Public Science Community Outreach Project

University of California at San Francisco

DC&E led a comprehensive public involvement process to help UCSF design a public science program to be focused at its new Mission Bay campus. As a part of the process, DC&E teamed with UCSF staff to conduct approximately 50 stakeholder interviews with UCSF faculty, leaders of private industry, directors of nationally-recognized science education programs, and community leaders from the San Francisco neighborhoods surrounding Mission Bay. DC&E also assisted with 19 focus groups with UCSF stakeholders, San Francisco Unified School District educators, students, and parents. The final part of the public outreach process consisted of a large, hands-on public workshop designed to test different approaches to science education. DC&E synthesized the results of the public process into several alternative approaches for the Public Science Program, which were presented to the UCSF administration and resulted in a Planning Report that makes four primary recommendations for enhancing UCSF's public science programs, with an emphasis on community health education, workforce training and classroom education.