Cool Science is an innovative program that seeks to educate the general public about climate change through children’s art (Courtesy of Cool Science) 

Sophia Boucher
Connector Contributor

UMass Lowell Education Associate Professor, Jill Hendrickson Lohmeier, launched Cool Science which is a project that has spread across Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Missouri. The project is centered around analyzing the impact that children’s artwork on buses has on the public’s knowledge of climate change.

“The goal is to increase intergenerational learning about science, and doing that by engaging youth and using them, using their work as a way to engage adults and to allow those conversations to happen between adults and youth,” said Lohmeier.

As one of the projects that the National Science Foundation (NSF) funds, Cool Science begins each session with an art competition for youth in grades K-12. Children and teenagers create educational artwork that represents their research on climate science in response to one of three guiding questions. The winning artworks from each age group are then displayed on public buses, at which point Lohmeier and other researchers will conduct surveys to gauge the extent of what the riders learned during their transport.

In addition to Lohmeier, the current team also includes Robert Chen (professor of oceanography and interim dean of UMass Boston’s School for the environment), Shanna Thompson (manager of the Center for Program Evaluation at UMass Lowell’s School of Education) and Stephen Mishol (professor of art at UMass Lowell). There are also faculty members from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, the University of Kansas, the Kansas City Art Institute and additional institutions who are involved in this collaboration.

The project began when UMass Lowell’s Associate Professor of Science Education David Lustick, who passed away in 2016, brought up the idea of utilizing the advertisement spaces in buses and transportation terminals during a conversation with Lohmeier. Having already gained experience evaluating an interdisciplinary graduate program regarding climate change with a University of Kansas group, Lohmeier suggested using the space to improve the public’s understanding of climate science. Thus, Cool Science’s predecessor project, called ScienceToGo, was created. With the idea of including K-12 students, the new Cool Science project was created with the additional aspect of a contest.

“We started the contest for kids K-12 with the idea that we would put their art on public transportation in Lowell,” said Lohmeier. The group applied and was granted funding within the span of a few years, which allowed them to expand the project by “adding workshops for mentors, by increasing what we do for celebrations and also by moving and having some of it in the Midwest.”

Expansion away from the East Coast was ideal, because Lohmeier says, “There are different issues for different regions of the country and obviously different views sometimes about how willing people are to accept ideas about climate change and things like that. So we wanted to look at it in a few environments.”

From their research so far, Lohmeier says the trends of public knowledge in relation to climate change have improved over the years. “People are certainly more aware of the fact that this is an issue, that it is something that we can’t ignore.”

Teaching about climate change is not without difficulties. For the project itself, the presence of COVID-19 postponed the past two years of artwork exhibitions to this upcoming year. Outside of the project, Lohmeier said that there are two additional obstacles the public faces in understanding climate science. About the first issue, Lohmeier said, “People have begun to see it as a political issue rather than a science issue.” Meanwhile, the second is the belief that one person cannot make a difference.

To this, Lohmeier says, “In fact, it can make much of a difference if everyone does the things that we know are helpful and if people come together and think about policy changes, which are where the biggest impacts can happen.”

Lohmeier and her partner’s hard work has paid off thus far. The Ad Club provided the Cool Science pilot program with a Hatch Award in 2014, and a year later, the White House honored Dr. David Lustick with the Champions of Change for Climate Change Education and Literacy Award.

Regarding what she has learned thus far, Lohmeier said, “Like with so many things in life, even if you are to know it all, you’d still be learning because science is constantly producing new knowledge, so if you’re going to stay on top of it, you’ve got to keep learning.”

To assist the children and teenagers with the competition process, college students and other adults are invited to join the project as mentors. Those who are interested in mentoring will attend an online summer workshop for three days, during which they will learn about climate change and how to work with the students.