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. 

    Nearby Meadowview, Virginia, is home to TACF’s research farms, which we had an opportunity to tour when we made a planning visit a year ago. Our original plans for the intensive were postponed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and anticipation made this November’s visit even more special. It was a pleasure to get to know the dedicated members of the organization.

 

This photo shows a group of four people in the foreground and another of five in the background. The informally dressed white group members are seated in chairs or on the floor. There are also colorful cards scattered on the floor and one in the hand of the person closest to the camera, a balding man in a blue sweater.
Participants in a communicating science intensive for The American Chestnut Foundation used illustrated cards as prompts in a storytelling exercise. Photo courtesy of Carrie Kroehler.

    The goal of The American Chestnut Foundation, we learned, is to restore the beautiful native tree to its original habitat, eastern deciduous forests. Almost completely eradicated by a fungal blight introduced early in the 1900s from East Asia, the American chestnut once played a major role in U.S. forest ecosystems and human economies. Its nut crop fed both forest creatures and people, along with their livestock, and its wood was used for log cabins, flooring, fence posts, cradles, caskets, railroad ties, and phone poles. Furniture and woodwork made from “wormy chestnut,” wood from trees that were felled after being killed by the blight, can be found throughout Appalachia.

    Vasiliy Lakoba, who did his Ph.D. work with Jacob Barney in Virginia Tech’s School of Plant and Environmental Sciences, took Communicating Science (GRAD 5144) with Raun as part of his degree program. He found the skills he developed to be so useful that when he landed his position as director of research at TACF's Meadowview Farms he proposed the idea of a communicating science workshop to TACF executive director Lisa Thomson.

 

This photo shows a young bearded white male in a green shirt and blue baseball cap leaning over a table covered by chestnut burrs.
Vasiliy Lakoba, a Virginia Tech alum, now serves as director of research at The American Chestnut Foundation's Meadowview Farms research station. Photo courtesy of Carrie Kroehler.

    The participants in the November 17 Communicating Science Intensive included fundraisers, farm workers, communications staff, and the chief scientist and executive director of the nonprofit organization as well as their researchers, who are stationed at Penn State and the University of Vermont. The workshop facilitators used a scaffolded set of applied theatre improvisation experiences, storytelling exercises, and audience role play activities to help participants build confidence, consider their communication goals and objectives, and distill their messages.

 

This photo shows four informally dressed white adults standing in a room facing one another. A blond woman is talking and gesticulating and two men and another woman are listening intently.
Participants in the communicating science intensive for The American Chestnut Foundation engaged in small group, full group, and individual exercises and reflections as they built skills of connection, communication, and collaboration. Photo courtesy of Carrie Kroehler.

    TACF staff have been working to develop blight-resistant American chestnut trees for many years and have ample opportunities to put strong skills of connection to use. In their work, they communicate with organization members, state organization chapters, potential and current donors, collaborating researchers, and friends and neighbors in Meadowview and elsewhere. They conduct educational programs, talk with volunteers on the research farm and across the country in their tree locator program, and participate in media interviews. We appreciated being able to play a role in their mission and look forward to future work with TACF.