Do you wish your scicomm work was more valued in academia? Join our study to test ways to make that change happen!
Dear Troublemakers,
I’ll keep this short and sweet. If you’re working in scicomm, you probably think more people should have access to scicomm training. And if you’re working towards that in academia, you likely feel stymied by barriers like time, colleague/supervisor resistance, lack of funding, and more. It can feel lonely and frustrating to fight this uphill battle against the academic prestige hierarchies that undervalue and resist scicomm work.
My collaborators and I established Scicomm LIFT as a research study and institutional change process to tackle these issues head-on.
And we are THRILLED to now be launching the next part [1] of our study: LIFTing Scicomm Trainers!
LIFTing Scicomm Trainers is a free coaching program that helps you represent and advocate for your scicomm work. The program helps you enhance your career advancement materials like job and awards applications, promotion documentation, curriculum proposals, etc.
If you want want your scicomm to be more valued within academia please fill out this interest form!
Program options include:
One of our in-person workshops, which we plan to offer at EEBC [2] meetings in the next 2 years
One of our online workshops, offered Nov 17, 2026 and Feb 10, May 4, and Jun 23, 2027
One of our cohort-based coaching programs, offered weekly Oct 20-Nov 10, 2026; and Jan 13-Feb 3, Apr 6-27, and May 26-Jun 16, 2027
Program details:
LIFTing Scicomm Trainers is part of our larger NSF-funded study about how to best support instructors within higher education who are (or would like to start) including scicomm in their EEBC [3] courses. Program goals include bringing people together and helping participating instructors get more respect, credit, and pay for this kind of work. Ultimately, we predict that supporting scicomm instructors will help graduate students in the U.S. access high-quality scicomm training in their degree programs.
If you know someone who might be interested, we’d really appreciate your help spreading the word.
Please let me or Virginia Schutte (co-PI) know if you have any questions!
~Bethann
[1] If you’ve been following along for a while, you’ll remember that I posted this spring about another arm of the study: Scicomm LIFT in Your Classroom. It’s not too late to participate in that study, either! We’ll be onboarding our next cohort later this year. You can learn more about this paid support program and sign up here.
[2] The LIFT PI team is all based in ecology, evolution, biology, or conservation (EEBC) fields, so we’re concentrating on what we know, first. Then, we hope to expand to all STEM fields.
[3] See note 2.
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