Assignment 1 – Recruiting Video

The recruiting video was geared towards high school students who might be interested in/excited about scientific research. The goal was to communicate my research in a way that a high school could understand, distilling the meaning of research into simpler words and concepts using metaphor.

This was the most difficult assignment for me, as it required a new way of thinking about how to communicate my research, along with learning a different form of media (video recording/editing) that I had not previously used.

Assignment 2 – Research Summary

http://johnbcheadle.wordpress.ncsu.edu/files/2025/04/CHEADLE_Research_Summary-1.docx

This assignment was created to be a jargon-free summary of a scientific research paper. For this topic, I chose something that was tangentially related to my field of plant microbiome, but potentially more ‘digestible’ to a wider audience – the gut microbiome. The challenge of this assignment was to grab the reader’s attention from the outset of the summary, using storytelling, simile, or metaphor to engage the reader. This is different than a typical summary and recitation of facts that I would do for a more technical assignment. Thus, it was another useful exercise in thinking about how to convey information to a non-expert audience.

Another aspect of this assignment was to compare the human-created research summary with a chatGPT-derived summary of the work. The prompt that I used was ‘Given the uploaded article, can you make a summary of this article that is fewer than 1000 words and is at the level of high school or early college undergraduate students who are not familiar with the field?’ The chatGPT summary was surprisingly accurate, making several of the key points that I had chosen to focus on. However, it maintained several jargon words and in my opinion was not effective in storytelling.

Assignment 3 – Commentary/OpEd

http://johnbcheadle.wordpress.ncsu.edu/files/2025/04/cheadle_oped.docx

The commentary/OpEd assignment was one of the more difficult assignments for me in terms of defining my specific target. I work in the field of genetic engineering of microbes, and GMOs are too broad a subject to write an OpEd on. It needed to be more specific. I landed on a piece about the American Chestnut Foundation, which is using genetic engineering techniques (among other techniques) to restore American chestnut trees to the Appalachian region. Especially in the wake of the LA wildfires, I felt this was topical, even though it was a departure from what my base of expertise is.

Assignment 4 – Policy One-Pager

http://johnbcheadle.wordpress.ncsu.edu/files/2025/04/Policy-1-pager-JBC.pdf

The goal of a policy one-pager is simple: when you are talking to policy makers, they have very little time to absorb the details of your scientific topics, so a one-page, graphical handout is critical for any potential follow-ups. The critical points of this assignment were to: grab attention with a catchy headline/title, briefly introduce your topic, display a very obvious one- or two-sentence takeaway, (optionally) include your ‘ask’ of the policy maker, and finally list your contact details very clearly for potential follow-ups.

I enjoyed the graphical aspect of this assignment. I mainly had difficulty with the ‘ask’ portion – my one-pager was more on the informative side, but I felt like I was searching for a particular policy to attach it to. The guest lecturers that were attached to this project were some of the best we had in the course. Also related to this assignment was a visit to the video production studio at NCSU, where they conduct many of their interviews. It was my first time doing this, which was a very unique experience and good practice for any future scientific interviews!

Assignment 5 – Mini-TED Talk

The mini TED talk was designed to be a high-level explanation of your research, limited to 7 minutes, delivered without the use of a script or slides (other than a single background slide). Like any TED talk, it is meant to engage the audience immediately, inspire, and avoid getting too detailed about the specifics/technical jargon.

In many ways, the mini TED talk was the most difficult for me, combining two of the aspects I find most difficult about any time of presentation – memorization and brevity. While I did forget a chunk of the script that I had prepared, I feel I recovered from that fairly well and was able to get my point across. The class had very good feedback for me, mostly geared around reduced jargon, thinking critically about how to contextualize big numbers, and starting with a more appropriate metaphor for the background slide.

Assignment 6 – STEM/STEM-Com Podcast

The STEM/STEM-Com podcast was an opportunity to work with another classmate and produce a podcast with a topic that was of interest to both parties. There were so many directions to go with this; we ultimately decided that this would be an ‘expert-interview’ podcast a la Shortwave. To this end, I interviewed my PI, Dr. Nathan Crook, and a postdoc in our lab, Alexandra Imre, about a topic they were both experts in – probiotic yeast.

For me this assignment was the most fun – I listen to a lot of podcasts and this was the first time I attempted my own. The interviews were fun to conduct, and an interesting challenge to create a series of questions that would lead to simple explanations of their complicated topic. Luckily, I was paired with someone who had a lot of audio editing experience; the end result was a very polished 7 minute podcast, a fitting last assignment for the course.

Summary

The COM598 Science Communication course was a great way to step out of the traditional way of science communication that I typically engage in – manuscript authorship, conference presentations, and lab updates – in which my audience has much more background on my topic. It was a worthwhile challenge to communicate scientific topics to a non-expert audience, and I feel that the strategies I learned through this course are applicable even (and perhaps especially) for an audience of my peers.