In 2020, seeing scientists on TV and in the news has become a normal part of our lives. Getting the public to understand science is vital, but scientists often have a hard time communicating their knowledge in a way those without their background can understand.<\/p>\n
Fortunately for students at the University of Connecticut, a set of classes can teach them the skills to communicate science to broad and diverse audiences.<\/p>\n
Professor of ecology and evolutionary biology Margaret Rubega understood the need for better communication between scientists and the rest of the world when she started working as the Connecticut state ornithologist in 1998. As the go-to authority on birds in Connecticut, Rubega routinely received calls from journalists.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I started that job, I was completely unprepared for that,\u201d Rubega says.<\/p>\n
In 2005, Rubega received a Leopold Leadership Fellowship which focused on communicating scientific information to non-scientific audiences including policymakers and journalists.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this point, we all have a sense that it\u2019s important for scientists to communicate with the rest of the world what they know and how they know it,\u201d Rubega says.<\/p>\n
One of the goals of this program was to spread the skills participants learned. In response, Rubega developed a small graduate seminar.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt became obvious very quickly there was much more of a need, and a seminar was not sufficient,\u201d Rubega says.<\/p>\n
Rubega collaborated with Robert Wyss, UConn journalism professor emeritus, on an earlier version of the course starting in 2009. In 2015, Rubega, Wyss, and Robert Capers, retired plant collections manager at UConn\u2019s George Safford Torrey Herbarium and Pulitzer-winning former journalist, secured funding from the National Science Foundation to develop the current two-part course. One course focuses on written communication and the other on verbal. They are offered in alternating fall semesters.<\/p>\n
By having graduate students from the entire range of STEM disciplines, they serve as a valuable audience for each other. The jargon and concepts from one field do not carry over into others, allowing students to point out where their classmates are not communicating their work effectively.<\/p>\n
\u201cScientists speak in a very specialized language that acts as a barrier to everyone else,\u201d Rubega says.<\/p>\n
The writing course has students practice writing short news pieces, op-eds, essays, and blogs aimed at non-scientific audiences.<\/p>\n
The speaking skill-focused course pairs graduate students with journalism students, or others working in the field, to practice interviewing. Realistic practice is one of the most important elements of the class.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou learn Spanish a lot faster if you move to Spain,\u201d Rubega says. \u201cGraduate students are working on practicing interviewing with journalism students, and they encounter all the difficulties they\u2019ll encounter talking to a journalist in the world under any other circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n
In this way STEM and journalism students are engaged in two-way learning. Both groups leave the course with a better understanding of how the other thinks and works.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt helped scientists understand the cognitive process the journalist was going through, and that it wasn\u2019t always the same cognitive process the scientist was going through,\u201d Wyss says. \u201cThere would be lightbulbs going off throughout the semester.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tanisha Williams, a UConn alumna, took the speaking-focused version of the class in 2017 while completing her Ph.D. Williams was interested in science policy and science communication, and wanted to be able to promote and explain her work in a digestible way to the public.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one thing to learn about different strategies, it\u2019s another thing to practice it again and again and get feedback,\u201d Williams says. \u201cIt made me a better interviewer.\u201d<\/p>\n
In July, Williams launched a social media campaign for Black Botanists Week<\/a>, a spinoff of Black Birders week, an event launched in the wake of public outcry over a white woman calling the police on a Black bird watcher in Central Park.<\/p>\n As the face of the campaign, several journalists requested to interview Williams. She says the skills she learned in Rubega\u2019s class made her more confident going into these interviews.<\/p>\n \u201cCommunicating your science is a skill, and often it’s not one we\u2019re taught about,\u201d Williams says. \u201cLike we receive training in biology or ecology or engineering, we need training in communication.\u201d<\/p>\n This kind of real-life application is exactly what Rubega hopes students do beyond the course.<\/p>\n \u201cWe hope students leave the class, with that structured support, with the courage to keep practicing after that class,\u201d Rubega says.<\/p>\n Wyss says the course helps journalism students, who may normally shy away from science, understand how to communicate information about critical issues like climate change or public health.<\/p>\n \u201cYou start to look at the landscape of the world right now, and you begin thinking a greater understanding of science is perhaps the most paramount issue facing the world,\u201d Wyss says.<\/p>\n The course asks students to consider what their duty is to the public as scientists.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really important for STEM practitioners of all kinds to think about what their public responsibility is,\u201d Rubega says.<\/p>\n These skills are valuable outside of academia as well to scientists working in industry, government or communications.<\/p>\n \u201cFor those who can do it, it\u2019s not only educational, it\u2019s a great treat,\u201d Wyss says.<\/p>\n The course has received additional support from the Office of the Vice President for Research and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the units have made a smart investment in this course,\u201d Rubega says. \u201cThey\u2019ve created the capacity for teaching skills graduate students in a modern work environment really need.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Follow UConn Research on<\/em>\u00a0Twitter<\/em><\/a>\u00a0&<\/em>\u00a0LinkedIn<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A set of courses aim to help scientists-in-training better communicate their ideas to the public – and to help aspiring journalists learn more about science. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":166309,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2226,2317,2076,2235,2225],"tags":[80],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1902],"class_list":["post-166308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clas","category-journalism","category-research","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-storrs","tag-research"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-12 13:54:02","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166308"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":166313,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166308\/revisions\/166313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/166309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166308"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=166308"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=166308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}