OSU Engaged Scholar Award
Engaged Scholars is a series highlighting Ohio State faculty who have made an impact in our communities through their community-engaged research and teaching.
John Beacom
Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Director of the Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics (CCAPP)
College of Arts and Sciences
A key component of my community-engagement work is with SciAccess, for which I am the faculty mentor and an active participant. SciAccess seeks to "inspire, develop, and promote innovative approaches to equitable science access for people with disabilities." As the fraction of people with disabilities in STEM fields is roughly 3%, compared to roughly 30% in the general population, much work is needed.
SciAccess was founded in 2018 by my former Ohio State undergraduate student Anna Voelker, who won the Ohio State Presidents Prize, which provided $100,000 for innovative projects that championed social change. We began with the in-person 2019 SciAccess Conference, which had about 60 speakers and 250 attendees. Since then, we have held virtual conferences - allowing worldwide participation - in 2020, 2021 and 2024. These events have reached more than 1,300 registrants from 55 countries and all seven continents. (For the 2024 event, we will soon post videos of the talks that will include American Sign Language interpretation and accurate captions.) Since 2018, SciAccess has developed several spinoffs that complement the conference.
In addition to SciAccess, I am involved in a variety of other community-engagement activities. One example is Science Sundays, which is a free monthly public lecture series sponsored by the College of Arts and Sciences.
Read the full news article on the OSU Outreach and Engagement site.
