Beginning this fall, I'll be creating a new graduate program in science writing at Florida Atlantic University, in Jupiter. Fla., just north of West Palm Beach. And although I haven't yet told him this, I owe the job, at least in part, to Dave Perlman.
Beginning this fall, I'll be creating a new graduate program in science writing at Florida Atlantic University, in Jupiter. Fla., just north of West Palm Beach. And although I haven't yet told him this, I owe the job, at least in part, to Dave Perlman.
A few years ago, Dave was scheduled to speak at the annual Scripps Howard Institute on the Environment at FAU, a kind of boot camp for environmental writers. At the last minute, Dave couldn't make it, and I got a slightly frantic call asking whether I could fill in. On that trip, I met the folks who would later approach me about starting a science-writing program at FAU.
FAU has 28,000 students on seven campuses strung along the Atlantic coast. The Jupiter campus houses the university's honors college and its environmental studies center. Interestingly, it is also becoming the hub of an international cluster of scientific institutions. Immediately adjacent to the campus are Scripps Florida, the eastern outpost of The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., and the Max Planck Florida Institute, part of the Max Planck Society of Germany — and the only such facility in North America. FAU is also active in oceanography and marine biology at its nearby Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute and ocean engineering at SeaTech, in Dania Beach.
With all that science going on, Manjunath Pendakur, dean of the College of Arts and Letters, and Susan Reilly, director of the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies, thought it made sense to establish a science-writing program, to take advantage of that talent.
And that's what we plan to do. I'll be developing the program over the coming year with the help of Pendakur, Reilly, and Gary Perry, the dean of the College of Science, who is also supporting the program. Collaborations will be established with researchers at Scripps and Max Planck, and with science and communications faculty at the university. Some of you may know Neil Santaniello, a long-time environmental writer for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, who teaches environmental writing at FAU. He will be teaching in the program as well as helping with program development.
Working closely with the university's extensive multimedia studies program, as we try to prepare journalists for today's journalism — and tomorrow's. If the word "newspaper" is never spoken in my classes, that will be fine with me. The program's focus will be on training students in online and entrepreneurial journalism.
As we currently envision it, the program's centerpiece will be a website on which students will produce regular copy on local, regional, and national science stories. (I wish I were there now with a gaggle of students to unleash on the Gulf oilspill story.)
We hope and expect that the FAU sciencewriting news site will become a community resource as well as a university asset. The idea is to give students an experience as close to professional writing as possible. I have little interest in training students for jobs that are disappearing or don't exist. I want to give students rich and rigorous instruction and experience in writing, reporting, and new technology — and equip them with the skills they need to get jobs when they graduate.
We will begin recruiting students in the fall of 2011. We expect that some students will arrive with backgrounds in science; others with backgrounds in writing. An individual program of instruction will be developed for each student — writers will be directed to science courses and scientists to writing courses.
FAU has given me a lot of freedom in designing the program. I'll be looking for suggestions from NASW members about what should be done to make this a top-notch experience. I'll also be counting on you to refer potential applicants. I'll seek your input and discussion online once I establish the program's presence on the FAU website.
I'm also looking forward to welcoming guest speakers, either science writers in Florida, or those of you traveling in the area.
And Perlman — you're welcome anytime.
Paul Raeburn is a journalist, blogger at the Knight Science Journalism Tracker, and the author of "Do Fathers Matter?" to be published by Simon & Schuster in 2012.
(NASW members can read the rest of the Summer 2010 ScienceWriters by logging into the members area.)
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