NASA Suspends All Education and Public Outreach (Update)
NASA Internal Memo: Guidance for Education and Public Outreach Activities Under Sequestration
“Effective immediately, all education and public outreach activities should be suspended, pending further review. In terms of scope, this includes all public engagement and outreach events, programs, activities, and products developed and implemented by Headquarters, Mission Directorates, and Centers across the Agency, including all education and public outreach efforts conducted by programs and projects.
The scope comprises activities intended to communicate, connect with, and engage a wide and diverse set of audiences to raise awareness and involvement in NASA, its goals, missions and programs, and to develop an appreciation for, exposure to, and involvement in STEM. Audiences include employees, partners, educators, students, and members of the general public. The scope encompasses, but is not limited to:
– Programs, events, and workshops.
– Permanent and traveling exhibits, signage, and other materials.
– Speeches, presentations, and appearances, with the exception of technical presentations by researchers at scientific and technical symposia.
– Video and multimedia products in development (and renewal of existing products).
– Web and social media sites in development (excludes operational sites).
– External and internal publications, with the exception of Scientific and Technical Information as defined by NPD 2200.1B.
– Any other activity whose goal is to reach out to external and internal stakeholders and the public concerning NASA, its programs, and activities.”
Keith’s note: This is just insane. How much money will this actually save? NASA’s response to the sequestration is to go out of its way to not communicate with the outside world? Is any other agency doing this?
Then again this might have a silver lining by forcing everything to a serious life and death review – there are some pointless money holes – all done as EPO – that NASA loves to just pour cash into. I have talked to knowledgeable folks at NASA HQ – and they say that this is not an indication that NASA does not think that EPO is important. Rather, that its time for everyone to justify the actual need for projects on a case-by-case basis.
While NASA is looking at all EPO activities they need to look at other things as well. For example, JPL runs two MSL websites that overlap/duplicate one another [1, 2] but don’t cross link – and JPL has an extra copy [3] of one of these sites for good measure. Yet none of these JPL sites interact with the site at NASA HQ [4] – and yet they all cater to the same audience. What does it cost NASA to support 3(4) official websites for one mission?
Keith’s update: This memo was issued inside NASA this afternoon – after the memo above.
Memo: NASA AA for Communications David Weaver to Communications Coordinating Council: EPO Activities Under Sequestration
“I am providing additional information and instructions regarding the review of public outreach activities under sequestration as outlined in the memorandum from the NASA Chief Financial Officer and Chief of Staff dated March 22, 2013.”
Sequestration forces NASA to hold up educational and outreach efforts, CosmicLog/NBC
“It’s important to point out that it’s a suspension, not a cancellation,” [NASA spokesman Bob] Jacobs wrote. “The agency’s budget for the fiscal year is more that $1 billion below the original request. We are taking prudent steps to ensure the resources expended on outreach activities are done so wisely.”
Letter from NASA AA for Education Leland Melvin to the Education Coordinating Council on Waivers for Education and Public Outreach Activities
Who issued and authorised the memo? Public outreach and education is a cornerstone of NASA policy and has been since day one. If this goes on much further they might as well just close NASA.
This is being circulated inside of NASA – there is a similar one dealing with education programs – I’ll post that one when I get a copy. I expect that NASA will have to explain both of these memos next week given the uproar they are causing.
OMG…What will all the ex-secretaries and non engineers do now? As if they contibuted anything to begin with!
If you’ve been paying attention to good EPO at NASA, it’s not about ex-secretaries. This is a group of educational professionals who have worked hard (at little salary) to bring NASA science, exploration, scientists and engineers to its (well researched) target audiences. Are we perfect? Nope. Do we have impact? Absolutely. Until you are ready to get out there and fulfill the same mission, perhaps a little kindness (particularly now when 100s are looking at layoff) wouldn’t be too much to ask for….
How do you know that this person is not in agreement with you? The problem with NASA is that things that get lumped together under “EPO” have a wide range of quality – from efforts run by education and outreach professionals according to a clear plan with metrics, clear audience definition, and done according to established education procedures – to goofy things done on a whim by people i.e. “ex-secretaries and non engineers” with no expertise in EPO who are given EPO tasks because they cannot do the jobs they were originally hired to do. NASA’s problem is that it has no common standard for EPO across all directorates, missions, projects, and field centers. They can do more or less what they want to do with money that is under their control. No one wants to step forward and create a common standard. And even if they do create new rules to govern and coordinate EPO there are no consequences for not following standards at NASA. To make things worse some people doing EPO at NASA point to other people doing EPO at NASA and criticize how they do things while suggesting that what they do is better – yet (again) there is no uniform agency standard against which to make such a determination. Its a mess and until someone fixes it the situation will only become more chaotic.
I don’t think I disagree with you. There is no doubt that NASA EPO has been a quilt of varying quality. But within SMD there is a community of practice that is research-based and audience-based — and held to high standard. And this needs to be both recognized and mourned, if it leaves the Agency.
SMD is not as coordinated as you think. There is that rubber version of a dead chicken that someone from Stanford trots around as an official NASA mascot even though SMD says it is not official and they cannot get the person behind the rubber chicken to follow any SMD rules. Astrobiology Magazine operates in their own universe with no oversight from SMD, and science.nasa.gov is similarly unsupervised.
I totally agree with Keith!
ya, more NASA regulation will fix this problem…:(
We are not ex-secretaries! We are committed professionals who work hard to inspire students to be the next generation of scientists and engineers at NASA. We are committed professionals who work hard to educate and inform the public of the important science that comes out of NASA. We are committed professionals who work to make sure that the public is informed about what we are doing. The people we touch beg to differ.
To all my EPO colleagues, Keep calm! We don’t know what this is (exactly), though we know it isn’t good. It appears that there will be more details next week, but before we panic, let’s see what we’re dealing with. Then we can see if there is something we can do….
The memo was produced at NASA HQ – today – and its authenticity has been confirmed with NASA HQ PAO.
Absolutely! No question about authenticity. But there are questions about who is being effected, which programs and on what timescale…That’s all i’m say….
I agree, like the travel restrictions, this may be directed at preventing us from doing our job efficiently, or at all, but might not cause people to be immediately laid off.
It would be perfectly reasonable to review outreach programs on a continuing basis and either solve problems or drop unneeded efforts. But cancelling them all is absurd.
These
NASA grants and outreach programs are important to science centers and
planetariums. It is, after all the planetariums that are the middle man
between NASA and the public. This year I attended a NASA conference at
Goddard, all expenses paid, and my science center received 2K from NASA.
This 2K allowed us to buy science supplies related to STEM, and help
teach the public about space. The stuff we get monthly for our NASA
space place bulletin board is used by teachers who come to my Science
Center to help them teach their pupils about science. Our Govt keeps complaining about how other countries are ahead of us in math and science and yet they cut this? How about cutting aid to foreign countries and help the USA FIRST!!!!
Great to hear. As a child of a teacher, I know they get their materials and help from wherever they can. There doesn’t need to be explicit education related materials from NASA for a teacher to draw on NASA materials but it would probably be a really big help if there was some concerted effort in that area. Science centers are great and I know at least one school that takes a trip to Huntsville for Space Camp every year and has been doing so a long time.
These
NASA grants and outreach programs are important to science centers and
planetariums. It is, after all the planetariums that are the middle man
between NASA and the public. This year I attended a NASA conference at
Goddard, all expenses paid, and my
science center received 2K from NASA. This 2K allowed us to buy science
supplies related to STEM, and help teach the public about space. The
stuff we get monthly for our NASA space place bulletin board is used by
teachers who come to my Science Center to help them teach their pupils
about science. So while our Govt complains that our students are falling behind in math and science, they cut THIS stuff out? How about cutting out aid to foreign countries instead!!!!
Inasmuch as NASA needs public support, and already is seen as something nonessential by many congressmen, cutting public outreach is bad politics. With less public support NASA will become even more of an account to be cut or raided.
I just hope that what they are preserving with these cuts are worth it.
“I just hope that what they are preserving with these cuts are worth it.”
…like SLS?
I don’t think so.
Even without the sequestration affecting things as it is, I think the public outreach and education, and similar activities, are bound to remain a mishmash as long as HQ and the various centers are geographically separated and the centers are allowed the level of autonomy they currently enjoy.
Keeping the authority with those who have the responsibilities (the people in the centers) is absolutely necessary, but conforming with the equivalent of company standards is also necessary. Like it or not, some things have to be agency wide and therefore mandated from HQ (or a party assigned by HQ). Would you do business with a company if you noticed that every person in the company had a different letterhead, instead of using a standard company letterhead. Not likely; you’d consider them as amateur and look elsewhere.
I think Keith hit on the key issue — there is no enforcement of standards. Therefore there are no consequences for not following the standards, if they did exist.
And that’s what I’m wondering about — is the problem that there are no NASA standards for Education and Public Outreach, or is it that they’re simply not being used?
I generally base my judgements of companies on something other than their letterhead. I don’t know, like the quality of their work, maybe.
There are a couple of ways to implement cuts like sequestration. One is to do a careful analysis and cut programs and projects of marginal value. The other is to cut highly visible activities that will cause maximum public concern. Like terminating tours of the White House. Like cancelling all outreach at NASA. It’s referred to as the “Washington Monument” strategy – threaten to cut (or not increase) the parks budget, and they say they need to close the monument.
Exactly. It’s almost a form of push back calculated to generate a public reaction.
The US Navy is doing a similar thing by canceling Blue Angels participation in four air shows scheduled for 2013 [MacDill AFB (Tampa, FL), NAS Corpus Christi TX, Vidalia GA, MCAS Beaufort SC].
It’s a highly visible cut that’s bound to disappoint the public, and yet, not flying a handful of F/A 18s makes next to no difference on the DoD’s bottom line.
The Blue Angels funding would be sufficient to keep the 500 or so weather observer jobs functioning across the country.
The Washington Monument strategy does help the benefactors ‘feel the pain’ to some extent. Find every NASA program that does matter to the public or a congressional district, suspend it or threaten to cancel it and it will be a good shot by NASA to elicit White House petitions (even though it should be pointed to Congress) and amplify the outrage of the citizenry. Smart move HQ.
Notice that the areas selected for suspension or cancellation are not the ones that have the biggest budgets or employ the most people. The ones chosen are those that possess the highest perceived “value” that citizens may derive (e.g. – STEM, etc.). Clever.
Imagine if NASA controlled the U.S. electric grid? They could get a real reaction by just flipping off a switch. …… Which brings up a question: Can anyone provide an example of a NASA mission or program that has a solid, tangible value similar to that provided by the U.S. electric grid? (One equivalent to the value tied to a $15T U.S. economy?) I can think of one. Can you name one?
Yeah it doesn’t have any obvious ones that I know of either and that’s a characteristic of the agency. I’d probably rather it keep out of that domain also. It’s science and tech development and projects etc. If spaceflight was as ubiquitous as regular flight for example, it wouldn’t be NASA running the traffic controllers, it would be something like an evolved FAA. The National Ignition Facility tech project doesn’t have a solid tangible value either.
Well how about climate and weather satellites? They are developed, launched, managed with lots of help from NASA even when under the NOAA. Monitoring the sun and detecting CME and solar flares too maybe. Maybe they could “flip off” the satellite weather stuff as something people would notice.
Thank goodness…someone on here finally gets it.
Of course actions like this by the feds are designed to create the most uproar and thus apply pressure to Congress to cave in to the White House. It has nothing at all to do with whether EPO is beneficial or efficient.
The question is, do we have jobs come Monday, or are we in Unemployment lines and homeless? Are we yet another foreclosure statistic? These announcements that go out before being discussed with staff affect real people–people who work long hours and are completely committed to providing information and education to students and the public about the important work that NASA does.
We were similarly dedicated to the Shuttle program when the realities of the program shutting down really began to materialize. As one NASA official put, we understand this will be difficult for you, but realize NASA is not a jobs program, and we do not guarantee jobs for contractors. Well, as a taxpayer, we no longer can afford the sky high budgets that each government agency has enjoyed in the past.
It is time to trim the fat, and if your department is needed for future, its personnel will be kept. If it is bloated or not needed, it will be trimmed or cut. I understand this will be difficult for you, but as taxpayers we do not guarantee jobs for government workers.
NASA does wild education. They are asking 1-12 to come up with radiation shielding for an instrument to going on the ’14 Orion flight. What do they do? Copy what the experts have been saying for years? Does NASA accept this or unless they come up with something new,none are accepted? This is a lot to ask children to do. Dropping cushioned eggs is great,but this? Bolden said the winner will ride and he would not be surprised for it to be used on a Mars flight.
I don’t care what they cut as long it is not space programs. Bolden said everything is cutable except the Big 3. SLS,Web and CC. Layoffs are possible. He can move money around,so no telling what will happen. No Presidents budget. This is the first time I have ever heard of that.
This school contest to design radiation protection is a strange one. Really nonsensical. Back when I was in school GM had a program in which they had a national campaign and high school junior high kids were invited to design the cars of the future. It was focused on elements of design, artistry, modeling, etc. But the goal was not to design a better wheel.
How much does this cost or save for NASA ? By law every NASA program is supposed to contribute 1% of its budget for education.
This decision should not come as a surprise. Gerstenmayer has been trying to divest himself of anything that does not smack of engineering right from the beginning. He tried to get rid of the dozen people who do the space and earth photography but he found no one interested in trying to do the job without a NASA contract. He tried to get rid of human life sciences by signing up the National Institute of Health, but when NIH discovered how difficult it was to work with NASA they basically put their activity on a back burner. He has said for a long time that he did not think that communicating what NASA does is central to what NASA does. I am somewhat surprised that he cares this much when the total manpower and dollar amounts associated with this stuff are probably around around 200 people and $50 million and he is managing a budget of 40000 people and $7 billion.Bolden said soon after he came in that he felt NASA should get rid of its educational programs and give them to the Department of Education to run.Maybe he talked to Gerstenmayer?I suspect that Obama and his good friend Arne Duncan (the two go back to Obama’s Chicago community organizer days) decided long ago that the Dept of Education should consolidate STEM programs and take other agency’s budgets to do so. But they seem to miss the point that the Dept of Ed budget is about $70 billion while NASA’s is $17 billion. Dept of Ed has only 5000 people and mainly they are a pass through of funds to states, cities and school districts. The Administration directed NASA and other agencies to zero out the funding for educational and outreach programs in the FY 2014 Budget Request in an effort to consolidate Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) programs and transfer program management responsibilities into either the Department of Education or the National Science Foundation. The point that this misses is that the Federal Government has a minimal role in establishing classroom content and the Dept of Ed has had essentially none at all. The ‘No Child Left Behind’ program put in place by Bush was really a testing program that tied Federal fund hand-outs to test scores. That program has not worked. The National Science Foundation also does not produce significant educational materials. So if the Dept of Ed or NSF want to get into the creation and transmission of educational material then they need to hire a bunch of people to coordinate that effort and they will still need to go back to NASA to coordinate the development of technical content that originates with NASA. As Keith has repeatedly pointed out, NASA has not done a great job of coordinating this stuff internally. This will put a third party in charge of the coordination. Why has NASA done a poor job? Well for a long time the lead education coordinator for human space was a French major. Then they brought in a St. Louis realtor who had failed as chair of the NTSB, so she had known communications issues and no applicable experience. She lasted a few years before being sent off where she couldn’t do more damage. Now astronauts and human resources managers are in charge. Maybe they ought to get some qualified, experienced, educated people and clearly articulate the job they want done ? I suppose that its probably too late for this; besides why would we expect generals and engineers to be able to articulate or organize the nontechnical, which they apparently do not understand, when they cannot seem to organize their people to do the technical job which they ought to understand.
Sorry, but you’re just wrong.
The policy of devoting up to 1% of a mission budget (excluding launch vehicle costs) for education and public outreach is an internal SMD policy, not a law. If Grunsfeld wanted to put nothing toward EPO, that would be his right (as other SMD AA’s have done in the past). Because Grunsfled believes in education, he has continued the policy started by Ed Weiler.
The only education activities required by LAW are a competitive grant program for museums (NASA Authorization Act of 2005), Space Grant and EPSCoR (in every recent NASA Appropriation Act, including the new continuing resolution).
Gerst is a big supporter of education and outreach. Who do you think funds downlinks to schools, on-orbit education activities conducted by astronauts, or on orbit education assets like EarthKam and ARISS? They also support cube sat competitions and a number of other experiences for college students.
So what if Lynn Cline was a French major? She was a big supporter of eduation and outreach activities, as well as encouraging scientists and engineers to go out and work with schools.
I think you’re confusing Bolden with Griffin. Griffin wanted nothing to do with education. Bolden has been vocal about NASA’s role in education and the potential for the Agency to inspire kids. What he has said is that activities should be able to prove that they work, and he has been pushing people to develop measures and outcomes.
Agree that work needs to be done, but the current leadership team in place (Bolden, Garver, Melvin, Gerstenmeier, Grunsfeld, Shin, Weaver) all seem to be strong supporters of education and outreach activities that can prove their worth.
Great that they are enthusiastic though I have heard Bolden and Gerstenmayer both say they prefer to have NASA’s educational programs taken over by the Department of Education. They don’t want to pay for it.
The problems with NASA and education are poor coordination and they are reaching very few students. There are 100 million students in the schools of the US http://www.census.gov/compe… If NASA offered useful and usable content for every one of those grades and subject areas, they would have a much better chance of reaching a large portion of the student population. EarthKam, astronaut downlinks, robot competitions, are great, but they probably hit no more than thousands of students a year. That is something less than a fraction of a per cent. Enthusiasm is great but they need to put some intelligence behind what they are doing. For some reason if you have a technical engineering or project management job in NASA you usually have to have a related degree in engineering or science. This makes sense. Yet for education, anyone who is enthusiastic is eligible? Maybe the management needs to put properly educated brainpower into a position of authority in this area too? Regardless, what they have been doing has not worked. Something needs to change.
Amen!
Kind of tough to maintain that enthusiasm when people who should not be in those positions because they cannot be relied upon keep getting the positions. Is it any wonder that they cannot get the job done?
The NASA financial sponsorship of FIRST Robotics may directly reach only a thousand students a year, however that isn’t the big picture. The money is used to start new robotics programs at schools across the country. These rookie teams have helped expand the HS program from 28 teams in 1992 to 50,000 students on 2548 teams this year. But beyond the money, NASA sponsorship encourages engineers to participate in school and community programs to mentor kids participating in STEM education at all grade levels.
“activities should be able to prove that they work, and he has been pushing people to develop measures and outcomes”
This is assessment. Its usually the last step.
Someone needs to start with a first step of program definition and design and then development it and they might try some pilot trials; and use some logic in the process.
NASA outside of JPL is inspiring nobody nowadays.
Hopefully they use this opportunity to organize the directorates properly.
I wonder if the folks who made the decision to suspend EPO have ever seen the expressions on kids’ faces when their class is visited by an astronaut or a NASA scientist or engineer? Now such visits apparently must stop. I wonder if they have checked the numbers of visits to NASA public websites, not just JPL/Curiosity but also Astrobiology and Lunar Science and many more? I guess those websites (or at least the For Kids and For Teachers sections) will all be “suspended” too.
Just a shot in the dark here, but I wonder if this isn’t a two-birds-with-one-stone opportunity. First bird: getting public and Congressional attention by canceling something that they relate to; Second bird: assuming that this is a temporary measure, use the down time to devise and implement the changes (improvements) to EPO that so many people feel are needed.
This week at NASA is still up:
http://www.nasa.gov/multime…
I can answer your concern about costs for support of multiple access points for the same documents. It costs about what it costs for what your friends posts to appear on your Facebook page — essentially nothing. The hardware “duplication” allows greater availability to more people at the same time. How many different machines do you suppose any large organization has serving its web pages?
I’ll make a quick comment pointing people to a rather lengthy piece I’ve titled A Tale of Two Space Days. That piece also points to some of my personal history. Yes, I organized Space Days that drew 2000-3000 people to the medium sized New Jersey State Museum (smaller than Udvar-Hazy). I’m on the outside of NASA and the aerospace establishment. What’s wrong with this picture?
I teach aerospace engineering, and first they take away NTRS, which I have links to in my syllabus, and now I don’t know if I will get space grant money or not for a planned rocket project. Classes start on Monday and my plans are up in the air. Who is running this country?
Steven,
What makes it even more confusing is that fiscal problems at any point in time are generally not caused by those running the country, but rather by those who were previously running it, many of whom are no longer subject to facing consequences.