NASW members Terry Devitt, Nigel S. Hey, and S. Holly Stocking have been elected fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. All are members of Section Y (General Interest in Science and Engineering). They will receive formal recognition of this honor at a ceremony during the 2008 AAAS annual meeting, in Boston.
Terry Devitt is director of research communications for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For the past 24 years, Devitt has covered the basic and applied sciences at UW-Madison. He also edits and is the project coordinator for The Why Files, a popular and critically successful website (whyfiles.org) about science and technology published under the auspices of the UW-Madison Graduate School. Devitt is also an active freelance science writer and has contributed to such publications as Astronomy, Orion, the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, the Milwaukee Journal, the American Heart Association, the Bulletin of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the children's science magazine Muse.
Devitt's awards include the 2001 Science Journalism Award from the AAAS and the Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award for In-depth Reporting. In 1997, he was the recipient of a Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) Gold Award for his work helping to develop The Why Files. In electing him a fellow, AAAS honors Devitt for "vision and leadership of the web magazine 'The Why Files,' to provide the public with accessible information on the science behind today's news."
Nigel S. Hey is a media relations professional and writer with a specialty in science and technology and their applications in commerce and defense. A native of England, he sold his first story to the BBC at the age of 11. After college, Hey began his career as a wire service and newspaper reporter. He then joined the Sandia National Laboratories as a science/technology writer and public relations officer (and later a senior administrator), where he remained until his retirement in 2001.
Hey's AAAS fellow election is in recognition of "meritorious service in the communication of science through four decades of sustained accomplishment in public affairs, science writing, editing, and publishing." He is the author of five books, several reference works, and hundreds of articles in publications ranging from Smithsonian to the Sunday Times. At various times, he produced and ran local radio and TV shows, and served as an information officer for the launch of the Project Galileo spacecraft. Hey is a member of the Association of British Science Writers, British Association for the Advancement of Science, and International Association of Science Writers.
S. Holly Stocking is an associate professor in the school of journalism, Indiana University-Bloomington. Originally trained in experimental social psychology, her current areas of scholarship concern media constructions of scientific ignorance and uncertainty and media ethics. She helped develop case studies on how journalists cover claims about the uncertainties and unknowns in science. These cases are part of a longstanding interest in the social construction of scientific ignorance and the news media's role in that process. She has co-authored or co-edited four books, including How Do Journalists Think?, a book about the cognitive processing of journalists, with psychologist Paget Gross.
Before earning her Ph.D. in mass communications at Indiana, Stocking worked as a journalist with the Los Angeles Times, Minneapolis Tribune and Associated Press, and as coordinator of science writing projects for the Boys Town Center for the Study of Youth Development, in Omaha, Neb.
Stocking is recognized by AAAS "for outstanding teaching in journalism ethics and science writing, and for extensive research to enhance the scientist/journalist interaction and public understanding of science issues."
(NASW members can read the rest of the Winter 2007-08 ScienceWriters by logging into the members area.)
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