And that's a wrap on the careers panel - thanks to all the panelists for sharing their stories!

Last thought from Vince: making the audience a main character in the story increases the impact of your story! This is the thing he loves most about his job at the American Lung Association when talking to donors.

To find opportunities, you can set up a job alert on LinkedIn to see what's out there. You can also find language from other job descriptions - if you accumulate these over time, you can write your own perfect job description!!

Kelly and Vince: Public affairs offices and crisis communications courses can also help scientists learn about how to get your message across in the media during high-stakes situations.

Michele gives an example about this: she was a key communicator during the Flint water crisis and Legionnaire's outbreak. Stories coming out of Flint went national and the situation ended up in court.

Vince says to think further about the context of what you're trying to communicate. Find out the national mood on certain topics and be able to contextualize why your science is important to know about NOW

Michele says you don't even have to think that far outside the lab. Many parts of a PhD (peer review, lit review, presentations) are communications intensive and offer opportunities to practice.

Where can you find opportunities outside of lab to practice sci comm? Kelly says public affairs offices are always looking for help and may let you write up your own research.

Lots of other programs being recommended, including from UM and the National Academies. Vince also shouts out the book Don't Be Such a Scientist for an informal training oppportunity!

AAAS Science Technology and Policy fellowship is a premier program that Vince participated in after his PhD. Fellows get placed at various federal agencies for one year with the option to renew for a second.

Moderator Q: What training programs, certificates, or fellowships might exist to prep for sci comm careers?

Vince and Michele say that academia can sometimes be resistant to PhDs pursuing careers in sci comm but the sentiments are starting to change and supports are on the way to help those interested in a sci comm career!

Kelly: I absolutely don't have a PhD! All that's required is a love of science, and that comes through in how you're communicating. You just need to know that basics of the field that you're translating into layperson speak. If you can do that & enjoy it, you can be a sci commer!

Next moderator question: how necessary is it to have a PhD to be a science communicator?

To start the day, Kelly opens her email inbox and looks for a crisis or new research to covering coming out of UM! Vince curates a website page for the ALA&breaks down new research funded by the ALA into three sentences. He also spends time as a cultural translator between academia and other spaces.

Starting out by introducing our panelists: Vince Tedjasaputra, Kelly Malcom, and Michele Swanson! Our panelists have a range of experiences from teaching at a large university, news rooms like Science News, National Science Foundation, and the American Lung Association!

We're coming back after lunch for panel 2 of 2 - this time with a focus on careers in #scicomm!

How do you communicate difficult stories? You can to enter into conversation by using boundary objects to unite us like coffee, wine, olive oils, etc to make connections across cultures!

Thank you Carolyn and all of the audience members for a fantastic discussion!

Carolyn was the first person from her grad program to go into scicomm! Now her program has a scicomm class and more people are pursuing this career.

Note the difference between misinformation vs disinformation: disinformation is intentional, while misinformation might just be misguided. both of these are still important to address!

She continues to share how medical advancements in the United States could be implemented to help others, while emphasizing the importance of not continuing to enforce stereotypes among people. Empathy is the key for this!

Reaching audiences without internet/TV, one approach is the "trusted leader" model—if you can connect with trusted leaders in these communities (like church leaders), those leaders can disseminate information & increase the chances that people will listen

Some powerful quotes she shared with us today: “The more we promote knowledge transfer, the more we are rich” “Inclusive science communication can be a healing catalyst for social change”

Compared to implementing fossil fuels >100 years ago, the accessibility of science has changed—today we have the internet and social media, but back then even though there were scientists who "knew" the risks of carbon emissions, who all REALLY knew?

Dr. Prado shares her travel experiences with students, and how difficult it can be communicate across cultures regarding scientific advancements without shame and judgement!

for writing for people who DO think we're doomed: call on other scientists who are doing work on climate solutions to discuss what they're doing! Technology isn't going to save the world, but it's definitely going to help!

A slide from Paola Prado, PhD's talk: Fair Traed community engagement. The slide reads: Institutional agents are invited into a community to carefully listen and plan a collaboration that prioritizes the intentions and objectives of ALL partners.

In our first breakout session 1: SciComm Across Borders, Dr. Prado discusses the importance of “fair trade” community engagement and promoting knowledge transfer between cultures with an empathy first approach.

re: individual vs corporate carbon footprints, advice about reducing individual emissions is helpful because people want to be able to contribute! but it's also true that a lot of action in reducing overall carbon emissions needs to be political action

You can definitely balance doom and hope in the same story, and Carolyn thinks this balance is what's called for. Climate change is a crisis, but looking for sources of hope are inspiring! You can highlight solutions while also including the caveats