Must See: "Talking the Talk: New Careers for Today's Scientists"

Posted by Lesley McCullom

Do you love to listen to NPR’s “Science Friday”, or watch PBS’s “Nova”? Have you noticed increased coverage of science, health, and technology issues in popular media? Have you ever considered a career in science communications, or just wanted to learn more about it? Well mark your calendar for a singular educational and networking event this fall.

On Friday, October 3, the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) will host its first science communications summit, “Talking the Talk: New Careers for Today’s Scientists,” featuring four nationally known science communicators, in the UAB Hospital West Pavilion. The event is free and offers students and faculty a chance to hear about the communicators’ experiences during a panel session (noon to 2 p.m.), then have the opportunity to network (2 to 4 p.m.) and meet with the speakers in a more casual setting afterward at Fuego (4 p.m. on).

                   Kirsten Sanford        Ben Young Landis        Marla Broadfoot           Russ Campbell                                               Ph.D.                         MEM                         Ph.D.                             MLA

Speakers include Kirsten Sanford, Ph.D., neurophysiologist, creator/producer of “This Week in Science”, 2005 AAAS Mass Media Science & Engineering Fellow; Ben Young Landis, MEM, writer for the US Geological Survey, author of “Better Know a Fish” blog, and co-founder, Capital Science Communicators; Marla Broadfoot, Ph.D., a molecular geneticist, postdoc at NIH, former PIO at Duke University, and freelance science writer/author; and Russ Campbell, MLA, communications director for the Burroughs Wellcome Fund and co-founder of the Science Communicators of North Carolina.

This is the first time that such an event has been held at UAB, according to Dr. Lisa Schwiebert, PhD, Professor of Cell, Developmental, and Integrative Biology; Associate Dean for Postdoctoral Education. “This effort came out of ongoing conversations about reports like the 2012 NIH Future of the Biomedical Workforce Report, which stressed that graduate and postdoctoral training programs increase trainees’ awareness of careers outside of academic research.”

Lunch will be provided. The summit, a model for future events in other alternative science career categories, is being organized through a collaborative effort of the UAB School of Medicine, the UAB College of Arts & Sciences, the Vice Provost for Student and Faculty Success, the UAB Graduate School, and the UAB Office of Postdoctoral Education.

See you there!

What I'm Working On: Learning How People Learn in Teams

Posted by Anthony Hood

Much of my research and teaching involves improving how students and employees learn in team environments. I first became interested in this area out of frustration with the way my students often divide the responsibilities for team assignments. Maybe you too have been guilty of the following: 

An activity is to be completed by 4 students working cooperatively as a team. The activity is designed to facilitate learning in 4 distinct domains. However, under direct examination regarding one of the learning domains, a team member replies “I’m not sure. I wasn’t responsible for that part of the assignment.” After a few more questions directed at the other members, the team’s learning strategy becomes clear; each member focused their learning on only one domain and skimmed or ignored altogether the other three domains. 

With this learning strategy, the team as a whole learns 100% of the material, while individually each student only learns 25% of the material. Unfortunately, my exams are not team-based and students employing the “divide and conquer” learning strategy typically do not fare well individually on my exams.  :-)

However, the literature on team science suggests a paradox. Although we discourage students from employing this type of distributed learning strategy, our expectations may be at odds with the way we work and learn in today’s resource constrained environments. Distributed team structures often represent the most efficient way to get more done with limited amounts of time, attention and energy. Distributed learning is the way many of us in interdisciplinary groups manage projects, build labs, submit grants and publish papers. As an organizational psychologist and team scientist in the Collat School of Business at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), my job is to improve our understanding of team learning and help prepare students accordingly. 

Do you work and/or learn in teams? If so, does everyone on your team maintain responsibility for only certain areas or is everyone responsible for all areas?