DURHAM, N.C. – It’s necessary today for environmental managers and policymakers to have a strong understanding of science. Equally vital, however, is knowing how to communicate that understanding to nonscientists.

This spring, students at the Nicholas School are learning how to do just that.

With support from faculty and staff, second-year Master of Environmental Management (MEM) students David Palange and Ben Landis have created a new one-credit course, “ENV 301.25: The Art of Communicating Science,” that teaches MEMs how to explain complicated science and policy positions to the media, the public, and other key audiences outside the scientific community.

The ten-week course introduces students to a wide range of traditional and Internet-based communications tools and techniques, and provides practical training on how to write clear, concise blogs, news releases and policy memos. Students also learn how to communicate to corporate partners, prepare for media interviews, and disseminate scientific information through effective lobbying and networking.

“Coming into our second-year at the Nicholas School, we realized that there’s not really a for-credit class that focuses just on writing or how to communicate,” says Palange. “We’re getting all this information and we’re learning how to be environmental professionals, but we never learned how to communicate that information properly.”

To fill that void, Palange and Landis took what began as “just a fun idea” and ran with it, drafting a syllabus, recruiting Nicholas School professor Deb Gallagher as a faculty advisor, lining up guest lecturers and getting the course approved by the school’s education committee over the course of a few weeks last fall.

“This class came together really quickly, but we’re very excited about it” says Landis. “We’ve made ourselves the organizers and T.A.s, but we have a lot to learn from this course as well.”

Interest in the course has surpassed expectations. Fourteen MEMs are enrolled in it – a good showing, Landis and Palange say, for a first-time offering.

“Twenty-seven students actually requested permission to take the course, but we deliberately capped it at 14 – a total of 12 students selected through a random drawing, plus David and me as T.A.s – to foster a small, interactive classroom atmosphere,” Landis says.

First-year MEM student Josh Stoll is one of the students enrolled in the class.

“One of the things I struggle with here at the Nicholas School is that I haven’t gotten a lot of feedback” on writing and communication skills, Stoll says. “There’s a lot of doing, doing, doing, but not necessarily saying ‘this is how you can do better.’ I think this course is really going to focus on that. It’s about process, not just about product. So that’s something I’m looking forward to.”

Palange and Landis have lined up 10 guest lecturers for the course. In addition to Gallagher, assistant professor of the practice of resource and environmental policy, they include:

  • William L. Chameides, dean of the Nicholas School;

 

  • Tim Profeta, director of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions;

 

  • Michael Burnham, senior business writer at Greenwire and a 2009 Nicholas Environmental Media Fellow;

 

  • Dan Vermeer, director of Duke’s Corporate Sustainability Initiative and a former sustainability executive at Coca-Cola Inc.;

 

  • Paul Bloom, an adjunct faculty member at the Fuqua School of Business and interim acting director of Duke’s Center for Social Entrepreneurship;

 

  • Bill Holman, director of state policy at the Nicholas Institute and former N.C. Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources;

 

  • Erica Rowell, online managing editor for the Nicholas School and The Green Grok environmental blog;

 

  • Eric Roston, senior associate at the Nicholas Institute and a former reporter at Time

    magazine;

 

  • Tim Lucas, national media relations and marketing specialist at the Nicholas School, who also serves as a staff advisor for the course.

“I think a lot of the speakers are really excited to talk about their experiences too, and share their knowledge,” says Palange. “They’ve been out in the field using these skills, and it was fun for us to be able to pick people to come in and tell their stories in a small class setting.”

Being a student-run course does have one potential downside, Palange admits. The course’s success in coming years will depend on the willingness of future students to take the reins once he and Landis graduate.

“This class is our gift to the first-years,” Palange says, “and we hope that they’ll continue to gift it.”