National Center for Science Education

Longtime NCSE member Bruce Alberts is a renowned biochemist with a long list of lifetime achievements. Alberts was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Barack Obama in 2014 and the Lasker-Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science in 2016.

Americans generally acknowledge the reality of climate change, but remain split over the role of human activity and the existence of a scientific consensus, according to a new poll from CBS News (September 15, 2019), released as part of Covering Climate Now, a collaboration of more than 250 news outlets around the world providing in-depth coverage of the climate story.

Louisiana's Senate Resolution 224 (PDF), introduced on May 31, 2019, and adopted on the following day, commends Gene Mills, the president of the Louisiana Family Forum, in part because "he was the driving force behind the Louisiana Science Education Act in 2008."

As a new national curriculum is under development in Wales, a group of the United Kingdom's leading scientists and educators is calling for both increasing the amount of evolution in the curriculum and explicitly banning the teaching of creationism, according to the BBC (September 5, 2019).

The 2019 hurricane season is well upon us, and across the country many people have growing concerns about how climate change is affecting extreme weather. Climate change certainly contributes to more extreme weather in some demonstrable ways. When temperatures are warmer during hurricane season, clouds can hold more water and wind speeds are faster, leading to more destructive storms.

If you haven't visited NCSE's YouTube channel recently, you've missed:

• a profile of NCSE Teacher Ambassador Melissa Lau
• interviews with NCSE interns and graduate fellows
• trainings on NCSE's innovative science education activities

And more besides. So tune in and enjoy.

NCSE's deputy director Glenn Branch was interviewed for Clare Kittredge's "Should Climate Change Education in Schools Be Mandatory?" which appeared in AMC Outdoors (August 26, 2019).

We held our second workshop for evolution teachers this summer at Michigan State University, and our first later in the same week on the nature of science at Clemson University.

It was a busy week to say the least. It was also an extremely productive week.

As the only national organization that is wholly dedicated to ensuring the accurate, effective teaching of evolution and climate change in the public schools, NCSE is the perfect place to find someone to speak to your organization or university about issues relevant to evolution and climate education.

NCSE had a busy summer doing outreach in our backyard of Oakland, California. While the Bay Area is known for great science, there are inequities in access to science education, making our free outreach at events in the community, like the Resource Area For Teaching back-to-school gathering for science teachers (pictured below), essential.

NCSE is pleased to welcome Emma Doctors, NCSE's new Program Coordinator.

NCSE's annual report for 2018 is now available (PDF) on NCSE's website.

When NCSE's founding executive director Eugenie C. Scott received the John and Mary Lou Pojeta Service Award from the Paleontological Society in 2018, she gave a brief address, which is now published (PDF) in the Journal of Paleontology.

NCSE's executive director Ann Reid and Ben Santer, a member of NCSE's board of directors, were interviewed about climate communication on the Hertz Foundation's blog (July 30, 2019) before they spoke at the foundation's summer workshop in Los Angeles.

NCSE bids farewell to Brad Hoge, who joined NCSE as Director of Teacher Support in 2017.

NCSE is pleased to congratulate Megan Herbert and Michael E. Mann (a member of NCSE's board of directors) for receiving the Louis J. Battan Author's Award (K-12) for 2020 for their book The Tantrum that Saved the World (2017), which (in the words of the award citation) "engages readers with empathy and compassion and empowers them to help save animals and people from the threat of climate change."

Creationism continues to be a minority position, attracting only four in ten adults in the United States, according to the latest poll from Gallup (July 26, 2019), which adds, "more Americans continue to think that humans evolved over millions of years — either with God's guidance ... or, increasingly, without God's involvement at all." 

NCSE is still seeking to hire a Director of Teacher Support.

NCSE is pleased to congratulate Naomi Oreskes, Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University and a member of NCSE's board of directors, on receiving the British Academy Medal, for her books (coauthored with Erik M. Conway) Merchants of Doubt (2010) and The Collapse of Western Civilization (2014), and for "her commitment to documenting the role of corporations in distorting scientific findings for political ends."

Melissa Lau, an NCSE Teacher Ambassador from Oklahoma, was featured — wearing her NCSE Teacher Ambassador t-shirt — in a story on climate change education on NPR's StateImpact Oklahoma (July 11, 2019).