Assessment of Communicating Science 2013: A Workshop for Graduate Students

Effective science communication is imperative for the sharing of scientific ideas, continued funding and support from policy makers, and education of the public. Science graduate students are a prime group to target for communication training, as they will be our future scientists, educators, and EPO professionals. To provide such training, we created Communicating Science 2013, a professional development workshop for STEM graduate students. This workshop taught graduate students from around the nation to effectively communicate science to both their peers and to the public. To learn about graduate students' attitudes toward science communication and establish the workshop's efficacy, we surveyed the participants both before and after the workshop. This assessment probed topics such as communication preparation the participants have already received, how science communication is perceived in their home department, and what participants hoped to gain from the workshop. We describe the workshop and report a few of the assessment results here.