AWESOME RAD stands for:
A Worry-free Environment for Sharing Opinions on Matters of Earth; Reading And Discussion
AWESOME RAD is a weekly hour-long session at the Earth Sciences Department of Syracuse University where students, faculty, and research staff discuss a recently published Geological Science article. The discussion is a round-table type of format with tea, coffee, and cookies and no true moderator. A volunteer will begin the session with a brief description of what the article was about and the discussion will go from there.
AWESOME RAD was created to provide
-a stimulus to read papers outside of personal research topics
-a setting that eliminates the professor-student boundaries that can limit scientific discussion
-an introduction to critical evaluation of science articles for undergraduate and new graduate students
-a voluntary learning environment (in contrast to traditional university lecture courses)
How it works.
Each week during the semester, a short published article is selected and distributed to the department email listing. Anyone interested in taking part in the session will read the article (if they can get to it) and then attend the discussion. Simple as that. As of December 2011, AWESOME RAD has had 3 successful seasons at the Earth Sciences Department
The articles are typically selected from GEOLOGY, PNAS, Science, Nature, Nature Geoscience, etc. because by targeting shorter articles, more participants may be able to find the time to fit reading it into their teaching and research schedules. To see examples, a listing of the AWESOME RAD reading list is here.
