Open AccessNew AGU Mass Media Fellow Initiated College Science Communication Course
Author(s) -
Weiss Peter
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
eos, transactions american geophysical union
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.316
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 2324-9250
pISSN - 0096-3941
DOI - 10.1029/2010eo430011
Subject(s) - biogeochemistry , graduate students , subject (documents) , class (philosophy) , ecology , sociology , library science , biology , computer science , pedagogy , artificial intelligence
Marissa Weiss, this year's AGU Mass Media Fellow, feels so strongly about communicating science that she and a fellow graduate student started a course on the subject. Three years ago, she and the other student in the biogeochemistry and environmental biocomplexity program at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., developed—with the aid of mentors—a semester‐long science communication class. The course has since become a regular offering at Cornell, where Weiss defended her dissertation in ecology this past August. A soil ecologist, Weiss showed in her thesis research that nitrogen pollution can cause slowing of soil decomposition because of a declining abundance of microbes that break the soil down.