What We're Solving For: The ENGAGE Initiative

How to Engage Communities Better as Scientists

ENGAGE is all about creating bold yet practical science communication strategies - and then turning those plans into projects for scientists to deepen their public and civic engagement at an especially important moment for scientist voices to be heard.

Find Out More Support the ENGAGE Initiative

HOW IS ENGAGE DIFFERENT?

ENGAGE works to make lasting improvements to science communication at a time when we desperately need greater information literacy and better relationships between science and the world.

Training vs Tactics

By stepping back from immediate solutions and offering an expansive process of science and science communication as a fundamentally human endeavor, we build a solid foundation for sustainable and courageous science communication.

Feedback & Fellowship

Our approach to science communication is different: both deeply personal and politically engaged. We challenge every participant to stretch far beyond the methods and habits that have served their science well so far.

Community & Commitments

This is a challenging time to do - or communicate about - science. Frustration, anger, and fear are rational responses. But in each workshop we create constructive engagement projects and the commitments to see them through.

OUR EXPERIMENTS

The ENGAGE Workshops &

In 2025, our co-founder Liz Neeley of Liminal launched the first two-day intensive in-person ENGAGE workshops in collaboration with several institutions with strong faculty demand and support. Our initial hosts were the University of Washington, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Utah. Each session sparked new ideas and experiments that became new projects.

We developed a risk management program to help participants develop response plans, protocols and resources for coping with crises

We hosted recurring “hot topic” discussion sessions in a heated year for critical debriefs on the latest news for research science funding as well as collectively pooling our knowledge and analysis of real-world events

We launched information sharing strategies and experiments like the weekly debrief Meeting the Moment and the Scientists in Solidarity Action Hours.

ENGAGE ProjectS

ENGAGE Libraries & more

The ENGAGE Libraries model is already in demand in other areas, and we'll be sharing the Libraries Playbook soon.

After the workshop at Penn, faculty saw a need and created a cross-department social gathering spot/coffee cart called PERC-UP.

At the Utah gathering, a faculty member from Penn collaborating with a team from Utah created an ENGAGE spinoff for trainees, set to launch in May 2026.