Newsletter

ComSciCon-Virginia Tech is back! This year’s communicating science presentations and workshops, organized by graduate students for graduate students, will be offered primarily online. The exception is the Nutshell Games, which will take place at the Moss Arts Center at 5:30 p.m. February 8. All ComSciCon-Virginia Tech events are also open to faculty, undergraduate students, post-doctoral research fellows, and community members.

What’s your research specialty? How well can you present it to a non-scientific audience? What if we add a 90-second limit to the requirements? In the annual Nutshell Games, graduate students are challenged to convey their research quickly, concisely, and – most importantly – engagingly!

We had a wonderful time in November when we traveled to Abingdon, Virginia, to spend a day with the terrific people who work for The American Chestnut Foundation. Center for Communicating Science (CCS) faculty fellow Daniel Bird Tobin, now a theatre faculty member at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, joined CCS director Patty Raun and associate director Carrie Kroehler at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center to facilitate interactive exercises in a full-day Communicating Science Intensive.

Ten graduate students from across the United States delivered short and engaging research talks as part of a “mini Nutshell Games” event at the annual meeting of National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Traineeship (NRT) programs, this year hosted by Virginia Tech October 17-October 19.

"It was a great experience presenting our research to the fifth graders," said Eddah Mauti, a graduate student in industrial and systems engineering. "I loved interacting with the different groups and adjusting our presentation to suit the different group personalities." Mauti, who talked to 60 fifth graders from Prices Fork Elementary School about self-driving vehicles and pedestrian traffic safety, was describing an October 26 event, when she worked with 17 other graduate students in her Communicating Science course (GRAD 5144) to share their research through the Hokie for a Day Expo at the Moss Arts Center.

The fields of science and journalism are often seen as separate spheres. While many acknowledge that their brief intersections are beneficial to both professions, it isn’t often that the contributions of such collaborations are brought to attention. At the Center for Communicating Science, these are precisely the interactions we want to highlight. Ed Yong, science journalist and writer for The Atlantic, visited Virginia Tech October 18. He discussed his experience reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic in a public lecture, “The Art of Science Journalism,” and led two hour-long sessions with graduate students and campus communicators.

Faculty and graduate students associated with the Center for Communicating Science (CCS) were honored to participate in Virginia Tech’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities/Minority Serving Institutions Research Summit in November. Hosted by the Graduate School, the HBCU/MSI Research Summit provides opportunities for Virginia Tech faculty to form collaborative partnerships with visiting faculty and for visiting undergraduate students to learn about graduate research opportunities.

Science on Tap, a monthly New River Valley science outreach program that the Center for Communicating Science helped found in 2017, temporarily opened a northern Virginia branch this fall when Virginia Tech Executive Master in Natural Resources (XMNR) student Jill Shifflett organized a Science on Tap event in Covington, Virginia. Shifflett, a student in the College of Natural Resources and Environment who is enrolled in the Arlington-based one-year executive master's degree program, planned and implemented two outreach events as as part of her experiential learning program.

The Center for Communicating Science (CCS) was well represented at this year’s Cultivating Ensembles conference, with a presentation and workshop on seven CCS-funded SciArt collaborations, a talk on the center’s Black Excellence in STEM oral history project, and a performance by CCS director Patty Raun in a stage reading of a new play, “The Great Understanding” by Jennifer Joy.

Oct. 6, 2022. Dear readers, thank you for your part in the Center for Communicating Science. You are the spark, the fuel, and the fire of everything that we do. As we review ten years of work helping folks build their muscles of connection, communication, and collaboration, above all else we appreciate you.