Stories

Civic Science Fellow Jen Tuttle Parsons is helping physicists build trust and community connection 

When the American Physical Society (APS) needed someone to reimagine their public engagement strategies, they didn’t turn to another physicist. Instead, they chose Jen Tuttle Parsons, a former music teacher and museum director who had transformed a small pop-up science museum into a vibrant community hub. Her mission as a Civic Science Fellow at APS is to help physicists break free from traditional lectures to build meaningful connections with diverse communities. 

The challenge is clear: Physicists deeply value public engagement but face steep obstacles, such as academic jobs that place overwhelming demands on their time. A recent APS survey highlights this struggle, with many members expressing a strong desire to reach out but feeling confined by institutional structures. “That lack of time is because they’re expected to do so much in the lab, so much teaching on campus,” Parsons says. 

Beyond traditional lecture formats that often fall short in engaging diverse, non-academic audiences, Parsons sees an opportunity for transformation. This new approach, she emphasizes, should focus on trust-building and active listening, paving the way for meaningful community connections. 

Parsons’ wide-ranging background makes her uniquely qualified to tackle these challenges. “As music educators, we were always trained with advocacy in mind,” she says. “When schools lose their budgets, the arts are generally the first thing to go. So we were taught how to connect with our communities in order to be advocates.”  

This experience with advocacy, combined with her later work transforming a small rural museum from a “pop-up on wheels” to a permanent community hub, taught Parsons how to build strong connections between different worlds. 

Creating Space for Community 

Her journey to civic science began in an unassuming storefront in Athens, Ohio that housed the Ohio Valley Museum of Discovery. As executive director of the museum, Parsons found herself weaving together her interests in science, education, arts, and community engagement. 

“It was just a small little nook in a mall at that point, and we traveled around the region,” she says. “We live in a pretty rural region with strong community support and collaborative partnerships, which made it the perfect place for me to draw in a lot of my academic research and interests.” 

Under her leadership, in eight years the museum evolved from its mobile beginnings into a permanent institution in a stand-alone building, becoming a regional hub for lifelong learning. It also served as a laboratory for breaking down traditional silos between disciplines. 

“I was really grateful that the museum was a space where they used STEAM philosophy, and we could be free to explore the ways that the arts and social sciences and STEM interacted,” she says. “I started to see how silo-ized everything has been for a lot of people in STEM and in the arts.” 

Building a New Model for Science Engagement 

When she joined APS in March 2024, Parsons found that many physicists wanted to engage with their communities but didn’t really know how, and didn’t have much time to learn. She knew the solution wasn’t just about creating more programs or opportunities for engagement. Instead she’s focused on fundamentally changing how institutions value and support scientists’ work with communities. 

“It’s pushing back on the model of what it means to be a scientist,” she says. And that’s not easy, she says. Community engagement and building trust is long and slow work. “It’s a change, a culture change, shifting work.” 

At APS, Parsons is developing a strategic roadmap for the society’s staff to help their members rely less on traditional lectures and start building meaningful connections with a range of communities. “I looked at it as a needs analysis,” she says. “Where’s the staff right now? What programs do we offer? What is needed in the community?”  

Central to the society’s current outreach is the Science Trust Project, run by APS with support from The Kavli Foundation and the American Institute of Physics. On the project’s team, Parsons acts as a thought partner and co-developer.  

One project initiative emerged from a pressing need: APS members were seeing widespread misinformation but didn’t know how to address it effectively. Rather than simply arming scientists with more facts, the initiative teaches them a fundamentally different approach. 

“The project reinforces the ways that scientists can learn to listen to people, and build trust, and become more reflective in their practices,” Parsons says. This means moving beyond the conventional model of public lectures to create genuine conversations. 

“Instead of speaking towards a general public,” she says, “we help scientists bring it down to specific contexts: Are you meeting with the Rotary Club? Or nurses? If you’re talking to nurses, you might focus on how quantum computing can impact health sciences.” 

Effective engagement starts with scientists embracing their individual perspectives, she says. “I would advise people to lean into their own unique points of view.” By incorporating their distinct experiences and insights, they can connect more authentically with their audiences, leading to richer, more impactful interactions. 

This tailored approach addresses the need for more effective engagement strategies, one of the key challenges identified in the APS survey. By helping scientists learn to listen actively, practice empathy, and adapt their communication to specific audiences, the Society can help pull down barriers between physicists and the public. 

This approach has proven especially valuable during crises, from hurricanes to wildfires, when scientists have critical information to contribute to public discussions. But, as Parsons emphasizes, the real work needs to happen before a crisis. “The community building, the trust building is long term,” she says. “It’s being a part of your community, being present and becoming recognized as a trusted source in your community, and not just the moment when those disasters hit.” 

The Power of Networks 

The Civic Science Fellowship has proven crucial for supporting this kind of transformative work. When Parsons first learned about the Fellowship, she recognized its potential to help her apply what she’d learned about community engagement in new ways. “I was starting to get that itch for a change again, to see how I could use what I had learned in community engagement and if it would apply in a different scale or a different place,” she recalls. 

What she didn’t anticipate was the Fellowship’s broader impact, through its network of Fellows and institutions. “I saw the value of the work right away, but I didn’t see the underlying network and all of the ways that it spiders out and has influence over different pieces of society,” she says. 

Despite initially worrying that her non-traditional science background might be a barrier, she found the Fellowship community truly open to diverse perspectives and experiences. “I have found people to be so incredibly welcoming and understanding across those disciplines,” she says. 

“I’ve found so much value in this as a community of practice—in all of the little seeds along the way that have been planted just in the connections that I’ve made through Fellows and through this cohort, and also the existing network that has grown around it.” 

Her experience has reinforced the importance of including a range of perspectives and communities in civic science work. “We need to be deliberately seeking proposals or partners that partner with underrepresented communities rather than try to represent them,” she says. And she makes a special plea for communities like hers in Athens, Ohio. “Don’t forget rural spaces! In academic and science research, rural is often invisible.” 

Creating Lasting Change 

Building connections and shifting mindsets across disciplines, between institutions, and throughout communities is not easy. It’s slow, methodical work that requires rethinking many traditional approaches to both science and public engagement. 

“We can’t rely on existing systems or institutions to make these spaces more inclusive,” Parsons says, drawing on her decades of research into accessibility and inclusivity in informal STEM settings. “It is individuals who are breaking down those barriers. It’s individuals who are striving for policies. If I’m the person in power, I need to use that power to be the agent of change.” 

As she looks ahead, Parsons remains committed to being a boundary spanner, whatever form that takes. “It’s very rewarding,” she says of her Fellowship experience. “It’s very exciting.” And the seeds planted through this work—in individual scientists’ approach to communication, in institutional practices, and in community relationships—promise to bear fruit long after her Fellowship ends. 

For more on Jen’s thinking on the importance of connection in civic dialogue, see her recent essay on Medium, “The Truth Isn’t Enough: Why Connection Matters in Civic Dialogue.” 

Jen’s Civic Science Fellowship at the American Physical Society is supported by the Rita Allen Foundation and The Kavli Foundation.