Writing 159: Scientific Literacy

Winter Quarter 2019

Instructor: Norman Douglas ("Doug") Bradley

 

Science literacy focuses on enhancing the delivery, understanding, retention, and engagement of scientific information for various target audiences, particularly the general public. This course provides undergraduates with a passion for STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) disciplines a foundation in science communication practices that explain, persuade, describe, and entertain. Coursework focuses on composition, public speaking, graphics designs and numeric representations for creating effective written works, talks, podcasts, blogs, videos, press releases, policy briefs, posters, and reports about scientific topics. Students will learn how to craft scientific stories that are accurate, realistic and compelling.

 

During the 2019 Winter quarter, Writing 159A, Science Literacy, meets 11:00–12:15 p.m., Tuesdays and Thursdays in HSSB 1211.

 

Science Communication at UC Santa Barbara

UC Santa Barbara is consistently placed within the top tiers of several college rankings for its undergraduate and graduate programs. UCSB students, faculty and staff are justly proud of these honors, but much of this success is due to UCSB's longstanding, openly collaborative culture between diverse disciplines and departments, both on and off campus. Invariably, each of these successful collaborations has required effective science communication.

 

Science Communication at UCSB is approached from several directions, each operating within different administrative frameworks and having different emphases:

 

• The UCSB Writing Program offers a Science Communication track within the Professional Writing Minor to qualified undergraduates.

 

• UCSB's College of Engineering incorporates a specialized writing sequence into its curriculum (Writing 1E, 2E and 50E), designed exclusively for first-year engineering undergraduates. This program is administered and taught within the College of Letters and Sciences—alongside other writing courses for the sciences, humanities and social sciences—by UCSB's Writing Program. The Program also offers a Professional Writing Minor that prepares students to interact with professionals in multiple fields, including STEM areas; beginning in Fall Quarter 2016, a minor track in Science Communication was first offered.

 

• Departments within the College of Engineering employ writing, speaking, and collaboration as a standard part of their curricula. One undergraduate example is the Department of Mechanical Engineering Capstone Project, a year-long exercise in collaborative research, writing, speaking, and PowerPoint/poster presentations, which is a senior requirement for the B.S. degree. Another example is Writing 259, "Science Communication"—a collaborative effort pioneered by UCSB's Writing Program and the Departments of Chemical Engineering and Communication, respectively. This course is funded by the Mellichamp Fund.

 

• The Technology Management Program (TMP) works with both graduates and undergraduates to learn entrepreneurship and develop business plans, including the annual New Ventures Competition. This engages students in a year-long, rigorous program of writing, speaking, graphical design work, and presentation skills, much of it scientific in nature. It must be working! In 2015, Forbes magazine ranked UCSB at the 21st position nation-wide for its entrepreneurial ratio—"the number of alumni and students who have identified themselves as founders and business owners on LinkedIn against the school's total student body"—ahead of such Ivy League powerhouses as Harvard and USC.

 

• The Department of Communication offers doctoral programs with interdisciplinary emphases, including: Cognitive Science (covering Anthropology, Communication, Computer Science, Education, Electrical and Computer Engineering, English, Geography, Linguistics, Philosophy, and Psychology); Feminist Studies; Language, Interaction and Social Organization; Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences; and, Technology and Society. The Department of Communication has been instrumental to the recent growth of science communication efforts at UCSB, including Writing 259.