The Research Topic: Science Communication and Graduate Students

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           The McCartney Bio Education lab investigates how students, at both the undergraduate and graduate level, increase their science capital.  My project centers on examining how graduate students learn transferrable skills, specifically in science communication.  As the needs for a 21st century STEM workforce are changing, so should the curricula for STEM graduate programs.  My research aims to highlight the value of science communication as professional skills and how to best integrate science communication training into the general graduate student curriculum in STEM fields.

          Specifically, in the Fall of 2018, my research team distributed an internet questionnaire targeting graduate students from all over the world. The questionnaire asked STEM graduate students about their experience with science communication training and what they think the ideal science communication training as a part of graduate school should look like.  The data we collected from international respondents were then analyzed via qualitative and quantitative methods. We found evidence showing that graduate students have little to no formal training in science communication and that many are lacking the skills and training to communicate science effectively. 

          However, we have also found that despite the lack of training, STEM graduate students have a high interest in science communication and are eagerly awaiting opportunities to participate in science communication.  My research team is continuing to build off this preliminary data with further individual interviews with STEM graduate students in order to learn how to adequately, and effectively, train these students. I have participated in the initial data collection for this research project.  The research and data from the questionnaire have been prepared as a manuscript to be submitted to a scientific journal. We also prepared two poster presentations that were presented at conferences in 2019. 

         As of Fall 2020, I have been taking the skills I learned from this project and been working on a different project within the lab. The project focuses on bridging connections between undergraduate students reading scientific papers and continuing their careers in science. Groups of undergraduate students read scientific papers and then interviewed the author who wrote them. I am working with the lab to record data from the interviews.