Rural Disaster Preparedness through Informal STEM Learning: Community-Identified Risk & Resilience

Disaster risk reduction and community risk reduction are systemic ways to mitigate and manage events, such as the catastrophic natural disasters that have occurred across the US in recent years. This Partnership Development and Planning project builds on connections and expertise among the Office of Research Experiences & Education at UL Research Institutes, Arizona Science Center, and Viney Jones Library. Together, the team will lead a community-focused planning process that identifies risk and resilience opportunities and challenges in rural areas of Arizona. This approach looks beyond disaster protocols to focus on mutual learning and community transmission of knowledge and expertise through understanding the roles of informal STEM learning (ISL) and ISL organizations in disaster preparedness. Several workshops will support organizations and community participants in identifying and developing priority topics, community mapping, and planning for future collaborations. Libraries will serve as spaces for, and agents of, connection and resource sharing. The project team is prepared to focus on any area of STEM identified by project participants with respect to disaster-related community risks and resilience.

Disaster preparedness is interdisciplinary and built on STEM thinking and safety, including knowledge of ecosystems, physics, civil engineering, and land management. This approach is rooted in the Office of Research Experiences & Education's practice of building relationships with individuals and communities to create place-based, contextualized learning resources and programs for safety and sustainability. It is also shaped by Arizona Science Center's work on the Rural Activation and Innovation Network (RAIN), which focuses on the role learning ecosystems play in rural STEM identity and self-efficacy. Using Westoby & Lathouras' (2024) multi-level approach to practice, this project will include implicate-, micro-, mezzo-, and macro-level work to describe how a constellation of actors, settings, and resources interact around informal STEM learning in rural areas. This approach will both generate knowledge with respect to informal STEM learning in rural areas and prepare the region for future collaborative work with respect to disaster preparedness. As such, the project has the potential to contribute a deeper understanding of the phenomenology of STEM learning ecologies. In total, the project is designed to surface and value the range of interests and expertise among organizations and individuals. Through community participatory approaches, this project will call attention to the importance of community-determined priorities and definitions related disaster resilience and risks, as opposed to priorities set by external entities. The project will invite all members of a given community and geographic area to participate in the workshops. The network sampling strategy and participatory community approach will also strengthen relationships between community members, community organizations, agencies, industry, and other actors around disaster preparedness.