first offered in 2020, they have reached about 12,000 people in over 10 countries and 37 states, including new audiences both geographically and students in grade levels that often cannot take local field trips due to their academic classes and extracurricular activities.

The sustainable and successful Virtual Outreach Program continues to get high praise in participant surveys and is a suite of highly rated, award-winning virtual programs that serve educational needs across the country and internationally.