A group of students stand in the entryway of an elementary school. The two students on the far left are wearing lab coats, and in front of them, another student wearing a gray coat and red pants kneels down and wears a rabbit costume head.
The graduate-level Communicating Science course, GRAD 5144, includes opportunities for graduate students to share their research with others. This group gave presentations to 6th and 7th graders at Eastern Elementary/Middle School in Giles County. Photo courtesy of Carrie Kroehler.

Our graduate-level course, Communicating Science, is a cornerstone of our activities in the Center for Communicating Science, and its ripple effects never cease to amaze and delight us. This semester, we want to shine a spotlight on some of the graduate student work related to communicating science that’s happening in our community. Many thanks to the following graduate students who are engaged with the work of the Center for Communicating Science:

  •  Quinn Richards, our center graduate assistant for the 2022-2023 academic year 
  • Members of our Science on Tap organizing committee, Mika Pagani, Maria DeNunzio, and Amy Hagen 
  • Our Food, Water, and Communities StoryMap editors, Alaina Weinheimer and Marti Wagnon, and recent writers Sarah Juster, Alaa Abdalla, Abigail Belvin, and Martha Calvert
  • Spring semester Science on Tap presenters Frankie Edwards and Gates Palissery
  • ComSciCon-Virginia Tech 2023 organizers Sara Teemer Richards, Mychala Snead, and Emma Bueren, who also are officers for the Communicating Science student club
  • ComSciCon pop talks workshop panelists Viverjita Umashankar, Jennifer Appiah-Kubi, and Jatia Mills
  • Our recent website Research Stories writers and interviewees Amanda Darling and Yang Liu, Ronnie Mondal and Darby McPhail, and Kristen R. Howard and Olalla Prado-Nóvoa
  • Mika Pagani, who helped lead “Connecting Across Differences” workshops for two groups of McNair Scholars this spring who were visiting from Virginia Commonwealth University and from Eastern Tennessee State University
  • Lauren Kennedy-Metz, a GRAD 5144 “graduate” now teaching at Roanoke College, who invited center director Patty Raun to facilitate a "Distilling Your Message" workshop for her psychology undergraduate students and introduced a mini-Nutshell Talks event at Roanoke College
  • 19 current Communicating Science students who shared their research with 90 6th and 7th graders at Eastern Elementary/Middle School  
  • 18 current Communicating Science students who interacted with 60 5th graders from Critzer Elementary School in Pulaski as part of the Hokie for a Day program. These graduate students also shared their research with about 40 members of the public at the Warm Hearth Retirement Community
  • 29 courageous graduate students who participated in the Nutshell Games, giving 90-second research talks to an audience of more than 250 community members
  • Erika Goldsmith and Prescott Vayda, who led a presentation and discussion about communicating science for the Watershed Assessment, Management, and Policy course
A hallway with gray checkered floor and white walls is filled with students including a man with dark hair and a bright yellow sweatshirt and a woman with blonde hair and a black and white flannel shirt.
Graduate student Mika Pagani, in purple, talks to a group of McNair Scholars visiting Virginia Tech from East Tennessee State University. Photo courtesy of Carrie Kroehler.

    If we missed calling your name here, please let us know what you’re up to so we can let others know! Whether you are talking about your own work, listening to others, or helping folks learn to communicate more effectively, you are making the world a better place, and we appreciate it.