coffee:
a network of
astronomers
Community Of Feedback For Ethical Engagement
Towards Ethical Community Engagement in Astronomy
COFFEE (Community of Feedback for Ethical Engagement) is a collective of people devoted to the important work of astronomy outreach–uplifting our communities through the sharing of our science.
In our roles as stewards of scientific knowledge and education, we affirm that we are humans and part of our communities first, and thus, we continually consider and evaluate the impacts of our outreach work on the people we engage with. In particular, we work together to challenge the issues that often make astronomy outreach less effective, including lack of intentionality and consideration of the needs of our target audiences, and the centering of predominantly white, socioeconomically privileged, and academic spaces.
To do this, we seek to facilitate connections between astronomers and community members invested in doing outreach ethically. We create pathways for giving and receiving feedback to improve existing initiatives through conversation, and we reflect on our own learned experiences to co-create new resources and build a community of communicators learning from each other. Finally, we support astronomers interested in learning about the implementation of responsible outreach efforts, in order to promote ethical community engagement broadly in our field.
This site is the homepage for the coffee blog - a web journal devoted to ethical outreach practices and personal experiences in astronomy outreach.
Community Agreements, Community Intentions, and Goals
Our community agreements are subject to change and discussion as the group evolves.
Community Agreements
We agree to:
- Treat others with respect
- Take individual accountability for harmful behavior
- Refrain from harassment, bullying, discrimination, and intimidation
- Refrain from misconduct
- Refrain from making false equivalencies between harmful behavior and pointing out harmful behaviors
- Keep our feedback respectful and constructive
- Listen actively and empathetically to feedback, acknowledging and thanking our community members for their contributions to our outreach
- Grow and make changes to our practices in response to feedback
- Create an equitable space by balancing making and taking space in conversation, paying attention to social and academic power dynamics at play
- Be present and refrain from multitasking during meetings
- Take proactive steps to ensure the community is accessible to its members
Community Intentions
Together, we will strive to:
- Give and receive feedback for our own programs
- Meet regularly and have intentional conversations about our outreach programs and (evolving) goals
- Use our meetings to narrow down our goals and get realistic steps in place, help each other work towards our goals
- Have a presence in the astronomy community more broadly, give people a way to find us, a way to get more people to think about this (COFFEE website, blog posts about our experiences, lessons learned)
- Keep our conversations from staying insulated - provide ways for people to be part of COFFEE asynchronously if they can’t make it to the meetings, share notes from our meetings to the group, share public posts on our website
Through this framework of interaction, we will:
- Be more effective and intentional in our outreach
- Understand the goals of each event and evaluate the degree of success
- Keep the needs of the communities that we’re targeting at the forefront
Future Goals
COFFEE is a developing community and we set the following intentions for our growth in the future:
- Bring community members into COFFEE discussions
- Reevaluate the ways we’ve defined our COFFEE community to ensure that we continue to be supported by our mission statement and community guidelines
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Partner Organizations and Member Outreach Programs
COFFEE members are based at academic institutions across the US. Here are some of the awesome projects and organizations on that they're working on!
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Cosmos and Coffee - bringing astronomy to the people, one cup at a time!
Another awesome outreach program!
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Another awesome program!
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Another program!
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Check out our library of resources
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Ethical Outreach Resources