Duke Engagement Seminar

Wanting to improve last year's forum, we held a seminar together with East Chapel Hill High iGEM team and the Museum of Life and Science to discuss future outreach projects as well as how to improve our success in engaging a diversity of thoughts. Our mosquito forum from last year drew primarily from Duke University and thus most people already came from a very scientific background. A variety of backgrounds and point of views is essential to having an engaging and meaningful forum.

We discussed with Chapel Hill and the Museum of Life and Sciences on collaborating to create forums in the future that can achieve this goal. During this seminar we examined the the incredible gap of opinion between the general public and scientist communities, and conversed about how scientific communities must create spaces to speak with and hear public opinion surrounding genetic engineering topics. We deliberated about appropriate ways to engage the public in learning about the scientific process and the research already being done with genome-editing technologies. We concluded that one of the most important goals of such public engagement is the interaction between trained scientists and laymen - this gives "science" a human face and allows researchers to learn from perspectives not often considered in their daily work or by their colleagues. The key structure of a forum is that it is NOT a lecture, but rather a chance for opposing sides to discuss; this enables scientists to reach out to people not accustomed to academic settings.

We also discussed price structuring to improve attendance in such public engagement forums. From what the museum found in their past experience, charging people a nominal fee encouraged a higher retention rate but saw an attendance consisting of people already knowledgeable and interested in the topic such as local scientists and graduate students. Making the event free, however, saw a dramatic drop in attendance since there was nothing to disincentivize dropping out the day of the event. What is important is to find a balance between maintaining acceptable retention of attendees but also keeping the event open to all community members. This often requires grant funding to attract a crowd diverse enough to have representative opinions (i.e. running the forum as a kind of paid study).

In a future collaborative forum run by Duke iGEM, the East Chapel Hill iGEM team, and the Museum of Life and Science there are several key components: members of the public and trained scientists, collaborative discussion, and a topic closely related to genomic editing. The Museum of Life and Science has, over the many years it has been open, built a substantial network with the community and local scientists and thus can be an important asset in attracting a diversity of opinion to the forum. Duke, likewise, has a network with many biotechnology firms which can not only bring a unique business perspective of genomic editing, but also draw new community members (especially Duke students) more interested in hearing about the latest developments on the technologies. Combining our resources, we should be able to attract a diverse crowd and create a successful discussion.