The University of Michigan’s Career Center and Head-Heart-Hands provide resources on how to plan a career change in three stages (HHH) and how to talk about transferable skills developed during a PhD (UMCC).
Numerous articles, resources, podcasts, and whole ventures (e.g., StoryCorps; The Moth) address key aspects of narrative and storytelling that are valuable (even essential) for sharing science. See the following articles for a few we find particularly helpful, insightful, or thought-provoking. These resources may change how you do things and/or provide you with useful citations to justify how you tell science…
Carolyn Trietsch writes in Science about the significant role that regular craft-making has assumed in her entomology department at Pennsylvania State University-University Park. The article points to valuable benefits including transdisciplinary collaborations and networking across labs, art-based science communication and outreach, and entomological collections curation.
Effective November 2018, The Bulletin of the Ecological Society of America will accept submissions for consideration in a new section dedicated to Communicating Science. All articles published in the series are free to publish and freely available via open access. This new space in the journal provides ESA members interested in communication and engagement a platform for publishing articles on…
The Intergroup Dialogue Project website indicates that IDP was founded as a series of undergraduate-focused courses and resources at Cornell University (2012). By 2016, IDP had developed “the first and only graduate and postdoc dialogue program in the country.” Beyond the programs and courses IDP offers at Cornell, they provide an overview of their core tool, the LARA Method: Listen,…
In this article in Nature Biotechnology, Maximiliaan Schillebeeckx, Brett Maricque, and Cory Lewis detail: The limited availability of academic positions vs number of PhDs granted per year; What a group of PhD students and postdocs at Washington University-St. Louis are doing to expand their training and career options in light of the academic job market. Broadly, the authors call for grassroots…
In this article from Aeon, Dr. Michela Massimi takes on the essential-yet-complex role of truth in science. Philosophical, thought-provoking, and essential reading. Lots to ponder in here about how truth gets portrayed, how perceptions of what is true change, notions of truth vs. consensus, and the implications of these nuances and fluidity for public trust in science.
According to Tracey L. Weissgerber, Natasa M. Milic, Stacey J. Winham, and Vesna D. Garovic, proper representation of small data sets and sample sizes allows accurate interpretation. Doing so, they assert, requires displaying continuous data. But, they write, “Most papers presented continuous data in bar and line graphs. This is problematic, as many different data distributions can lead to the same…
Excerpt from website: “Metcalf Institute webinars feature leading scientists, policy makers, and communicators in a variety of fields to help news consumers make sense of complex science and environment issues. The seminars are archived on Metcalf Institute’s YouTube channel. Metcalf Institute webinars are part of our Climate Change and the News Initiative, developed to assist journalists in covering the science and impacts of…
According to their website, Atomic Hands‘ mission is: “Atomic Hands is committed to increasing public accessibility to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) through American Sign Language and fostering collaboration and networking opportunities among current and future Deaf STEMists.” Their website includes resources for communities, K-12 schools, and universities, along with ASL Stem dictionaries and more.
This free, online course from the Northwest Center for Public Health Practice (University of Washington) addresses how to engage with limited English proficiency populations. Overview excerpted from their website: Description In emergencies, limited English proficient populations are one of our most vulnerable populations. Communicating effectively can be challenging due to language, cultural, technological, and logistical barriers. This 90-minute webinar…
Excerpt from website: “Social media effectiveness shouldn’t rely on luck. Too long have superstitious, unicorns-and-rainbows myths dominated the field. The culmination of years of research, this webinar presents a framework for reliable social media success. Watch this on-demand webinar to learn how to build your reach, engineer contagious ideas and measure your results, through data-backed, scientifically-proven best practices.”
Excerpts from website: “Science Talk is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization […] It was the brainchild of a small group of science communication professionals who saw a need to gather others and help elevate science in the region.” “Each year we organize a conference where scientists, journalists, celebrities, politicians, students, and anyone who loves science can convene and share their expertise. This gathering offers…
The National Resource Conservation Service has several communication-related webinars you can watch on-demand.
Excerpt from website: “Dr. Raychelle Burks is an analytical chemist at St. Edwards University who develops new forensic methods for detecting drugs and explosives. She’s an active science communicator on social media, podcasts, and other popular media including the Science Channel’s Outrageous Acts of Science. Burks will discuss her successful approaches for bringing science to new audiences and how she…
Planning on teaching a course about scientific writing next semester? But, you haven’t finalized your syllabus yet? Ecologist Stephen Heard (@scientistseessquirrel) invites you to use his scientific writing course syllabus! He also wrote a book – The Scientist’s Guide to Writing – that is a useful companion to the syllabus.
Excerpt from the website: “BioRender is a web app that enables scientists in biotech, biopharma and academia to create and share professional science figures in minutes (instead of hours!) using our scientifically accurate image library. We work with teams at Genentech, Sanofi, Johns Hopkins, Stanford and many emerging biotechs who use BioRender to make science figures way faster, better and cheaper in order to…
Read full paper here. Quoting from the abstract: “There is widespread interest in evaluating the social impacts of research and other scholarly activities. Conventional metrics for social impacts focus on economics or wealth creation, such as patents or technology transfer. These kinds of metrics are less appropriate for many scholarly fields, and miss the specific social concerns or needs that…
“The Science Media Centre of Canada is a registered charitable organization that supports journalists writing about the sciences, engineering and technology.” The Science Media Centre of Canada will: work with you to help your research reach journalists list your research in an embargo-controlled weekly newsletter tailored for journalists teach workshops for you share its free resources on how to effectively interact…
If you are working in, interested in, and/or supportive of art-science integration, this extensive list of citations curated by Art = Opportunity may be useful for your project justification, fundraising efforts, etc. Excerpt from the Art = Opportunity project website: “ART=OPPORTUNITY is a campaign started in San Diego County, funded by a grant from the Stuart Foundation, and highlighting arts…