Hello!
My name is Brandon Rogers (he/him/his), and I’ll be your instructor for this 5-week course. I hold a Bachelor of Science degree in Biological Physics, an MA in English and Comparative Literature (with a concentration in Literature, Medicine, and Culture), and I’m currently a doctoral candidate here at NC State in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media. Aside from being a student for many many moons, I’ve worked in a number of labs across the country to various degrees, including some at UNC Chapel Hill, Duke, the National Severe Storms Laboratory, and the Institute for Nanoscience and Engineering. I’ve also held positions as a professional writer, editor, and content strategist for clinical investment companies and research labs where I’ve written on topics related to scientific, medical, and pharmaceutical research.
Other random facts about me include:
- I’m from a rural town in Arkansas with a population of less than 700.
- My high school graduating class size was 12 (including me)–and yes, it was a public school.
- I’m definitely a Tar Heel basketball fan. Sorry, not sorry.
- I enjoy Dungeons and Dragons, and I often DM (Dungeon Master) for other graduate students.
- I don’t have any pets, but I’m trying to change that before the end of SS1.
- When not under quarantine, I travel quite a bit to see concerts in DC, New York, and abroad.
- I desperately miss writing in coffee shops. You can only stare at the same four walls for so long before you start talking to yourself.
Writing Your Scientific Story
I’m extremely excited to see you all learn some valuable communication skills, but I’m even more interested in hearing about all of the things that you study and how you’re going to make an impact on the world. Does that sound like a bit much? Well, it shouldn’t!
Throughout your professional careers, you’ll be expected to sell what you do, why you do it, and why it’s important to a wide range of people–some might be experts in your field while others might be in a completely different world of work. In this summer course, I’m going to show you how every piece of writing from the blandest of abstracts to the most technical of grant applications have at least one thing in common: they tell a story.
In The Scientist’s Guide to Writing, environmental ecologist and entomologist Stephen Heard (2016) writes, “What does it mean for your paper to tell a story? Successful fiction or drama sets up and then resolves some interesting question in a reader’s mind, by exposing compelling characters to a well-defined plot…A scientific paper does the same. It has characters: the rocks, chemicals, equations, or other entities that you studied. It has a plot: the methods you applied to your characters and the results you obtained from them. Most importantly, it raises and answers an interesting question” (57).
My Role as Your Instructor
Writing for science and research follows certain rules, but in the end, it’s all about writing a cohesive story. My goal as your instructor is to guide you through these perhaps unfamiliar protocols until you can guide yourselves and write your own scientific stories. This might look differently online than what you’re used to in a typical classroom. Rather than lecturing indefinitely about how to do something, much of my guidance will be offered through a curated reading list, assignment feedback, and responses to emails.
Science writing and communication definitely do have some protocols that I’ll be sure to outline, but many of these are situational and open to interpretation. The question of “how do I write in the sciences” is just as much about following guidelines as it is about letting your voice be heard by your intended audiences. That being said, my lectures will typically be fairly short (10ish minutes) and they’ll take different formats ranging from audio recordings to PowerPoints.
Do not mistake these short lectures for negligence. This course is structured around you developing skills and producing materials that you can use for your future careers, and therefore I’m allowing quite a bit of creative freedom on your end to pursue topics that pertain to your goals.
Ask yourself what you want to get out of this course. What skills do you want to have and can reasonably acquire by mid-June? What materials would you like to produce? For what audience? While this course isn’t a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book, you do have ample opportunities to make it work for you in a way that extends beyond this semester.
Remember, I am a resource for you. Take (respectful) advantage of that.
-BR