The AGI anniversary was an occasion to encourage its members to get involved in education and outreach (E&O), an area in need of attention in the geosciences. Wider exposure to Earth sciences should result from new US National Science Education Standards, which place Earth sciences on a par with biology, chemistry and physics in kindergarten through to twelfth-grade education.

The importance of E&O is not lost on Micchelle Hall-Wallace of the University of Arizona and Katherine Johnson, director of E&O at the Incorporateed Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) in Washington, DC, both of whom are building programmes for educating non-specialists of all levels, with information and data available to the public (see Internet addresses).

Gregory van der Vink, director of planning at IRIS, has shown what can be done using public data in an educational setting. He and 12 students, from a class he teaches each fall at Princeton University's Science and Technology Council and Department of Geoscience, published a paper on the increasing economic vulnerability to natural disasters in the United States (Eos 79, 534-537; 1998). The paper was presented in Washington, DC, after which a congressman immediately offered any of the 12 students a congressional staff position, according to van der Vink. The course was developed not for producers of scientific information but for future consumers of that information in government or business.

AGI's Earth Week

http://www.earthsciweek.org/

Michelle Hall-Wallace page

http://geo.arizona.edu/K-12/michellehall.html

Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS)

http://www.iris.washington.edu/

Princeton Earth Physics Project

http://lasker.princeton.edu/pepp.html