we had that mandate first come out in our facilities we made sure that we were helping people learn how to create them fashion them be creative um we're always soliciting donations around that right now to get more face coverings for individuals to get them access so that will continue to be a huge part of our programs and operations um and uh again following all of the guidelines around safe protocols for COVID-19 I will say to this date um with some of the preventative measures we've taken the end of quick action to do some social distancing within the shelters and to um create you know these enhanced preventative measures to this date we have not had a single positive case in any catheterities shelters uh so uh we will continue the protocols we've had and the testing will continue to be a high priority for anybody that we find that symptomatic um and or you know needs further evaluation so that'll be an ongoing monitoring that we will do uh at this site thank you okay the next question is from Teresa followed by a Lynn Teresa I've enabled your speaking permissions please unmute your mic and ask your question hi thank you um thank you to everyone who's on the panel and for all the excellent questions from participants my concern is not this controlled uh homeless shelter it's that there's already one tent over there uh someone obviously homeless living in it in the parking lot right at the corner like I would say the northwest corner inside the parking lot there is a tent and this seems to be contagious because people are in survival mode now what's going to stop people from seeing tents they are controlled and then next thing you know we wake up with 20 more tents in the other parts of the parking lot um and I guess that's my main question thank you Teresa so I do know we're planning to manage the parking lot by closing it at curfew and reopening it in the morning um surprised to hear a tense shown up uh the uh the intention is that we will not allow any other people that aren't registered at the finley site to occupy any space on the finley property and I I can state it as simply as that um anybody else on the panel want to amplify something and it's that's as clear as I can be I think thank you just to follow up on that we'll be working closely with the city staff there and the police department being in partnership but now to understand what's going to change the landscape of this is we have a place for them to go now and that doesn't exist right now so as of next week we're going to have 70 of these tents and I think people are anxious for this opportunity and that's going to be a game changer for us in this and I think hopefully that's going to mitigate a lot of those concerns good point thank you okay the next question is from Alyn followed by Katie I have unmuted your mic Alyn and please unmute yourself and ask your question thank you uh this is Alice Lynn hello everyone um thank you for providing this planned emergency tent village for unsheltered it's a great step both for the unsheltered and housed to have an intentional well planned village during this crisis I welcome an additional planned tent or safe parking village at the park nearest my residence I have a process question because best processes ensure best outcomes it's in the best interest of the unhoused the city and taxpayers to have a diversity rather than a monopoly of operators of publicly funded emergency shelters to ensure healthy competition for shelter contracts to treat clients better and get people permanently housed as quickly as possible home cinema county was formed two years ago of public officials and a technical advisory committee or TAC a 25 community experts on homelessness as a lived experienced TAC member who has researched and championed planned villages more than anyone on the TAC I would like to know why haven't the TAC and TAC emerging issues task group led by miss holmes formed for emergencies like this been included in the planning of this village we haven't met in five months on zoom or begin been given an opportunity to to give input on this including on the operator chosen to manage this site thank you thank you Allison hello I heard mostly comment there did anybody have a here a question that we might want to respond to around home cinema county or kind of off the focus of finley but also I would just encourage you to share your comments with the full council certainly at the next home cinema county leadership council board as well thanks okay the next comment or pardon me question will be from Katie followed by randy Katie I've enabled your speaking permissions please unmute your mic and ask your question hi there thanks so much for taking my question my question is about drug and alcohol use on the finley site my understanding is there is no drugs and alcohol allowed within the encampment here are my questions one we know that drugs and alcohol will be obtained and used off-site so residents will be coming back under the influence similar to sonoma state universities guidelines for searching residents upon reentry will these residents be searched when they reenter the camp second what will that search look like third who will conduct the search will it be Catholic Charities or security guards thank you thank you Katie sounds like a operational question and jenny linear mics already off so thank you yeah so so we certainly will be holding a pretty robust understanding that people who we will not be allowing any drugs or alcohol on the site and any drugs or alcohol that are found to be in someone's possession on the site would be grounds for dismissal from the program again for the safety of the site and other individuals in the site in terms of people who might be coming to the site under the influence we are a behavior based program so we will be managing an overseeing behavior that affects the health and safety of the site and the surrounding community if someone is under the influence and their behavior is such that it threatens the health and safety of that of the site we would take immediate action to resolve that situation but conversely if someone is not under the influence of drugs or alcohol and they do have behavior that negatively affects the site from a health and safety perspective we will also be resolving that issue so we will be looking at behaviors for the individual to make sure that everybody in the surrounding community and in the site is safe so we are not doing it based on sobriety we're viewing it based on behavior in terms of the question around search we at this point do not have planned searches that we will be executing we do have a vast experience as well as our security company and the potential in looking at you know potential red flags or risks that might come associated we will deal with those on a case by case basis but we will not necessarily have a protocol that we'll be searching everybody when they come and go from the site again most of these individuals that we work with are there to be safe and so we'll be continuing to encourage the health and safety perspective from the participants and continuing manage that from a perspective of helping people along the pathway towards sobriety and also making sure that people's behavior is such that they're safe and their partners at the site are safe as well thank you okay the next question is from randy followed by lbk randy i've enabled your speaking permissions please unmute your mic and ask your question got it am i clear yes fantastic okay a few questions uh so you stated that people living in finley uh we we filtered i guess somehow um to pull aside the sexual predators and criminals who have previously been convicted how will that be done and how will the same potentially predatory criminals be eliminated from the local community being in danger and risk to those of us who live close by um secondly how about the folks who are living there um who are continuing to use drugs if there's no drug use allowed in the encampment how will that be enforced how are we filtering out the people who are using drugs trying to bring in the people that are the most vulnerable at the same time keeping out those same people that uh you know have a long history of uh addiction so lastly i guess the people who refuse to be sheltered there are those who continue to use intravenous drugs like we've seen over on jo dota trail heroin or meth refuse to go to finley because they know the drug use is not tolerated what are we going to do with those folks in the rest of the community since we all know housing first is a failed agenda will city continue to supply drugs to the homeless people that are living in finley alcohol and tobacco i guess as well um like we've seen at los guilicos okay randy thank you for some three-part question it's it's dealing with uh sort of screening um people that would be sexual predators from being at the finley site uh management of use of drugs and then i think you had a question about refusing services what do we do community why did i hear that correctly well maybe your hands lowered sorry well maybe jenny lincoln we talk again through some operational perspectives about uh screening the predators and the use of drugs and alcohol and before let me just say that uh we've been at this since six o'clock uh maybe we just go with what does a group think maybe three more questions max and then we wrap up okay thank you go ahead jenny man yeah so um hopefully write me if i missed one of the questions but um in terms of the screen so uh as captain cregan mentioned earlier we will not be accepting people who are uh registered sex funders there is a process to check that you can check website um and and make sure that individuals are uh not on that website if they would preclude them from coming into the site um in terms of managing uh the alcohol and drug behavior as i mentioned uh we're we're dealing with behavioral issues again there are people who maybe aren't in terms of their behavior affects the in the health and safety but there's also people who are not under the influence where that could be a similar circumstance again this is true in the housed and unhoused population so this runs across multiple um populations in our community and so we will continue to monitor that behavior um and make sure that people who are actively um trying to go towards the path of recovery as have access to referrals and have access to the opportunities that allow them to continue that pathway towards um sobriety and that often is the case and um what we find in the site that we operate is we actually uh once someone has an establishment of a place that's safe to be they often are open to the looking at the next phase of actual recovery and moving forward in that way so that's why our on-site staff that's trained in these um different fields allows them to kind of provide the resources and referrals that we wouldn't have had maybe if they were on an um not inside of this program so that's that's an important component for us to continue to um to to provide that resource for individuals whether they're on the you know in one of our encampments or whether they're in this in this site i think i don't know if i missed any other questions let me know if i did but um that that's going to be the real differentiating factor and i just want to say one more time you know this you know alcohol and drug use is something that is a whole social issue in and of itself um it again it does not discriminate whether you're housed or unhoused in many scenarios and so there are whole systems and whole um referral processes and community-based organizations and county you know just you know uh departments that work on this issue again running the gamut whether you're unhoused or or housed individual thank you jenny lynn okay the next question will be from lbk followed by santa rosa resident and the last question will be from diana lbk i have enabled your speaking permissions please unmute yourself and uh ask your question uh can you hear me yes okay this is hi this is lindsay um and i'm a uh i'm a neighbor here and in northwest center rosa i regularly go um go running up by the finley center and um sort of run through that parking lot um first i just want to take um take a minute and thank everyone who's on this uh the work y'all have done with setting this up is really thorough and um i just appreciate it i also want to take a moment and just appreciate um what i heard jenny lindsay um about uh addiction drug use and alcohol abuse uh not being limited to the homeless population i think i would just also add that um uh sexual predators are not entirely housed within the homeless population either um so i really appreciate you saying that jenny lynn because i think um we should really resist these sort of morally flawed arguments that suggest uh that homeless people are um are to blame for a lot of the social ills in our society um the thing i want to ask really is about how uh those of us who are nearby here can um can be good neighbors um i heard some folks you know concerned about um about uh maybe maybe these folks who are moving in potentially uh spreading COVID-19 and i kind of heard some stuff about about face masks so i'm just sort of um wondering if there's some way that um there are things that we could we could donate to to help out the folks who um who are going to be moving in you know whether it's it's homemade face masks or um or there are things you all need uh or ways that neighbors could could kind of show up and and welcome these folks and and help to take care of them as they as they come to temporarily live in our neighborhood thanks yeah thank you for that question and um i think we mentioned earlier about a way to manage donations just for finley but the whole wide system of care that catheterities is operating so maybe on just a quick summary review jenny lynn just um capture that yeah um thank you so yeah we will definitely again we're in a unique situation catheteries are usually very reliant on volunteers and bringing lots of people in to help in our programs but obviously in this situation of a pandemic we are having to kind of change those protocols a little bit and not have as much outside influence in our sites just again to limit exposure both both ways uh we want to protect the people in our programs uh so volunteering is going to be probably on a uh on a very limited case by case basis um we we definitely will be looking for certain in kind donations and we will post something on the city's frequently asked questions web page kind of a listing of things but i can tell you right now what will be at the top is face coverings um so that's something that we're going to be in a continuous need not only for this site but all of our um homeless service operations so face covering people who are willing to um sew masks or donate masks uh or whatever that might be there's some really creative things i've seen in the community um that's going to be the number one top of the list and um it would be beautiful to see you know neighbors who want to help donate to that that would be a great cause um other things that we can always use is um you know other hand sanitizing or other uh items of that sort that we can give maybe individual ones that individuals can take with them and have as part of their personal um kind of you know what they're wondering you know uh leaving the site for essential services they're able to have that access to that we will be providing some for on the site but uh equipping individuals with personal hand sanitizer and other um items like that would be very um welcomed as well but we'll put a more comprehensive list on the city's uh website yeah kelly i think you had something you wanted to add just real quick and jennylynn already mentioned um that we're going to be updating our website so thank you for that um i just want to say i've been taking notes tonight so any questions concerns including all this great input from um the community about how we can help and how we can be good neighbors um i will be updating our faq with that so people know how they can help thank you perfect perfect thanks okay the next question is from santa rosa resident followed by diana is the final question of the evening uh santa rosa resident i have enabled your speaking permissions please unmute your mic and ask your question can you hear me now we can hear you okay um well i am going to start by saying i hope i won't be judged by some of the callers who think that we it is incorrect to acknowledge that sometimes the homeless are not good neighbors um because i think that is the case um um but i do understand that there will be a lot of control over this particular um site because it will be a managed site um but my uh concern is when the site was chosen um i was i was pretty shocked that a park was being chosen uh because we know that parks are already kind of a magnet for the homeless and was uh consideration given that you may now have um made finley park a magnet for the homeless um in the future that's my question well yeah thank you for the question um and i'll start with maybe stating that again this is a temporary arrangement to get through a health crisis so that we can create safe social distancing this is not envisioned to be there beyond the shelter in place or until we have alternative solutions identified as we mentioned earlier i don't know if that attracts homeless into the future i i don't have any data point on that i don't know if any member of the panel knows but uh just so that's my comment on that kelly maybe you can contribute something oh you turned your mic off i i meant to turn it on no i just want to say that i think that we the panel and everybody working on this we have thought through a lot of the contingencies um and and have been prepared as we possibly can tonight to answer all your questions and some of the things we won't know until we um operate the program and get the program up and running and so i think that um a couple people on the panel have already mentioned we will continue to evaluate it moving forward and um should an issue arise around uh potentially the site attracting more people then we will take steps to address that true yeah i would just reiterate what kelly just said took the words out of my mouth and um and please let you know let us know what what we can be doing and the evaluation process will be ongoing um and uh well you know we can add other additional resources as situations might arise and and in how we might need to to refocus certain efforts as well so this is going to be an ongoing evaluative process um and and definitely kind of first of its kind in terms of its operations in the city so um we we do plan that as part of our our ongoing operations and we appreciate feedback from the community as you see things from an operational standpoint i am happy to address those um from from the operator operator stand uh perspective i will add that we're going to share the numbers again to contact us so if you observe things that you feel are different or shouldn't be there in the first place by all means contact us whether it's law enforcement or our homeless services number of things of that nature dave if i could just add it it's an experience that the city has had along prince mill green light one of the best ways to make sure the behaviors of any public space are used appropriately is have a lot of people using it in that appropriate manner so i would encourage neighbors which you can do enjoy finley park come and enjoy finley park and all the amenities that are there within the framework of the public health uh order don't avoid the park because that's not going to help anyone good point okay the final question of the evening is from diana diana i have enabled your speaking permissions please unmute your mic and ask your question okay thank you very much and i am surprised that i am able to be a double dipper because i did uh offer a question earlier and thank you for extending the time on this uh town hall meeting right my question has to do with the fact that i am currently a resident of the oakmont community out in east santa rosa off of highway 12 where we have recently uh across the highway at los guillegos opened up a temporary uh homeless encampment uh center in hopes of moving more uh homeless folks into temporary and then on to long-term housing i was a resident of the local community of uh the finley center i lived just you know probably less than half a mile away and often walked in the finley center park now having um been a resident of oakmont for almost a year and through this transition with the los guillegos uh temporary housing i have come to to know that the los guillegos temporary housing program is not temporary it was due to close on april 30th of this uh year and there was staunch um opposition to this shelter being located so far from the community uh center santa rosa center that would provide needed services for these uh for these individuals it's not temporary it looks like it's going to be long term now the covet 19 probably has changed as it has changed all of our outcomes and services that we're looking for so i guess my question has to do is is how different is this temporary covet 19 uh social distance site from the highway 12 los guillegos temporary housing for our local community um homeless population and i understand that catholic charities is is uh front and center in providing for santa rosa city uh these community services for our homeless as is uh saint vinson's depaul for providing services for individuals at los guillegos so how how is uh saint vinson depaul and catholic charities coordinating services that so that a temporary program does not turn into long term and what do we see for long term housing transition for our homeless population thank you very much yeah thank you diana i i do know that covet 19 did change the path of travel for many of uh homeless service operations um i know it really put the county in a different place by trying to respond to that i know tina you have some thoughts um there was a part of your question about um well i guess back to yeah it sounds like los guillegos is going to be there longer because of the distraction if that's the right word for trying to respond to a health crisis uh tina anything to add to that or i just i just don't get along with the response i suppose well i can say that uh los guillegos is operating for three months uh in march uh we had a board meeting i believe it was march 11th or march 10th the board did vote to extend the los guillegos site for an additional six months so it is still temporary um in lieu of um exploring our indoor outdoor shelter uh proposal so then of course the pandemic hit and so that of course has you know threw everything off schedule and um the los guillegos side currently um has uh even in the midst of this pandemic been able to move some of its residents into uh permanent supportive housing while they are still housing those individuals that are in the site um and sheltering in place so we've not been able to move others in right now because of the health order but um it is still currently um temporary and our indoor outdoor shelter plans are still uh in movement uh although slowly moving because of this pandemic but we're still strategizing a transition plan uh after the fact post pandemic so we're still working on these things good yeah short term medium term and long term yeah so dean i think that's uh or jenny linier might came off you want to say a few words i think there was a question around cava cherries and saint vinson to paul partnering so we partner with all our our non-profit partners especially in the area of um homeless service operations so um there's a multitude of partners that are are working to create a safety net for people experiencing homelessness and um you know saint vinson to paul is one we regularly communicate with and and have a lot of shared individuals that we we serve together um and i think there was a quick mention in there around long term housing transition plans i mean again that is the entire focus of our entire of cava cherries whole homeless service infrastructure is to get people housed um a lot of our our shelters and in these interventions are very important to get people out of very dangerous and unhealthy situations in our encampments in terms of their own safety and their own medical needs but really there are long term goals that these are short term interventions that ultimately are a process by which we can get people into housing and our focus is resolving people's homelessness not managing it resolving it for the individuals and so last year catheterities was able to house 650 people out of homelessness and into permanent housing and that's a number we're going to continue to shoot for here and it's also something we're going to work with the individuals in this site is to provide permanent housing options and pathways out of homelessness so that is that is our focus and all of this is keeping people safe and leading them into housing keeping people safe and leaving them in the housing well-saving so dina was that our last caller that was good before i turn to the over to the mayor for some closing remarks i i just wanted to thank the members of the public uh thank the panel for um you know this is a this is a very tough subject made more complicated with the challenge within the emergency situation appreciate people listening to us and and providing some ideas to participate that really means a lot want to remind folks that we have a web page srcity.org slash cobin 19 homeless support we have an email address if you want to provide some feedback homeless at srcity.org and starting tomorrow ideally by nine o'clock we have a voicemail box five four three four six oh five that if you didn't get your point across tonight you have additional questions you think of or comments please email or call us we want to hear from you we want to develop the best systems going forward so mayor did you want to say anything before we wrap up tonight yes i'll be very brief just echoes some of your sentiments thank you to everyone for their participation you know originally we scheduled this for an hour and a half an hour on the three hours because this is such an important uh topic and it's a very complex topic you know ending homelessness is really easy housing but how to get there that's the challenging part and there is no framework for any other community who's had to deal with cobin 19 um and so we're creating this as we go and i just want hopefully everyone who's been participating or listening gets the sense that there's a lot of folks city county state federal employees working behind the scenes to try to get us the resources there so i just have uh two asks or two opportunities for a continued public involvement one of the things that i with the city council along with my colleagues uh same thing with the board of supervisors we're continually talking with our representatives in sacramento and washington dc to get additional funding to come to sonoma county to help us address some of these issues you might have read in today's paper yesterday's paper the heroes act is going before congress i believe tomorrow i'm pretty confident it's going to pass congress but then getting through the senate may be another challenge so i would encourage everyone if you have an interest in some of these dollars coming locally right to your senators especially if you know any senators out of state that may not be supportive of some of the actions that the state of california is um taking but that makes a difference hearing from members of our community who think these federal dollars can really help us in our situation please don't sit idle don't be passive in that let them know you think this county of sonoma uh has earned the right to have some of those federal dollars coming our way and secondly next tuesday we have a santa rosa city council meeting there is public comment period there this is not an agenda topic but you are you have an opportunity over three minutes provide the entire city council with your thoughts about this project or anything else going in the city so i'd invite you to be an active participant in your community tuesday we start at noon time because if you want to hear about the budget of the city of santa rosa we're starting at noon but at four o'clock we'll start a regular uh council meeting and at five o'clock we'll be open to some public comment so please participate a lot of opportunity i know i along the rest of the city council members are really interested in hearing what this community has to say so thank you for all of your participation final words david you covered a mayor thank you very much and thanks thank you to the panelists and the members that participated tonight great good night all good night


Central to the beliefs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is their concept of God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Mormons, properly known as Latter-day Saints, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, refer to these beings collectively as the Godhead. To understand the Godhead more fully, let's begin with the Latter-day Saint understanding of God. Latter-day Saints acknowledge and revere God the Father as the ultimate object of their worship. He is the Supreme Being, the all-knowing and all-powerful Father of all mankind. They even refer to Him often as Heavenly Father, meaning the Father of their spirits. God the Father appears in the scriptural record from time to time at very important events, like during the creation of the world as recorded in the Old Testament, or in the New Testament, for instance, when introducing His Son Jesus Christ at the Savior's baptism. And lo, a voice from heaven saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Latter-day Saints believe God is a loving Father to all His children and wants them to have all that He has. For this reason, He provided a plan of happiness and a Savior to help His children learn of Him and become more like Him. Latter-day Saints pray to and worship the Father in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, the Lord, Savior, and Redeemer of all His children. Jesus Christ, God's Son, was born in a manger, lived among the children of God, and taught His gospel of salvation. Jesus also suffered for the sins of mankind, was crucified, and rose from the grave as a resurrected and glorified Being. He is the great example for all of God's children. The Holy Ghost completes the Godhead as the messenger and revealer of the Father and the Son. We'll explain more about the Holy Ghost a bit later. Together, the three members of the Godhead are one in many ways, but don't confuse the Godhead with concepts of the Trinity found in other Christian faiths as there are key differences which, for Latter-day Saints, are very important to understand. They can also be confusing at times when, in Scripture, they are sometimes referred to as one God, or when it says, the Father and Son are one. For Latter-day Saints, this means they are all united in their thoughts, desires, knowledge, power, and purpose, to love, guide, and save all of God's children. One important concept is the understanding that each member of the Godhead is a different individual being. For example, Joseph Smith, a man whom God selected as his prophet to restore the Church of Jesus Christ to the earth, revealed that God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ are separate individual beings. Joseph saw God the Father and Jesus in a personal visit from them in 1820. In Joseph's words, when the light rested upon me, I saw two personages whose brightness and glory defy all description standing above me in the air. One of them spake unto me, calling me by name, and said, pointing to the other, This is my beloved Son, hear him. This is yet another example of God the Father introducing his beloved Son. Joseph later recorded a revelation that he received, describing their physical bodies. The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man's. The Son also, but the Holy Ghost has not a body of flesh and bones, but is a personage of spirit. Were it not so, the Holy Ghost could not dwell in us. Now let's talk more about what Latter-day Saints believe about Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is often referred to as the Son of God, also called the First Born. Latter-day Saints believe he was the first spirit child created of heavenly parents and is the eldest brother to all of God's children. They also believe, through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ made in Gethsemane and upon the cross, he became the Redeemer of all of God's children, literally the Savior of the world. And Jesus' subsequent resurrection prepared the way for every person who ever lived or who will live to overcome physical death by also being resurrected with an immortal physical body. As the Apostle Paul explained in the New Testament, Even so in Christ shall all be made alive. Besides the many descriptions and names of Jesus Christ referred to in Scripture, Latter-day Saints also believe Jesus is the only way back to God the Father. Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man cometh unto the Father but by me. Now let's talk about the third member of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit. Also sometimes referred to as the Holy Ghost, he is, well, a spirit. He does not have a physical body, but his spiritual influence can be felt by all of God's children. This attribute allows him to work in perfect unity with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, fulfilling several roles to help God's children live righteously and receive the blessings of the Gospel. For instance, the Holy Ghost witnesses of the reality of the Father and the mission of the Son. And in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul describes other feelings associated with the Holy Ghost. Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith. The Holy Ghost also reveals and teaches the truth of all things. God taught the Prophet Joseph Smith how all of God's children can receive a witness of truth for themselves by the power of the Holy Ghost.  So there it is. God the Father, His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost make up the Godhead. They are three distinct beings with unique and important roles, but together they operate in perfect unity and harmony. God the Father loves all of His children and knows they will be happier and more fulfilled if they listen to and feel the direction from the Holy Ghost, follow the teachings and example of Jesus Christ, and return to live with Him. It's all part of God's plan. The Godhead, what it is and why it's important to understand. Now you know.


Well, you know, people often ask me and I often see things in the news that ask questions about what's wrong with American science education. And here's a few headlines that say that such as US teams trail their peers around the world, why can't US students compete with the rest of the world, and so on. You may have had questions about science education too, but I'd like to get you to turn those questions around tonight and see that we'll turn them on their heads. Before I get going any further, I really want to thank Lindsay Barone who really helped me put this talk together and did a huge amount of the work. If you ask US adults and scientists in the American Association of Science, how they feel the US ranks in scientific achievements, then about half of the public says we're the best in the world in scientific achievements, and 92% of the scientists, so they feel pretty good about themselves. But Americans feel pretty good about American science too. As I said, more than half think we're the best in the world. And more than half also feel that we're the best in medical treatment and among the AAAS scientists, 64%. So the point of it is we feel pretty good as Americans and as people of science about the kind of work we do in science. But if you ask that same question about how Americans feel about K through 12 science, technology, engineering, and math education, so-called STEM, they don't feel so good. Only 29% of Americans think we're number one in the world in science and technology education and only 16% of the scientists. So clearly there's a perception that we're doing something wrong, both in the media and among the public and even among scientists. Well, so the question is how do we know that we're not doing so well in science education? What kind of things would we measure to answer that question? And who do we talk about when we do these sorts of studies? And that's what I want to spend the first part of the talk with you about. We're going to at least mention three studies. Two of them are by the Trends in International Mathematics and Science study. And they're studies that are done at the fourth and the eighth grade levels. You know, there's various things and it tells you some of the kinds of questions, the number of questions they ask about life science, physical science, earth science, about the types of questions they ask students. It's a test that's meant to see what students know about science and a little bit about science thinking. What you'll notice is that not all the kids in the United States take it, but just from these eight or 10 states here. And then around the world, a total of about 4,000 students participate but from these countries around the world. It's been done for a while. Most people think it's a pretty good study, but the thing I want you to know is that that whole idea that we're not doing well in science education as far as I can tell comes from this test and from the next test I'm going to show you. There's really no other ways that we compare kids in science around the world. So this is it. And so here's the ranking of all the countries who did the fourth grade test and the eighth grade test. You can't really read it, but what you need to know is that in the fourth grade, the United States ranks seven out of 50 countries. Really not so bad. And in the eighth grade we drop a little bit to tenth out of 42 countries. So you could say the 25th percentile roughly. So that's the way we stack up and these tests have been done for a number of years, but that's the way we stack up in the fourth and the eighth grade. Really not badly. Now there's another whole assessment that is done for 15-year-old kids, which would be high school, about middle high school kids. It also has about 4,000 kids per country. Again, not all of the U.S. is represented, just three states, and then all of these countries around the world. And in this study, the so-called PISA study, because the program for international student assessment, again it's this list of countries, and here's what seems to really bother people a lot, which is we're 28th out of 65 countries in that ranking. So if you take those three tests together at the fourth, the eighth, and at age 15, we go from position number 7 to number 10 to 28. So as far as I can tell, those are three data points that people use to say that we're not doing very well in science education, and I think most people focus on this 15-year-old data, the data set from 15-year-old students. Well, I'd like us to think a bit about these tests. Tests are never perfect, and especially international ones or standardized sorts of tests always have problems. So I'd like to just go through them a little bit and deconvolute the scores a little bit and tell you why first off those scores don't necessarily bother me a lot. But then we'll go on and turn them on their heads. So again, here's a summary of the U.S. positions on the three tests, fourth grade, eighth grade, and at age 15. And here's two of the top-scoring countries, Singapore, which you can see ranks in the one, two, or three positions on all three of these tests, and the highest ranking of the European countries, which is Finland, which also scores very highly. So we're going to, in the next few minutes, compare the United States versus these two countries. Now, you can say why might that not be comparing apples to apples in these countries, and one thing that might come to mind is the size of these countries. So this is Singapore, and it's about the size, it's a fourth the size of Rhode Island. It's about eight miles by 20 miles. It's about half the size of Long Island, or actually about a fifth the size of Long Island. It's pretty small. This is Finland. I never knew how big it is, but it's pretty much the size of Montana. So those number of U.S. states are being compared against these rather small countries. Now, let's also look at the gross domestic product per capita. In other words, basically how much money is made per person in the country. I don't know if you knew it, but Singapore ranks very high in the world and ranks well ahead of the United States overall. Singapore also ranks ahead in the per capita gross domestic product of all of the states in blue that are included in these three studies that I showed you. And you can see that Finland ranks down there about the same as Florida or Alabama. So there you might see something about Singapore, which is they've got a lot of money to spend on a lot of different things. Now, if you look at the per pupil spending, Finland as a percentage of the gross domestic product, all the work of the country, Finland comes out ahead with the highest percentage of spending per pupil. The U.S. is in the middle, and Singapore is the lowest, but remember Singapore's got a very high gross domestic product, and if you sort of adjust for it, then in fact the spending per pupil in real dollars is actually more than the United States. So the point I want to give you here is that these countries spend more per pupil of their gross domestic product on education than the U.S., which might be surprising to you. Now let's take a look at the makeup of these countries. This is the ethnic makeup of Finland, all the states involved in the study, and we're Singapore for there. And these denote the blue is the minority ethnic group, and then smaller subpopulations are here, or ethnic minorities. And if you look at this, what you'll see is that Finland has a really homogeneous society, as you'll know if you've ever been anywhere in Scandinavia, very low percentage of ethnic minorities. Singapore has about 25% ethnic minorities, which are mainly Indian and Malay, and you'll see that the U.S. as a whole has about 37% ethnic minorities, and then you can look at the different states that are in the TIMS and the PISA study. So the point I want to make here is that the U.S. population is way more heterogeneous, way more diverse than either of the other two populations in the TIMS study. What difference does that make? Let's just take a quick look at that. In Singapore, it's known that the Malay population is behind an academic achievement, behind the other two population groups, which are ethnic Chinese and Indian. Finland doesn't have much in the way of ethnic groups, but the one that is lagging behind the other are the Roma Gypsies, and in the United States, there's an achievement gap in school and also in science between whites and Asians and black Hispanics and Native Americans. And this shows up in the scores of the PISA study, that one that's taken at the age of 15. These are the U.S. numbers for 2012, and what you'll see is that the average score for whites and Asians are above 500 or more, and the scores for blacks and Hispanics are in the 400s. So the point of it is that our scores in the United States are skewed by these relatively large numbers of ethnic minorities who we know struggle in science, and it's a nationwide problem that many people are trying to work on. And so here we can then put that into perspective. There's a tenth of a percent of the known struggling minority in Finland that is affecting their scores. There's about 13% of the melee minority that depresses the scores in Singapore, and in the U.S., the two biggest groups are Hispanics and blacks, who we know lag behind in science achievement. So let's take a look at another thing that the scores say or don't say, and that's the context, the educational context, that these tests take place within. It's really pretty interesting, and what's the philosophy of testing in these countries? First off, these are the number of school districts in each of the states that participate in the TIMS and the PISA studies, and you'll see that there's a lot of individual school districts within California and the other states. It's well over 2,000. In Finland, there's 317 states or actually their education authorities, and in Singapore, there's one. Now what that's telling you is that in a place like Singapore or Finland, there's less local control and more control by the central government, especially in Singapore, and you could imagine that a centralized education authority would be a lot better at doing things like standardized tests and preparing kids for tests than in a very disparate sort of school systems like we have here in all of the United States that participate in the studies. Now if you want to take a look at what the Singapore school system looks like, and I spent quite a lot of time in Singapore some years ago, so I saw this firsthand. I expect you to memorize this chart, but here's the kids in primary school. At the end of the sixth grade, there's an extremely high-stakes test, and that's going to set your course for a lot of your life. If you're really school smart, you're actually put in this group called the Express, and what that means is you're slated to go to university from the sixth grade on, and you've got a pretty clear path as long as you don't mess up. Now if you're not one of the Express students, you're going to work your way through this system. First off, this sixth grade test is going to determine which of these sub-tracks you're put on. And my understanding from people I met and talked to in Singapore over a number of years is that once you get on one of these tracks, it's pretty difficult to change horses in the middle of the stream, so to speak.  Those are extremely high-stakes tests, and they're there for one reason.  So these tests are literally for sorting kids onto academic and vocational tracks. And I think they're going to come in here. Here's when the first TIMS test takes place. I guess they're probably pretty happy there. But these other two tests take just after this really difficult test to determine secondary education and just before this test that's going to determine your adult life for good. So these kids are very good at taking tests. They know the stakes of tests, and it's ingrained in their society and administered by one ministry of education. And remember, Singapore is basically the size and the population of Chicago if the Rhode Island didn't hit you. Now Finland is really a lot more like us, which is they have compulsory education up through high school, and then there's a leaving exam, a national leaving exam at the end of the 12th grade, and then that's going to help determine where your college placement. It's pretty much like an SAT, but it's administered by the government. So I would say they're more on the order of our kind of education system than not like Singapore. And what's our education system like? Well, we had this thing called No Child Left Behind, which was not refunded by Congress in the last session, which was loved by some people, but hated by a lot of people. Educators called it No Child Left Untested. But the purpose of No Child Left Behind and the thing that has now succeeded it, which is every student succeeds, which I didn't even know, I confess, are not for sorting kids like in Singapore. They're meant to diagnose the school system and the teachers and to make improvements, especially in struggling school districts.  It doesn't really determine anything in most school districts about what kind of classes you take or where you would be mandatorily placed. There's still freedom for the students to move around pretty much in spite of whatever score they might get on the kinds of tests they take and No Child Left Behind. Our tests also focus mainly on English and math, which are thought to be the subjects for general literacy and general helping you move ahead in the school system. So what I want to say here is if you compare yourself especially to Singapore, these school systems and the purpose of testing in those systems are diametrically opposed. One is to sort kids out into academic and vocational screens, streams, and the other is basically to diagnose the school system and the teachers and to see where they can do better in helping student achievement. And of course, we have plenty of places in the U.S. that just opted out of all of this because they feel their school districts are doing fine without having the federal government medal in their local control of the school district. That happened quite a lot here on Long Island and also in Connecticut. Okay, well, here's my beginning to ask you a bunch of other questions. We've dealt with what's wrong with American science education. Hopefully you see why I have some questions about that. But here's the first of the questions that put this totally on its end, which is if our school system is so bad, why does everybody want to come here for college? And if you think I'm kidding, here you go. These are doctorates in the United States in 1984, 1994, 2004, and 2014. And the blue here are U.S. citizens and the yellow parts here are people who are here on visas or some kind of permit. And this is all PhDs and the second bar is science PhDs. So take a look at either one, but let's look at science. You'll see that 30 years ago, about 24% of the science doctorates were to foreigners and now that number is 38%. For all around PhDs, it's gone up a bit, too, from 16% to 29%. But the point of it is people like to come here for university. And then the people who like to come here the most are actually from some of the countries that do the best on the TIMS and the PISA studies, those international science assessments. So what you'll see overwhelmingly, over the last 10 years, people getting doctorates in the U.S. of foreign citizenship, they're overwhelmingly from China and another top country is Taiwan. And I'll have you note that in the PISA study, the city of Shanghai rated number one. So some of those students are some of these students next year. So I don't know what that means, but it means there's something about the U.S. education system somewhere that people like. Now maybe they wouldn't come here for high school, but in fact there's a big movement among Chinese students to go to school districts in California especially. But people like to come here for college education. Okay, let's shift away from the testing now. I've showed you these data that show that the U.S. doesn't do so well in achievement, science achievement at the pre-college level. And the question is, does that really matter? Does that really say anything about how we're doing in science? Remember the first slide I showed you is that everybody really feels pretty good about what we're doing in science and medicine. But did the scores on these international assessments have anything to do with that? And the answer is I don't think so. Here's Nobel Prizes over the last 115 years. And what you'll see is in medicine, chemistry and physics, about half of all the Nobel Prizes awarded in that period of time went to people who were affiliated with U.S. institutions. So half of all the Nobel Prizes. How about patents? These are patents awarded. All the blue ones are from the U.S. and all the blue ones are foreign ones. And here in 2014, that number is a little less than 50%. So about half of all the Nobel Prizes awarded to people working in U.S. institutions, about half of the patents to U.S. nationals. How about citations in some of the major scientific journals in the world? And those of you from science know that these are very important general science journals here, medical journals here, and another general science. And what you'll see is the U.S. authors who publish in these journals range from about 30%, sorry, from 16% to 48%, depending on the journal. If you look at the citations, in other words, how many times a paper is cited or mentioned by another person, and then you map them on sort of a web. So if you imagine a telephone web or a web of all the people who are interacting with you on Facebook, and some people have a lot of connections and some people don't have any. Well, this is sort of a connection map of citations of scientific articles around the world with the country sized according to its citations. And what you'll see is the citations in the U.S. are about equal to all of the citations of Europe and about twice the citations of Asia. So it doesn't appear that however we perform on these international assessments at pre-college science education, they don't seem to be affecting us much in our performance of science, at least by those several ways I showed you. So let's now shift to the end of the talk and let's talk about what's right about science education. Well, it's local and it's phenomenological, and let me tell you what I mean by that. There's 13,000 school authorities in the United States, and Long Island is a great example of local control because here on Long Island, virtually every school district in Nassau and Suffolk County is about one or maybe two high schools, several middle or junior high schools, and several elementary schools, and you control them. Now, yes, New York State, we have a New York State curriculum, yes, there's certain things that come from no child left behind from the federal government, but your local school boards have the authority to set curriculum in each one of those districts, and that's the case to some greater or lesser extent and mostly greater in all of these 13,000 school districts in the United States. Now, some people would say that local control and the lack of central authority means that we do things over and over again and quote, recreate the wheel. But I'm actually of the mind that that's probably one of the things that's special about American education, which is every school district has the ability to innovate or not, move ahead or not. And the best school districts in the United States, in fact, innovate and move ahead, and of course some suffer because they can't, and some of that, of course, is monetary. So I think this is actually a good thing, the local control of school systems and the local control also, of course, of the university system. How about a local example? Psyosat High School. It's a modest-sized school district by most means. It's sort of even modest by Long Island size, about 2,000 students, high number of kids attending college. And the thing I want you to realize is that they have about 25 different courses that are offered at Psyosat High School that you could take. So feel free to take virtually any of them so long as you meet some minimum other requirements of the region's curriculum. And if you actually look at a chart of the things, you don't need to look at this very much. These are a couple different tracks that kids can take. But what I want you to see here is that as a student progresses from eighth grade through twelfth grade, their choices in science increase. So in other words, as a kid goes through science, they have some basic things that they have to take. And then, you know, for those kids interested in science, there's an awful lot of things available. I can tell you at my high school, Ward-Mellville, it's probably twice the number of science courses. But this is 25 just in a relatively small school district like Psyosat. Well, compare that with the same sort of chart from Singapore. And I actually wrote to some of my friends in Singapore and got their charts. These are real ones. And what's interesting is that at the seventh and eighth grade, they have a little bit of choice. And that choice actually gets less and less as they go through the school system. And if you compare these, you see these kids being increasingly channeled with very little choice as they get more and more mature. And here in the United States, you have kids as they become more mature having more choices. I think that actually is telling you something about the philosophy of the school systems. Now, what does this all mean? Because remember, the only way that I ever was able to compare the students that we see here on Long Island and international students were these three tests that I started out talking to you about. But I actually had a way to test some kids in a more direct way, and we've been doing that now for two years. It's not a lot of kids. And as you know, you know, low numbers sometimes can be misleading. But we've had students coming to the DNA Learning Center from Beijing 166 High School. I should have had some photos in here for you. But it's a high school in central Beijing. It's in the old part of Beijing. It's about a half a mile from the Forbidden City, about a half a mile from Tiananmen Square. Most of the students that go there, their parents are public servants doing something in the Chinese national government or in the Beijing city government. So it's quite a good school. And it was designated as a special school of biology. Now I wouldn't want to say that it's anywhere near as say Stuyvesant High School in New York City or the Bronx High School of Science or Brooklyn Technical High School in New York. I don't think it's in that league. But it's trying to be the designated biology high school in Beijing, which is a city of, you tell me, 15 million people or so. Well, the students who come here, when they come here we give them a general test of literacy items about genetics because that's what we're interested in. We didn't make up these questions. So in other words, these questions are not biased by things that I might think are important or what we have at the Learning Center. We took them from a set of validated questions developed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. And the questions that are used by quite a lot of people who might be interested in looking at genetic literacy, like I could give the test to you and it'd be a pretty good one. The tests are in Chinese, so there's not a language issue as far as we know. And those kids from Beijing 166, very good urban up-to-date cosmopolitan school. When we give them this test, their average score on this test is 55%. Don't worry about 55, don't think of it like a failing grade, but it's just a percent. They get 55% of the questions right. And they're high school kids and they're coming to take one of the DNA Learning Center's courses. The Long Island kids coming to take that same course score 25 percentage points higher on those tests. And this has held up over several years because I wasn't sure if this effect, when I first saw it, I actually couldn't believe it, but it's held up over a number of years and this has actually pooled data. So what does this say to me? It says to me, that's great all of the standardized testing that's done in Asia in different parts of the world, but at least in our corner of the world, which is genetics, these kids from very good high school in Beijing are not as well prepared as the kids here on Long Island. Now, the reasons why they're not as well prepared in genetics, some of them have to do with the fact that kids here on Long Island could come to the DNA Learning Center before this time. But a lot of it has to do with that ability of those kids to progressively choose more and more science courses as they can at SCIOSED and also of having more opportunities of visiting science-oriented museums, science centers, and shows about science on TV. So it's a whole syndrome of things available to those kids on Long Island that we're comparing that makes their science world really much more rich than for those students in Beijing. And it shows up here, but it doesn't show up on the TIMS or the piece of studies. Well, the last thing I want to talk about is my idea that... not my idea, but the idea that education is phenomenological, meaning that the real education occurs at the point and that interaction between a student and the teacher, but also phenomenological, meaning that in a system of local control, the local school board and the local people can say, these things are relatively more important to us in shaping the experience of students than these things that you might say to us from Washington, D.C. or Beijing. Phenomenology focuses on an individual's firsthand experiences rather than the abstract experience of others. And I've got to tell you, all of the standardized tests, they deal entirely with abstract experience. Now, about 15 years ago, there was an educator by the name of Howard Gardner who came up with the idea of multiple intelligences, which basically he said that people have eight different ways of learning. Some of them are kinesthetic, like when you touch things and move things around. Some of them are logical, some of them are linguistic, and there's a whole list of eight different what he called intelligences. And his point was this, if we all had exactly the same kind of mind and there was only one kind of intelligence, then we could teach everybody the same thing in the same way and assess them in the same way, and that would be fair. But once we realize that people have very different kinds of minds, they have different strengths. Some people are good at thinking spatially, some in thinking language, others are very logical, other people need to be hands-on and explore actively and try things out. Then education, which treats everybody the same way, is actually the most unfair education because it picks out one kind of mind, which I call the professor mind, somebody who is very linguistic and logical and says, if you think like that, great. If you think like that, there's no room to train you. Standardized tests only tap the professor mind, absolutely in 100%, maybe a little bit of the linguistic mind. So if you have a country that strives to do very, very, very, very well on standardized tests and Singapore is one, you can't possibly do right by all of the rest of the intelligences and however scattered and however repetitive or redundant the school systems are in the United States, at least many of them are striving to help kids learn in those other ways. That's not to say that in Singapore they don't do that at all. But I'm just saying the heavy bent on these high stakes tests for funneling and tracking kids where they go in education are mainly tapping into one kind of mind and they produce students and I know a lot of Singaporean students, very capable students and a very large number of very capable students but the Singaporeans will tell you themselves that that kind of education blunts the highly creative people that are sort of out of the middle. And this is the reports that you also get in science of Singaporean and some Asian students which is and even some European students that that kind of regimented education is not that good for creativity. So the final passage I want to explore with you is okay well based upon what people who are interested in science education in the United States, what are they thinking about these days? Let me just tell you a little bit. In the last ten years there's been these five studies. They're pretty much like most studies which is they get a big or a small group of people in a room, they're supposed to be experts and they thrash around what's important and what's not important and then they come up with some kind of a consensus in these documents. These documents all say the same thing. You don't need to read them. I'll tell you what they all say which is how do you reform science education? These happen to focus on undergraduate education because remember even though everybody wants to come to our undergraduate universities they actually probably do a worse job at science education than the pre-college element which seems to be so bad. That's what I'm here to tell you. Because that professorial sort of alerting is even more entrenched in the collegiate system than it is in the pre-college system. In other words there's more focus on that sort of one type of intelligence in the university in some cases than at the pre-college level. So what do all these documents say? You should try to get kids to think conceptually at a higher level and to think about how science really works, the practice of science rather than memorizing stuff like facts and terms. Now everybody knows that but that's key. You have to actually believe that. You can't just say that stuff and then give people a lot of standardized tests. It's antithetical. You need to adopt ways that kids can ask questions, inquire and work from themselves outward like I said in that phenomenological way. They have to be student centered. And kids especially have to be able to ask their own questions. We find that's extremely important. You can't ask the questions for the kids. You need to help them work between disciplines and biology is a great example of a science that has a lot of different things going on. It has math, it has computers, it has chemistry, it has a little bit of physics and it has biology, it has a lot of stuff. So that's a good example of interdisciplinary study. And you have to work collaboratively. The idea that a scientist goes into some lab by themselves and does great stuff and comes out and then discovers stuff, that does happen sometimes. But today if you read papers in journals, there's long, long lists of scientists on one paper. Sometimes the list is so long that they can't even put it at the front of the article. They have to put it like as a footnote. So people are working collaboratively, especially on things that involve computers and big sets of data and so forth. Research experience that kids can have, let them do these science practices, try stuff over again. It doesn't work and they have to try it again. That's reiteration. And they have to discuss their results. They have to be like scientists. They have to be like when scientists come into this room and argue that, hey, I did these experiments. I think they're valid and this is what I think they say. And you can say to me, I tried some similar ones. I don't think you're interpreting them right. So let's go back and try them again. That's what happens in this room. But kids have to learn that as a part of science, not to sit there and figure out what answer they give on a standardized test. And the sort of holy grail in undergraduate biology education at this moment is to take these ideas and to develop experiments that you can scale up. Because traditionally a few kids have been invited into the labs of professors when they were, say, juniors or seniors. I was. And you can work on some project and that would be helpful. But it tended to be later in your school career, like when you were a junior and senior, and it was only a few kids. But now what we're trying to figure out is how can we scale up a research experience. Maybe not as intense and maybe not as mentored exactly by one professor as that one-on-one. But how can we scale up something that's very close to research that could evolve a whole class of kids at the same time. And that's called course-based research experiences. And it literally is the holy grail. Every competent, striving university in the United States is implementing them and implementing them early. Because all of the data say you need to get these experiences in for kids when they're freshmen and sophomores. If you don't capture them, then they walk out. So one of those studies there, this ugly one here, was by the President's Councils of Advisors in Science and Technology. They call it PCAST. And what they said, I don't know exactly why they said this, but they said we need a million new workers in science, technology, engineering, and math over the next decade. And they said if you can increase the number of kids who stay in a science track. In other words, they come in as freshmen and say, hey, I want to be a scientist. If you can increase by 10% the number of kids that actually stay and graduate with a degree in science or technology. If you could increase that number by 10%, that would give you 750,000 kids over 10 years. In other words, 70,000 to 5,000 kids per year. That's called retention. When kids actually stay in the field of study that they said they were going to do. And that's about the only thing that you can really measure in undergraduate education. So one thing you might get from this talk, and I hope you do, which is there's relatively few things that you can really measure very well in education. That's why we take these really poor and uninformative studies between countries because it's very difficult to measure these things. But one thing you can measure is the kid that comes in and says, I'm measuring in biology when they're freshmen. And you can see when they get out of the university four or five years later, they don't count them if the kids that, you know, take some seven years to get a degree. But four or five years, are they still a biology major or at least still a science major? Or do they switch over to economics or business? It's very easy to measure. And here's what I want to, the last part of this part is the University of Texas at Austin has one of the oldest course-based research programs. Not very old, it's only about seven or eight years old. 800 students per year, they're gearing up to have the possibility that any freshman in all of the University of Texas at Austin could have a research experience with a professor in the first year. And what do they find? They find that kids who go have that freshman research experience, 12% greater retention in the sciences than kids who don't have it. And they're all matched for economics, for socioeconomics, for race, they're matched perfectly because this was a re-study. So what does that say? If a kid has a research experience in their freshman or sophomore year, you do exactly what this President's Council asked us to do, which is get at least 10% more retention of kids in science. And then imagine if you take that research experience back to the high school. You might have another 10%. That could give you 20% more kids interested in science just by having research experiences once in high school and once when they're in college. And I'm happy to say that the New York State Legislature is on the ball. They mandated that every student who graduates from the CUNY to the University of New York or the SUNY system, State University of New York, every student has to have an experiential science learning element to their graduation as a requirement. And they list some of the things that could be service learning activities, internships, and the part that I really like, undergraduate projects. And the very last thing I want to leave you with is just a couple of examples of the things that we do at the DNA Learning Center that's in line with what these Consensus Studies have said. Because we've been interested in experiential discovery learning, kind of learning where kids ask questions, whether they're their own questions or are guided by the teacher. We've been interested in this for a long time. So here's just a couple of the things we've done over the last 20 years. I didn't go back any further than that. So in 1995, we did the first experiment anywhere in the world where kids could get some DNA out of some cheek cells. It's simple and easy and doesn't hurt. And they could look at a bit of their DNA and use that to compare their DNA with people from around the world. And that means diversity. How are we diverse genetically? And we've been doing that experiment since 1995 and it's one that's done all around the country and to some extent around the world. Next, we came along and did an experiment in 1997, which was the first experiment anywhere that I'm aware of that allowed students to look at a bit of their own DNA sequence, the AT's, season G's that make up our genetic code. And again, they look at that bit of sequence, it goes into a database, and then they can compare their DNA with their friends, which is interesting, but also compare their DNA with people from around the world, including ancient specimens like Atsi the Iceman, whose replica is at the DNA Learning Center, or Neanderthals who were our cousins and we mixed it up with a long time ago. So that's fun. And just to give you an idea of what you can do if you do something like this and stick with it and, you know, our fastidious as we try to be, over 100,000 students have their DNA in our database, and this was long before you could do Family Tree DNA, or 23andMe, or the Geneographic Project. We were doing a similar sort of thing for free here at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. And 1.6 million people have gone on to that website and analyzed their own DNA or somebody else's DNA. Then we came along and worked with these little tiny worms called C. elegans, and this was a set of experiments that are very good for the college level, which can let students sort of knock out a gene, make it stop working for a while, and then try to study what effect that has on the worm. And it turns out that this worm is a teeny thing, but it has most of the same genes as us. So you could, for example, think about a gene that's involved in cancer or one that might be involved in a disease that's in your family, say, and a student could look that gene up, find the similar gene in this worm, and knock it out and see what does it do to the worm. It may do something, it may do nothing. So this is the kind of project that the kids can start with their own question, like, you know, I have chronic fatigue syndrome in my family. Do we know anything about those genes? And if I knock out one of those genes in this worm, you know, does it look tired? Well, that sounds funny, but that's a pretty good question, actually. This is a super fun experiment that actually was first done here at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the 1930s where they determined whether you can taste some certain bitter things. And all of you have probably done this experiment.  And some people say, I can't taste it. Well, it's determined by gene, that ability to taste that. And now we let kids look at that gene, determine what their gene looks like, and then predict whether or not they can taste the bitter taste. Well, that's exactly what you do if you have certain kinds of cancers and they take a look at your genes and they say, well, judging by the look of your genes, this specific treatment would be best for you, and this one would be virtually useless. That's called precision or personalized medicine. In this experiment, let's kids understand that. Another thing that we've done is to go into cyber infrastructure, which means the computer stuff, the big computers and the track ways and the internet that allow people to analyze things in biology. We've been working on a big $100 million project to do education, part of the education for $100 million project to help scientists and teachers learn computer resources like super fast computers and computers in the clouds and things like that. And the last two things that we've done which are super fun is DNA bar coding, which we started a few years ago, which let kids go out into the environment or out into the grocery stores, find something that's alive or once was alive. My favorite is bird's nest, use the bird's nest soup and you can actually buy that bird nest and say, is that really a bird nest? Is that really made by birders? It's just like some stuff because who would know? But you can actually extract the DNA out of that bird nest and show that there's DNA in that bird nest that comes from the proper swift in Asia that makes that nest and builds it with its saliva and in making it deposit some of its DNA there. But you can also go out into Cold Spring Harbor as we're doing and survey all the small organisms that might be difficult for you to figure out what they are. But by the DNA bar code, you can tell pretty easily what they are. Are they the same species that were there a hundred years ago when Charles Davenport first came here and had people study in the environment? Well, the answer is we're finding out that some of those things are gone and some of them have been replaced by other organisms and where did most of those organisms come from? They came in on the bottoms of boats from Europe and other places. And the final thing that we've just started a couple years ago, this is a very ambitious project, probably really and truly I think the most ambitious large-scale education project you'll find anywhere, which is the project that helps faculty at smaller colleges and universities have an organism that they're interested in and then through this project and through the funding that we have, we allow them to get a whole set of DNA information on that organism. When I say a whole set of DNA information, I mean a picture of all of the genes that are working inside of that organism under one condition or another. And it's literally billions and billions, tens of billions of DNA letters worth of information that then have to be analyzed using high-performance computers of the sort I mentioned to you before. So you can see that I'm not down on U.S. science education. I actually think we're headed in the right kinds of directions. I'm happy that Colesery Harbor Laboratory and the DNA Learning Center have been involved in that effort to try to move it along. And I thought I'd leave you with just something totally different, which is another question, which is we've got this great science education system that's getting better all the time. We've got this great research system that does half of the Nobel Prizes, half of the citations, half of the patents in the world. So how do you keep that going? And so the question I wanted to put to you is what do you think it takes to become an independent researcher? Meaning what do you have to do to get there? And the answer is 42 years. So the average age of someone who's getting their first grant that's called an R01, that's an independent investigator grant. It's the sign that you've made it as a researcher. The average age of the granting of those is now 42 years old. Now imagine a career that you might choose where you're going to, of course, go to university. You're, of course, going to have to do something, rather, some kind of apprenticeship or graduate score or this or that. But imagine going through that until you're 42 years old to say, yeah, I'm finally in my career. And that's the reason why that is so is because despite the fact that we love our science and we love our medicine here in the United States, and we think we're pretty good at funding it, there's still not enough money to go around for the best people to do the best work. So you have to sort of get in that queue and wait until you're 42 years of age. And as a consequence, we're losing many, many American researchers. And who are we losing it to? Those foreigners who come in and would love to go to college here. So anyway, I don't know what all of that means, but to me it's an interesting story and I hope you think about some of those questions. I also think that when you see questions in the media about science or education, that you maybe take some time to look at the answers behind those questions. So thank you all for coming and have a great night.


Currently we're out at Quantico Marine Corps Base Quantico on training range, training range 8, re-qualifying on heavy weapons, so 240, 249 and 203. So this took a lot of effort between the full-time staff, so Massar Nibara, Technostar Robinson and myself trying to get this coordinated with home station units, so medical support from the 436 medical group, as well as a reserve support unit here at Quantico Marine Corps Base Quantico. They have a full-time staff of Marine Corps reservists that facilitate training for all types of different reserve units across all four branches. So currently we have 25 defenders out here for qualification, including our combat arms instructors. On deck we have about 40,000 rounds of ammo between the 203, 249 and 240 Bravo. One of the big things is getting our newest defenders on the weapons systems. They no longer practice this, or they no longer train on it at tech school, since the Camp Bullis range is shut down, it's shifted to Fort Leonardwood, so it's its own course now. So our newest defenders don't touch these weapons, so it's extremely important for them to come out, learn how the weapon functions so they can employ it when needed, and they can operate it safely. Ultimately anytime we handle weapons on a regular basis, and there's no such thing as too much training when it comes to weapon handling, it's kind of like flying, we're no different. So anytime we get out here, get our hands on our weapons, get familiarized, show that we know how to use them and be more comfortable with them, it just makes us more capable overseas when we're doing our job. So right now we're doing the night fire portion of our training here for heavy weapons. We're using night vision goggles and the thermal imagers. I think this is great for our defenders, we don't get out here and do this a whole lot, but we have to keep coming out here annually to make sure they know this. The Marines have been very accommodating as far as enabling us to get this hands-on training and it gives us definitely a close option that gives us more flexibility, gives us more capability in getting this training that we need.