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Columbia's Science Cafe brings research to the community

  Every second Monday, Broadway Brewery in downtown Columbia is packed by 6:00 p.m. Half of the restaurant is filled with people having dinner or a beer at the bar. But on the other side, tables and chairs are packed into a crowded space for this month’s Science Cafe.

Science Cafe is a community program started by the Bond Life Sciences Center at MU. Each month, the Cafe brings a different researcher or professor to give a lecture about their field of study.

But this lesson isn’t like the ones you’ll find at school.

“We've got a speaker up there and they introduce their topic, their specialty for 10-20 minutes,” said Jason Fenton, administrative assistant at the Bond Life Sciences Center and the coordinator of Science Cafe. “Science Cafe lasts about an hour so that leaves quite a bit of time to develop a conversation.”

Science Cafe is an international grassroots movement that started in Leeds, England in 1998. Cafes are meant to promote science education for the public in a non-academic setting.

“It's really important to have an informal setting for science because it can be kind of intimidating sometimes if you're not really well-versed in scientific language or concepts,” Fenton said. “So kind of kicking back and relaxing at a pub, come when you will, leave when you will, bring questions, sit down, relax, I think you can really get into it at a personal level.”

According to Fenton, Science Cafe is meant for people with little to no experience in science. The program tries to select topics that relate to current events or popular issues that people are already interested in.

Elizabeth Brothers attended October’s Science Café about using plants to extract heavy metals from the soil. She said she’s been to three different Science Cafes since they started last February.

Brothers said she thinks community education is an important part of scientific research.

“It really doesn't do any good if you have science and you don't bring it to the public,” Brothers said. “You have to bring it to the public so that people can understand it and begin to maybe implement it. We can't just keep it within researchers.”

And Dr. David Mendoza, the lecturer for October’s Science Café, agrees. He said science doesn’t have to be formal and Columbia’s Science Cafe is a great opportunity for researchers to share stories about their work.

“The speakers who come here and talk, they bring the topic with a different perspective. Not only from the science perspective but from the human side,” said Mendoza. “I think [that] is what makes things more interesting for people to come and learn something that might sound boring in a textbook but it has implications for them. When they learn about it, I think we all win.”

           

Hope Kirwan left KBIA in September 2015.
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