There’s no shortage of fun things to do on a Friday night in Austin. For many locals, from couples on date nights to retirees and rowdy kindergartners, the monthly Hot Science – Cool Talks event at the University of Texas at Austin tops the list.
On a warm March evening, hundreds of Austinites gathered in Welch Hall to hear UT associate professor and astronomer
Caitlin Casey talks about how pictures of deep space from the James Webb Space Telescope are “shattering the universe” — or at least challenging scientists’ long-held theories about how it works.
Hot Science has been going strong for 25 years, with the free lecture series opening up science on campus to a public audience. Most of the speakers are UT faculty members and researchers from all scientific fields, from robotics to dinosaurs.
Jay Banner—founder of Hot Science, host of each talk, and a professor at UT Jackson’s School of Geosciences—created the series to help people make connections with the science and scientists around them. It has been a hit since the beginning. So many people showed up for the first talk in 1999 that they flooded the stairs.
“We turned away more than 100 people who couldn’t get into the room,” says Banner. “Then we knew there was an appetite for it, and it’s really grown and grown from there.”
While packing auditoriums on the UT campus for more than two decades is a feat in itself, Banner is now working to distill the essence of the “Hot Science” experience — scientific wonder and personal connection — into a new television series. CALLED Hot Science TV.
The series is still in its early stages. There are currently six episodes, each about seven minutes long, available online for free. Each episode features a “Hot Science” topic and speaker who, first and foremost, must be a great teacher.
This is something Banner knows all about. This year he received the Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching, one of the highest honors for teaching at the college and university level. The award is presented by Baylor University every two years and comes with a prize of $250,000 for the winner and $25,000 for their home department. Recipients include English literature instructors, mathematicians, choral directors and now, geoscientists. With such a wide variety of teachers entering the competition each cycle, choosing a winner comes down to judging who has had a transformative effect on students.
According to sophomore Isha Bhasin, Banner’s engaging teaching style is why she is a geoscience student today. She became an environmental science major at The Jackson School after taking Banner’s Sustaining a Planet course as a freshman. “He opened my eyes to not only what sustainability means,” says Bhasin, “but how it’s applicable to every part of our lives.”
The Cherry Award is also a reminder of how far he’s come: According to Banner, he started out as a terrible teacher.
When he first joined the UT geosciences faculty in 1990, his teaching style could be politely described as maximalist. Banner said he tried to cram everything he learned during his 16 years of post-secondary education into one semester. He recalls fully appreciating his students’ response to this “more is more” approach.
“I remember walking into the room one day with two full trays, swinging the door open, and the students turned and looked at me, and their eyes were really wide with what I thought at the time was wonder,” says Banner. “But as I learned once I saw the reviews at the end of the semester, they were rife with terror or hatred.”
On a recent field trip to Barton Springs and the surrounding Greenbelt, Banner’s pedagogical evolution was clear, as he engaged students in a discussion on aquifer recharge near an eroded limestone bedrock riddled with holes. The class spent minutes watching a blue heron jump its prey along the water’s edge.
Now, while Banner works to get Hot Science TV for a larger audience, there are some parallels between the play’s development and its learning journey. Hot Science TV is not the first attempt to expand the reach of Hot Science speakers through video. The current iteration of the program was boosted by some unexpected advice – from actor Adrian Grenier, a celebrity who has starred in many Hollywood projects including the early 2000s HBO hit Entourage.
These days, in addition to acting, advocating for environmental causes and working the land on his Bastrop farm, Grenier is a member of the UT Institute of Environmental Sciences Advisory Council, which Banner chairs.
During a council meeting about five years ago, Grenier said that if “Hot Science” was going well, simply recording the talks and uploading them online wouldn’t cut it. “Hot Science” had to be transformed from a long lecture into, as he puts it, “a little show.”
“They all have this great content on stage for the people who are there, but what about all the people who can’t be there in person?” Grenier says, recounting the conversation at the meeting. “Why not make a show that people can access remotely?”
Banner agreed wholeheartedly. But this time he would need help.
That’s where Scott Rice, MFA ’03, and his team of Radio-Television-Film students come in. Rice is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and an associate professor of practice in UT’s Moody College of Communication, where he teaches the film production class Screenplay with Matthew McConaughey, BS ’93, Life Member, Alumnus of outstanding. When Rice learned of Banner’s interest in turning the “Hot Science” lectures into a show, he said he was excited to work with his students to make it happen.
Every episode of Hot Science TV it was shot in a single day, with students managing the schedule, set design and videography. All footage is merged into a program where the speaker is talking directly to the camera.
“In this show, the presenter is the scientist. They speak directly to the viewer and express their unique passion for what they do, why they do it and the heart behind it,” says Rice. “The element of the heart is very important. It’s the human element.”
Although film is a tough business, Rice is confident the show has what it takes to be a success, with the program receiving positive reviews — especially from K-12 teachers, whose students have always been a staple in “Hot Science” lectures. and critical to the success of the series.
“Each of those speakers has pushed me to be a better teacher,” says Banner. “I sit there and analyze, ‘Okay, this is a great conversation, what makes it so great, and how can I use it in my teaching?’
That’s the thing about great teachers: they always keep learning.
CREDITS: From top, Sandy Carson; courtesy of Hot Science TV