Achievement

Incorporating feedback from formal evaluation, the Science Communication Center (started by SCALE-IT) had a banner year. The popular science writing element has produced several quality articles written by STEM graduate students. The topics included describing the value of researching respiratory rates in shrimp, to gasoline extracted from tree nuts, to scientists decoding the language of plants. These articles will be published in popular science magazines. Last year, the workshops produced two such articles (published on LiveScience). Soon-to-be published articles from this year’s workshop will be included in the Outreach section of next year’s report. The students also received valued training by faculty from the School of Journalism on how effectively to use literary and rhetorical tactics to improve the readability of their writing. We believe that these skills will be transferable to other forms of written communication, such as grant proposals and journal publications.