EdEon was originally named the SSU Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) group when it was founded by Prof. Cominsky in 1999. Until 2020, Cominsky was the Project Director, Principal Investigator or Co-investigator on all grants to the group. In 2017, Dr. Laura Peticolas joined the group as Associate Director. With more than 15 years of experience at UC Berkeley leading E/PO programs for NASA’s Heliophysics Division and its missions, Peticolas has greatly increased the scope of activities that EdEon can support to include space and earth science topics, and is bringing her own projects into EdEon. EdEon’s mission is to develop exciting formal and informal educational materials that inspire students in grades 5-14 to pursue STEM careers, to train teachers nation-wide in the classroom use of these materials, and to enhance science literacy for the general public, with a special focus on increasing the numbers of under-represented students.
The EdEon offices are located on the third floor of SSU’s Schulz Library and Information Center. Facilities include seven offices, a printer/copy room, a conference room, and a stockroom. The group maintains its own webserver and computer workstations. The group’s webserver hosts many sites for different EdEon projects, including several funded by NASA. Team meetings occur in the EdEon conference room, The group maintains computer equipment to support remote meetings, including speakers and webcams, and conducts remote training sessions for ongoing projects. To see a complete list of all of EdEon's current projects and staff, see the EdEon Website