 are recorded and all the documents from the sessions and everything are going to be distributed afterwards. So as I was saying, the convergence science session is going to be probably in January. We need to schedule it because, you know, there's a lot of now holidays happening and also different main conference, so just stay tuned. We'll probably send an email soon after this. So, yep, I think the space is over, Christo, that he will introduce the super amazing panelists that we have today, and yep. Thank you, Anna. And thanks, everyone, for joining our fifth session. Again, it's a pleasure to have a wide range of speakers and panelists today that will let us know about all our complex issues of writing a good brother impact and research relevant statements. So what we'll do here is to give each of these speakers two minutes to introduce themselves. We have Steve Nesbitt from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is a professor and director of graduate studies there. We have Megan Myron Carols, who is a recruiter and a DEI lead at UCAR. And finally, we have Karen Slater, who is a writer and an editor in NCAR. And so, Steve, why don't you go ahead and maybe for two minutes introduce yourselves and I'll pass it over to Megan after. Yeah, sure. Actually, if you go forward in the slides, I have a little slide that talks a little bit about, there you go. So my name is Steve Nesbitt. I'm a professor here at the University of Illinois on the other side of the Great Plains from UCAR. But I've been here for, gosh, 17 years now, and been through the postdoc process at Colorado State and then becoming a professor, being mentored through the grant writing process and now serving as the mentor for new faculty in our department, including underrepresented faculty. So hopefully I can provide some wise wisdom here for you all. I also do a lot of observational work and I've been involved in now 24 field campaigns on four different continents. So that has also been a learning process and my setting the I could only want to count how many proposals I've written for all these projects. A little bit about myself. I like being outdoors and have three kids and my partner in crime and I tried to have fun out here in Illinois. So thanks a lot. Thank you, Steve. Megan? Hey, y'all. My name is Megan Myron-Carls, or Megan MK. I use sheave pronouns and I am in my 11th or so month working here at UCAR. I have a bit of an untraditional background. I went to school and got my degrees, my undergraduate and graduate degrees in sociology and then spent about almost a decade working in higher education specifically within student affairs at a couple of different colleges and universities and then worked at a high school for a hot minute and then am now here. My passion area is diversity, equity, inclusion and helping people understand those ideas and how they can incorporate them to create a richer experience in their work life and their personal lives, etc. And I'm also a parent of two small kiddos. I have a four-year-old and a 15-month-old, a couple of dogs and I live in Denver right now and I'm a big soccer enthusiast. So that's a little bit about me. We'll get into it when it's my turn to present. Thank you Megan and I'll give the words to Karen finally. Hi everyone. I was invited to this and I immediately replied to the email and said, are you sure you're asking the right person? Because I don't write grants. I'm a tech editor. I love words. Someone asked me the other day what my favorite quality about myself was and I said my vocabulary, which was probably not what they were hoping to hear. Anyway, I love what I do for RAL and for a broader population now for the ASP postdocs is I'm a technical editor and I started that career mostly with environmental engineering firms. I was part of the team that closed Rocky Flats if you know anything about that. So that was a lot of reporting and I love what I do. I love who I do it for and I love what we do as an organization. So I am pretty impassioned about my role here. My personal life. I have an eight-month-old golden retriever. I live in Golden with my husband who's a career firefighter and that ought to do it for you. Thank you Karen. That's an excellent introduction for everyone and Mariana if you maybe can propagate one slide further so I can give a broad summary of today's session. We have a lot of exciting topics and ground to cover here. So just as a reminder, we'll be talking about what counts the broader impact when you're writing a grant proposal. How do we balance between ground deals versus mediocre words and statements? How do we go about writing a meaningful and actionable DEI broader impact statements? What are the things that we need to consider and how do we relate these aspects to the technical and scientific writing that goes into the proposal? Then how do we write things in an effective way to convey our really important scientific ideas? How do we convince program managers that our proposals are worth funding? In general, toward the end of the session, we'll have a nice two snippets of example statements that come from funded proposals that we were very lucky to have access to. We'll show you what these statements look like, maybe analyze them a little bit, ask for your opinion, and we'll close with questions for the speakers and open discussion. So on that note, it's my pleasure to give the board to Steve first who will tell us a little bit about writing broader impacts and DEI statements in proposals. Yes, thank you very much, Risto. I'm glad we have such a diverse panel because they all provide really important expertise in terms of crafting these statements. And I can't emphasize that enough. It's not just about the technical aspects of your proposal, but also the style and the presentation of what goes into it. So these are all things to the world of writing proposals. So I'll just start out very briefly. Through the series, hopefully you won't understand why we wrote proposals. Obviously, it's to support your research. But as time goes on here, it becomes more important that we need to not only explain the technical aspects of our work, but also we need to make sure the work is relevant to the broader groups of people out there. And we'll talk a little bit about that. And then also make sure that we are the workforce developing the capacity of research within the country, within the world, and we need to demonstrate that through our proposals. And so today we're talking about two important aspects here, the relevance, which we'll get into in terms of being more specific, and then also the broader impacts of your research. And, of course, we want to be able to get funded. And so it's worth a lot of time preparing these proposals and making sure that they stand out when they're a value and they're a value and they buy. So really it's almost just as much about getting all the technical aspects, but also making sure that when it comes down to making the decision, whoever's doing it, the review panel, the program manager, whoever, you want to make sure that you're rising above that sort of cutoff line. And that's where you get style points. So we'll go to the next slide now. So we'll start out talking about relevance here. And I just want to share what I call the first rule of writing proposals. And that is treat your reviewers nicely and make it easy for them to evaluate your proposal. And we all hear about reviewer two being sort of keep in mind reviewer two is just like you going through challenges and making life easy for them to find what's in your proposal, navigate through and actually fill out the evaluation forms that each agent's at each agent's at each proposal. You want to make it as simple as possible for them to copy and paste. Yes. Steve, your audio is going in and out. Would you mind exiting the meeting and then coming back in to see if that will reset it? Sure. Let me try something. Yeah, let me do that. Okay. So we can look at a picture of a cute cat while we wait for him. It's a sleepy cat which is perfect for a snowy day here. Exactly. Yeah, so just a reminder, keep posting your questions if you have them in the Q&A section in Slido. And then yeah, and also you can bold other questions and then just propagate them like to the top and then we can read them at the end and discuss them with all of us. Can you hear me now? Is that better? Yeah, we can hear you so far. It's good. It's important to remember this first rule of proposal writing and let me try this too. There we go. All right. So make it easy. My main point here is make it as easy as possible to review your proposal and this is important for broader impacts and relevance as well. So we'll go to the next slide here. So in terms of relevance here, before I get started talking about relevance, we need to of course understand what relevance means to each protein that might be applied. First of all, if you happen to be applying to a NASA grant, NASA has three boxes that reviewers have to fill out and the second one usually is relevance to NASA. So if you're writing a proposal to NASA, this is a critical piece of information that you need to include and what relevance means to NASA is very specific. It means does it fit within the purview of what NASA does? So that's kind of a specific thing for NASA that you need to definitely argue and argue and argue sort of by NASA and asking through things like the Decadal Survey which sort of guides what all NASA does and also talks about the different missions that NASA does and you need to specifically call out where you fit within that in terms of relevance. Now for the other funding agencies, relevance is a little bit less specific and they're basically, for example, for NSF or DOE, you basically need to explain why your proposal fits within the given agency that they expect to propose. I mean, for example, if you're applying to the climate and large-scale dynamics program at NSF, you probably don't want to propose something about supercells because unless it's really a climate issue that you're talking about, right? So really in order to spell it out, you need to make sure that you fit within the purview of each program. So make sure that you understand how relevance is evaluated within the proposal, and we'll talk about some tips for how to do that in a minute here, but also know the agency culture, talk to your cop, talk to your cop and so that they can tell you how that works. And then also in terms of relevance, budget also comes into that too because you want to make sure that what you're proposing is sort of the expected amount of money that they expect you to request, right? A lot of proposals are rejected because they're too expensive. So in order to be relevant, you have to also kind of fit within the budgetary scope of what they expect. But how do you learn how to do this? Well, it comes a little bit with experience, but it also comes by looking at other proposals, and we'll talk about that and talk about that and talk about so learning how to demonstrate relevance of your proposal. So how do you actually gain the expertise? Well, the first thing, which I call the zero order thing is make sure you read the guidelines for the proposal. They will usually spell out exactly what they want in terms of relevance. And so even though those documents can be long and arduous, it's important to read those documents, and then also each year they update those documents. And so you want to make sure that you're getting the latest information from the agent is to learn the lay of the land or funding agency that you're applying for. And as early career scientists, this means going to meetings, kind of going to talks relevant to that specific agency, that specific program, talk to your colleagues at NCAR. There's a lot of experience in terms of different agencies. So find those people and talk to them, you know, take them out to lunch, try to understand kind of what they think about different agencies and what might sell and what might not sell in terms of relevance. Number two, talk to you, talk to you, okay, okay, the people, your scientists. I've had very long phone conversations with program managers. They're happy to help you guys get started. So so don't be afraid. They're not evil people, you know, they want to meet you guys and learn what you're doing and try to help you get be successful. Number three, look at successful programs, sorry, successful proposals, you know, call people up and or send them a message and say, hey, do you mind if I take a look at your proposal, you know, I promise not to to share it with anyone, you want, you want, is, is important to learn kind of what they, what they do. And number four, if possible, volunteer to review proposals, either on like a red team within the organization there at NCAR or serve on review panels and review, I'm sorry, program managers are happy to have volunteers to help review proposals. They are usually searching for people to do this. It's, it's a lot of work, but it's also is how I learned a lot about looking at proposals and seeing what sold and what didn't kind of looking at them side by side by side. Okay, now we'll switch gears a little bit and talk about broader impacts. So here, this is something that can take many forms within a proposal. And I've got some pictures there from some things that I have done in the past, but this is by no means the exhaustive list of what you can do in terms of demonstrating broader impacts in your proposals. One can be student training. Okay. And student training is something you usually do, you know, as a faculty member, faculty member faculty and said, students said, right, right, golf every morning. And, you know, they do all the work. I'm just kidding. But, you know, the students are the people that are in trained within within the research and their training and demonstrating that you're reaching a broad and diverse group of students through that training process is usually going to give you a lot of high marks in terms of scoring and broader impacts. Other things that we do, which we do, of course, at NCAR, UCAR, but also at the university is public outreach. So here, we take the results of our research or our process of doing, us this case of the case of campaign, show it off. We show it to the public through direct outreach events, through putting things on the web, through having webinars, through visiting different community groups. These are things that are part of the process that we that we often do in terms of doing broader impacts in terms of public outreach. Um, third one is formal education. So here we say we're going to develop a curriculum that will be delivered to some organization. So, for example, we're going to develop it, we're going to develop it, we're going to curriculum, curriculum, something like that. Generally, something, this is something that's related to the research topic. And you probably don't want to go too far afield if you're doing this and we'll talk about why in a minute. But here, here you are developing formal curriculum. Now, none of us probably are K through 12 educators. So when we start talking about formal education, we also have to develop a way to evaluate and make sure that what we're doing is following guidelines for K through 12 education, let's say, right? So that might and that might and that helps and helps and helps evaluate that. And of course, you would want to involve those people in the proposal. Preferably, you want to pay those people to be involved in the proposal as well. And then finally, there's informal education. So here, we're going to go out and say, we're going to develop things that will have educational components to them, but then will not necessarily be evaluated or included into a direct curriculum exercise. So here, we might go out and demonstrate in the school that we're going to launch a radius on. We might take our radar, take our radar, take our school. It's probably that are underrepresented or might not have access to kinds of technologies that we usually use. But you want to demonstrate through that process that you're having an impact as well. So these are some, but not an exhaustive list of broader impacts that you might do. Next slide, please. So in terms of writing broader impacts into your proposals, this is very, again, very proposal and program dependent. Some programs, like some of you, some of you, some of you writing an NS, writing an NS, but this has a large component of broader impact that you will have to spend a lot of time on and probably have a formal education component, and most likely. So this is something that you'll want to spend a lot of time on. You want to reach out and use the resources that you have in your organization to help that NSF always evaluates proposals in terms of their broader impacts. And so that will range a lot, depending on your research and your proposal. And the scope of that will vary accordingly. Sometimes it's just training graduates, student, if you're an early career research, you can demonstrate that doing the research will have impact on you as a human resource. But in NSF, they will be evaluating your broader impacts as a major component. The other programs, it really depends more on the program. The early career grant at a NASA has a broader impacts component, but most other NASA proposals, it's sort of an implicit part of the proposal, and it's kind of like icing on the cake, if you will. You probably want to have it in there, have it in there, have it isn't, doesn't, huge component of the research proposal. Other programs are sort of evolving, you know, DOE is now going to be having an impact and a Jedi type statement within the proposals, and so this is something we need to consider. Next slide, please. In terms of the scope, again, of broader impacts, this can take many forms and increasingly is intersecting with Jedi type themes in terms of diversity and inclusion. But you will want kind of leveraging your research to do outreach and broader impacts. You want to be able to demonstrate the impact of what you're doing. You want to show that it's targeting either groups of individuals or institutions or geographies that generally don't, you know, would have a positive impact from this kind of work. And of course, you may or may not have a very close connection between the broader impacts in your research, or it may be more kind of separate. And that's fine, fine, fine, I'll say, I'll say, limit, limit. So if we can go to that next slide, please. So you have to consider several things when you're designing a successful sort of broader impacts part of your proposal. You have to know kind of who's going to be reviewing it. So know who might say yes or no. Kind of envision your panel. Is your panel going to be your peers, or is it going to be a very diverse group that's evaluating things for education and maybe more expecting different further aspects. And also consider whether your sort of broader impacts are very integrated in the proposal or an add on. And that's going to kind of say the scope. Do you need to bring in an evaluator? Do you need to bring in an educator? Those are important things. Number two, seek additional resources. Talk to your colleagues and your institutional resources. These people will help you with this process. And I know at NCAR, if you're writing proposals, there's great resources that help, like within the ASP program to help a lot of expertise in community needs. Make sure that you know kind of what you're doing. Don't try to go out and propose something that people are going to say, hey, you know, Professor Nesbitt does, you know, observations, but now he's going to develop a tool for modeling. You know, that's ridiculous. So make sure that you're focusing on things that you're going to succeed and make sure it's something that you anticipate people needing. As well. Be careful also to differentiate broader impacts with broadening participation. Okay, these are both important, both important, both, but their can be the impact of your scientific work on people or the community, whereas broadening participation is bringing in groups that may be underrepresented and so forth. So make sure that you're differentiating those things when you're talking about these broadening topics. And then, of course, again, emphasizing know your audience, spell out the benefits, novelty, or detailed plan, your qualifications, and the resources able to carry out the broader impacts of your proposal. And she have to, so this is where evaluation comes in, either informal or formal, so that the reviewers can believe that your broader impacts efforts are going to have a measured and positive impact. So I'll wrap up there and I look forward to the discussion. Thank you, Steve, for a very comprehensive look at the different aspects of going to broader impacts and different opportunities that we can take to make the sweet and meaningful and to align well with what the particular solicitation is asking for. I like how we mentioned that there are certain things that we should be mindful of. For example, Jedi related topics and how to leverage, maybe sometimes we have opportunities to propose things that may be not immediately clear. So we need to be very careful evaluating these one at a time. Now in the interest of time, I will switch to Megan. There were two specific questions for you, Steve, and we'll read them at the end after all the speakers have an opportunity to speak. Thank you so much again and we expect to see you in a little bit again. Hey all, me again. Here's a picture of my family because I think they're adorable. But again, my name is Megan Myron-Carls or Megan MK. At my last job, I worked at a high school and we all went by our last names. And so for six years of my life, I was referred to as MK and it took for me. I really like it. So I want to extend that opportunity for you to use that as well. Thank you. Those are my kiddos, Merrick and Kennedy. My oldest is Kennedy. We call her Eddie after my grandpa and that's my wife Kelsey. And yeah, if there's any soccer fans out there, just know that you've got a friend in me, especially if you follow a women's soccer. I'll put that out there. And I'm a sociologist by like academic training. And so I really, I geek out on having conversations around specifically identity development and how our identities are influenced and affected by one another and in systems of power, privilege and oppression. And so if at any point you have a question about what I'm talking about or you need more clarification, please just put something in the chat or interrupt me. I'm cool with it. But yeah, feel free to move on to the next slide. I wanted to first jump into the conversation around like what are these words that we use a lot? In my and my lived experience, oftentimes when people say the word diversity, what they're, what they're, what I hear them say and how they talk about diversity is really grace and ethnicity. Maybe they're talking about both those two ideas as well as maybe gender. But rarely is it this concept of all of the things that make you, you, right? So your political beliefs, your family makeup, your age, your mental and physical ability, your income bracket, right? Like there's way more that goes into this word for me personally. But I feel like a lot of times when we talk about diversity, it gets very much pigeonholed into talking specifically around race and ethnicity, maybe gender, so on and so forth. Apologies if you can hear my dog before came in the background. Okay, great. When we talk about equity, I just want to make sure that we're all on the same page. When I'm talking about equity and hopefully when you talk about equity moving forward, I want us to think about it in the terms of what makes something fair and just. Not just like making sure we all have an opportunity or access to this thing, but what kind of accommodations might somebody need in order to access the material? So like not just verbally saying something out loud, but maybe providing some visual aids. Granted, like when we're talking about writing a proposal for research or for money for grants, that's not always doable, but just something to be thinking about in general. An example of equity, right? Like making sure everybody has what they need to be successful. And then lastly for inclusion, I look at inclusion as being equity in action. It's one thing to cognitively and theoretically understand these concepts, but it's an entirely different thing for us to put it into actionable items. So yeah, I wanted to just like frame the conversation in this lens and move us beyond a bit more. So like I said earlier, I've been working here for a little over 11 months now, so I'm relatively new to the organization. But part of my role as the diversity, equity and inclusion lead is to serve as a bit of a bridge between the office of diversity, equity and inclusion and human resources. And so I spent a lot of my day thinking about who's missing from the conversation. How could we phrase things differently to better articulate what we're looking for when we're posting positions? And how are we asking, what are we asking candidates to provide us so that when we're reviewing their materials, we have a solid understanding of who they are, what their experiences have been, and what they would potentially bring to the table. So when you put this in the context of incorporating DEI in your research proposals, your grant applications, etc., I want us to be thinking about the fact that this is, oh, sorry, you can move on to the next slide. This is more than just a box that we're going to check off, right? It's not just like, okay, cool, I talked about this one thing that counts as DEI, and now we get to move on. DEI is really, it needs to be thought of, in my opinion, as really embedded and woven throughout the entire process. And so for me, again, I like to think of like central questions that come back to you when I'm putting something together to help myself be centered and grounded in this mindset of actionable, like how am I making sure that my values, like I want people to feel welcome and included in a part of the community and appreciated for what they're bringing to the table. And I want my work to demonstrate that. And so if I feel myself getting stuck, I'll ask myself these questions. So what parts of my own experiences are not currently widely recognized or represented in the work that I'm doing? Like, basically, is there something about what I'm bringing to the table that is potentially unique, underrepresented, should be highlighted or listed, or pulled out and have a light, well, yeah, highlighted, I guess, that's a good way to say that. What other identities or contexts might be missing that could add richness or depth or value to the work that I'm doing? Additionally, what communities might be affected by the work that I'm doing? And then lastly, how is my growth reflected in my research? And I think that this last piece, honestly, is hopefully going to be the thing that ties it all together for folks, especially when you think of inclusion statements. If that's something that you're being asked to write as a part of your process. What we're looking for when we ask candidates, for example, to write an inclusion statement is we're looking for growth. Like, where did you start? What things have you have you done in your past? And how has that affected the work that you're doing now? And it's very, it can feel very personal and vulnerable, and that can feel really scary and not, it makes it feel like it's not, what's the phrase that I'm trying to look for here? Like, when we say things like, I just want to focus on the data or the fact, right? Like, I want to take a motion out of it and be objective. I think that a lot of times DEI feels really vulnerable for folks because it might feel like you're removing or you're putting too much of emotion into it, or subjectivity into it. But really, what I really do think that it's a value add and something that can be interwoven because when you think of it coming from this perspective of, if I want to increase my work with Indigenous communities, for example, but I might not have, I might not be a part of an Indigenous community, but I really feel very passionate about incorporating this particular population into my research. That's a really, that can feel really vulnerable, right? You're stepping into a space that you might not be a subject matter expert, you might be passionate about it, but it feels uncomfortable because you don't want to necessarily speak for other people or get it wrong, so to speak. And I would argue that it's still important work to do and just because you don't hold that identity perhaps doesn't mean that you shouldn't attempt to highlight the work that you're doing and how it affects other communities and lift up other voices in the work that you're doing. I hope that this makes sense. I know I have a limited amount of time and so I want to make sure I address specific questions that folks might have, but yeah, at the end of the day it's more complicated than just race or ethnicity. You can interweave more parts about your own experiences as well as other people's experiences into the work that you're doing and how you articulate it, and I'm really excited to hear from Karen and in her words nothing because I think that can really be useful too. And yeah, I want to be here to help and serve as a resource. I'm going to stop rambling at this point. I'm really excited to talk more with the rest of you. Thank you, Megan. That was a wonderful overview of what we should consider when we're writing a DI statement. I particularly like your point about the fact that if we're passionate about including certain type of work that we don't necessarily associate to ourselves, this is an important, this is okay to consider and in fact we should pursue that effort and it's one of the things I've been also considering myself working with Indigenous communities. I have friends who belong to certain communities and I've always been passionate to explore what connections we can make and it's great to hear that you encourage this type of work. So I believe we have a little bit of time for questions and I'll start with perhaps the last question. So how to make sure that we address a DI in a proposal that we're not going to move that towards a wide-savier complex? That's a great question. I think first and foremost is naming that. I think a lot of people are afraid to say, to name their fear of I don't want this research to be interpreted in this way and so if I say it, then I run the risk of it being that thing and I would argue otherwise I would say it is imperative that you name it like the point and emphasis of my research is not in fact to be a white savior is to not reinforce these paradigms of power and oppression to not center my myself or my experiences in the work that I'm doing but rather to use my vantage point to uplift other voices in other communities and to work alongside them and to be in partnership and so here are the things that I am doing that demonstrate that. I think really if you can make sure that you're always coming back to like here are the actionable things like here are the things that we're doing or here's what this work will do for people or this is how we will make ensure that we don't further harm or create those kinds of power or inequities or divisions I think naming it is really important because it puts it out there and it allows you to see like oh yeah this is the thing that I named I'm not just thinking it and feeling it I'm putting it out in the forefront and that again it's a bit vulnerable right and and it can make it feel a little bit scary because you're putting yourself out there but I would argue that you would get much more support especially from the communities that you're trying to incorporate into being able to stand and network with you. Does that make sense? Yeah I think that's a great answer and I absolutely agree that it's not an easy thing to consider but there are ways to address that especially when it's written in a proposal. There was one additional question which was going back to your point on how do we evaluate the fact that we may not be part of a certain community. I think you addressed that already somewhat so I'll give a preference to one additional question which is something new that maybe you didn't touch as much in your presentation and this question is do you have any suggestions on how to approach actionable DEI when the research is more abstracting global in nature and less relevant to specific communities? Sure I think just because you're not necessarily doing a deep dive in a particular community necessarily but there's broader global implications I guess I think my advice would still be similar like name like these are broader this is a larger perspective or focus that being said here's what I'm going to be doing or here's what I hope to do or hear the communities I hope to include in the conversation to ensure that you know again my work isn't only solely being centered on one area or one perspective I'm considering these particular variables to help give a broader context. This is going to feel a little bit random but I was listening to a news article I can't remember where apologies but they're talking about bees and the the vibrations that bees put off and how it affects electricity and I was like wait what that that's random but like the broader implications that the researchers were discovering was that for like atmospheric science of like how electricity affects molecules in the air which affects clouds and I was like I did I sometimes regret that I only studied sociology because I felt very confused but like my mind was blown at like just the trajectory that this one incident where a person was studying electricity or vibrations caused by electricity and a bee happened to get in the way and how it completely just affected the the overall course of their project it just derailed it but in the best way possible almost and the broader implications for like the ripple effect of like what could this mean if this is true and if that is true and that thing or the other so I guess what I'm trying to say with this really random example is that again DEI is not it's not limited it doesn't have to be limited right it can be something big and and more complex and it doesn't have to be a thing that is only focused on one specific population or marginalized identity it can be global it should be global really hopefully even if we are doing a deeper dive on a specific thing we should be thinking it thinking about problems and problem solving from multiple angles I think that's a great summary essentially because we don't immediately see a connection between our research and the broader implications and the first implication doesn't mean this connection doesn't exist and maybe sometimes it's about doing a little bit more research and thinking more creatively about how can I possibly take my findings and help society or to diversify to make to make my research more inclusive and impactful communities that may not have been included I think the big example is a great so you don't we wouldn't anticipate that until we see something happening in nature or we read make connections do research and make these connections offline so I think that was a great example that hopefully addresses the question on that note in an interest of time we're just about it's time to switch to our final speaker Karen who is already here and just as a reminder please put your questions on the Slido deck so we can read them after and as a reminder we will have a separate Q&A session at the very end thank you Karen the virtual floor is yours hey I'm going to run my own slideshow and the reason is that I'm actually going to go to several other URLs so I'm going to have to kind of bounce back and forth so I apologize ahead ahead of time for what might be a rather psychatic viewing experience my apologies so I believe I have rights to share don't I sometimes you have to make me a oh yeah I'm not allowed to share my screen okay right now sorry about that no worries I forgot yay sounds like I could do this now all right can everyone see that looks good on our end okay good of course now I can't see you who am I and why am I here as you know I work for Ralph and my talent was somewhat discovered I didn't start as a writer editor I started as an admin three but I was doing so many papers that people discovered that I had this useful commodity and that I might share it with everybody so I did get promoted as a writer and editor recently not recently a while ago so the main content that I work with is I do a lot of our web pages and the goal there of course is to create web pages that to the outside world are engaging and inspiring and even nudge people to call us and get in touch with us so the other thing I am known for is I'm a grammar witch I'm feared and loathe and I write a grammar which column for our realm newsletter every month usually dissecting some sort of a grammar knit or communication issue and I enjoy this quite a bit and finally where you come in I'm a technical editor and I provide my resources not only to rel but recently ASP asked me to provide my services to them and I've been enjoying this very very much your papers are extraordinary and I've been incredibly impressed so we're going to move on to the next slide what's my process and the reason I tell you about my process is that although I don't read grants grant reviewers have a process also and I'm hoping that my process intersects with the kinds of things they're looking for so this is going to be a bit of a piggyback to Steven slides where he talks about relevance and so my methodologies I go through the abstract and the introduction with probably the most attention that I'm going to apply to the entire paper and the reason is I'm looking for the why why did you choose to pursue this is it personal curiosity did you identify a gap in the knowledge base that you sought to fill did you did you see that your work will benefit society in some way and I really appreciate statements that basically wrap it up for the audience and don't assume that your audience is going to be a member of your particular specific scientific discipline you never know who's going to read your paper and that's the beauty of it you want people who may be unconnected to your to your science to read it and say I'm going to cite this because tangentially it really works for my own argument who benefits will this have a human benefit do you perceive that something you have revealed or concluded may actually better society in some small way may move the needle in global well-being okay and now here is my my list of raw nerves nits pet peeves I believe that using an active voice which is simple active voice we did this we we concluded this is so much more powerful than using have have been because that just adds bulk and unnecessary bulk to your sentence and it also when you speak directly it brings your confidence to the table and confidence is an arrogance confidence is purpose that's what makes your readers lean in and then moving on to one of the reasons I believe I was invited to this is I read papers not so much for grammatical errors because most of your papers don't have grammatical errors of any kind of import I'm helping you find the right word to make concise statements and instead of coddling together all these words in some past imperfect sentence it tense I like to remove words find the right word and so one of my best friends was a writer for REI and for backpacking magazine and she was educated at Northwestern with a journalism degree and she used to pound it into me you don't need adjectives you don't need adverbs if you chose the right verb and the right the right word in the first place so it just adds bloat and some of my examples here are simple ones right instead of has try exhibits or shows or features or reveals the iceberg reveals several fissures conversely and this is also one of my pet peeves just make sure the word you're using isn't pretentious or inaccessible to any audience a broader audience because first of all it makes you look a little pompous and remember if your peers are reading this you don't want to imagine them rolling their eyes going oh use the word elucidate oh great well you know you can just use the word explain because you really want to grease the wheels for someone to grasp your sentence without stumbling so don't create speed bumps in the road to understanding and just because you know a fancy word doesn't mean you should use it uh for instance utilize is one of my pet peeves utilize is to use in a special way people use this word all of the time i can't tell you how many times i go don't you just mean use or employ or something else like extract and so for instance utilize literally means to use in a special way for instance i used a hammer to pound a nail i utilized that hammer to prop my door open because that's not what the hammer was meant to do but you used it in a special way hopefully that makes sense and my last one is very you don't need it there are better words and i'm going to show you how to find a better word so i don't know if you guys remember and some of you may be too young for this there was a movie called the dead poet society and robin williams basically it was a coming of age movie and it inspired young men to be deeper do better and so his his line was avoid using the word very because it's lazy a man is not very tired he is exhausted don't use very sad use morose language was invented for one reason boys to woo women and in that endeavor laziness will not do so i don't know if you guys have a chance to look at the grid on the right but there are an infinite number of wonderful words to use instead of adding a very to something more modest tools i believe in tools i believe in cheating i believe in copying i believe in reading other people's work and saying i'm going to use that in my paper so one of these is called the hemmingway app and we've used it a lot with our word our web pages because we want our web pages to be accessible clean engaging and even exciting if there's an opportunity to do this anyway if you see the quote there the hemmingway editor is like a good editor attuned to places where vanity seems to be getting the better of things so this is the interface for the hemmingway app and what you do is you switch to write you paste in your verbage let's just say a couple of paragraphs just for fun just to kind of do a it's just a check hang on a second i'm going to copy something else this is grabbed from a paper i read not too long ago and then you hit edit so what it's done is it created a scorecard over here to the right so it gives you you only use one advert good for you because you've met the goal of one or fewer number two uses of passive voice cut it to one or fewer number one this phrase has a simpler alternative zero of seven sentences are hard to read so good for you you actually made this understandable oh wait a minute six of seven seven sentences are very hard to read so if you click on each one of these it'll actually give you specific advice about that word use more force well so instead of negatively impacts why not say damages or whatever and then you can click on this bin wrong to use subsequent all right so that's the hemmingway app and um that'll be of course in my slides if you want test it it's a lot of fun to use and again we use it um quite a bit for web pages because we really want our language to be almost beyond relatable but even a little bit exciting all right so here we are back at my page this is a fun tool lose the berry once again so let's say very delighted about hello sorry apparently they're not equipped brand but maybe in this case you want large enormous anyway it's just it's fun to play with and um i use it the source pretty liberally and i also have an archive of my articles so if you ever want to review some of my content some of it's entertaining some of it will help you get your emails read better um one of my greatest hits one is the did you read my email fewer words this paragraph obviously i clipped it for my presentation but it kind of underscores what i've already said and this was an interesting gem that i found as i was oops sorry as i was looking for word choice things the usgs actually went to some trouble to compile suggestions and warnings about words that would frequently appear in their literature so can you see this the choosing the right word yes we can okay it goes through not only every word it talks about the nuances of understanding each word so about is nearly always better than approximate but approximately as preferable if fairly accurate figures are given and it goes through i mean this is pages and pages and pages of scientific language and jargon and how it may or may not be comprehended by our audience it's worth a read i actually learned quite a bit i found this yesterday and i'm still about only halfway through it and it recalibrated me on several scores but i loved particularly this one quote whenever we come upon one of those intensely right words in a book or a newspaper the resulting effect is physical as well as spiritual and electrocute prompt so i thought that was pretty cool and this is my last slide because you guys wanted to see cute stuff i quickly loaded up a cute picture of my husband and my puppy and that's all i have thank you caron that was a wonderful overview of very useful tips and tools that we can use in our own work to make sure that our writing is consistent with the grammar and and not only the grammar but as you said the style and and how to elicit our message in a concise way that makes it clear so thank you so much for this overview before we switch to the example statements and passing over to megan let me to to mariana let me see whether i can find yes there is a question for you caron which is are there any resources you could share with those researchers that they're not english native speakers to improve their writing i'm going to give you an answer that isn't what you're hoping for i have noticed in reading many of the asp postdoc papers that their papers are extraordinarily correct and extremely well written i think and this may be a an unfair generalization perhaps because they have studied a language in addition to their own and know things that we english speakers only know intuitively or organically you know we low belong we english speakers you know without checks and balances but if you've had to learn a language and study it and study the terms for the language knowing past imperfect and split infinitive and compound adjective hyphenation i have only found tremendous superior writing skill amongst the esl people so i know that's not answering your question um so my favorite line when someone asked me something like that is i don't know i will find out so i'll let you know when i find something that i feel really worthy because i think you are all well beyond the basics so i'll need to find something a little bit more robust yeah i agree with you that for us in non-native speakers high school education and learning a second language has been very heavy on the grammar and learning all about the technical structure of the language and then i think me also as an example of a person who doesn't speak english is the first language is i think it's more to our the difficulty comes from our inability to see what is the trendy way to say things what is the the way that we should write that's consistent with the status quo of technical language so we understand the grammar but maybe the choice of vocabulary is is the challenging aspect for us and i think you provided some excellent resources here that we can lean on to decide which choice of words and statements makes more sense for a particular field so thank you caron for your presentation once again i'll like to pass it here to mariana briefly she will review some example statements before we go back uh go into our q and x session afterwards yes thank you so we have a you know when i say we so diamond anna and i we have reached out to several project scientists and scientists at and caron asked who would be willing to share some example statements that were a part of a funded grant so we have a curated document of seven example statements and today we're just going to show one for the sake of time and this is an example statement from for for no a physical oceanography and the topic was on buoyancy effects within plumes driven by rip currents and their research approach was institute and airborne observations of near shore plumes so i'm just going to read the text on the screen and then point out why pristo anna diamond and i were drawn to this as a nice example statement so this work will improve predictions of material transport of pollutants nutrients heat sediment and larvae associated with rip currents and other near shore processes by including important buoyancy effects which have previously been neglected a postdoctoral researcher will be trained while performing modeling and data analysis for the project and will co mentor an undergraduate student who will investigate the importance of near shore plumes and modulating harmful algal blooms assessing possible improvements to the california home for algae algae risk mapping seahearn systems in collaboration with its developers the team will create an agu session on oceanographic plumes across a range of scales communicate with local and federal hab forecasters and prepare an out-treat demonstration this project's provide this project provides a leadership opportunity to an early career principal investigator so the reason why this example stood out to us is like a nice tangible like okay these are actual broader impacts and also um points of inclusion is one it directly states that a post doc will be trained a part of this and will be a part of the mentoring process so you have both postdoc learning skills but then also an undergraduate student having a transfer of knowledge there's also the point that this area has previously been neglected so that shows the relevance of the research and the need of the research and then towards the end there's a discussion of we're not just doing this research and keeping it to ourselves we're creating a specific agu session for this topic and the last sentence i think is very applicable to all of us that this grant or property this proposal is a leadership opportunity for an early career investigator okay so with that i believe we are on to q and a so in this slide then i'll put back here um pardon me make sure we have everything so the slido link let's see if somebody can paste that back in the chat because i know people have come in afterwards up here it is okay so here's the slido link that we'll be using i'm going to stop sharing real quick and then pass it over to diamond who will be moderating the slido yeah um so just based on what we just read for that example statement and also trying to combine a couple of the slido questions together for the speakers today what suggestions do you have about translating the work that we do into actionable science so either through outreach or ways that like local governments could use the outputs of maybe climate models or the observational data sets that we have so either from your experience or from maybe some statements that you've read or have participated in and i'll let you guys decide who wants to speak up first but yeah just actionable what what how can we do that i'll just say uh try to be specific and have examples that actually have sort of a followable uh train of thought if you will for example it's a much better to say that you're going to target specific groups or stakeholders or populations specifically and address specific uh agencies that might be able to use things rather than just saying you know the classic example is i've done this research and i'm going to publish a paper and throw it over the fence and hope somebody uses it so try to be as specific as possible as possible yeah megan or karen do you guys want to add anything uh steven beat me to it and said exactly what i was on my mind um yeah specifics are great i know that i'm also the business is snippet and so like my brain is activated and i have like a bunch of questions i'm like oh i want to know this thing that thing and the other and so i think if ever you're looking for a reader just to like review especially from a very outsider point of view i can volunteer this tribute um but yeah being being specific about communities or the potential community impact or or populations um that could that could benefit from this information or assistant and yeah specifics and then if you if you have an idea of of a a connection to additional research or how it helps elevate or support other things that are happening in that field um i can see that being a value at as well i don't know that i have anything to say that wouldn't be redundant at this point the truth of it is a lot of what we do if you pull back and expand your resolution on any problem that we're solving it will in fact have an effect on a human population because even if you're improving like a forecast tool it's going to help more forecasters do their job better which gives more warning to a population that might be at risk so you know even when it looks like pure science and you're just moving the needle for a bunch of other scientists the follow-on effect is if you pull back on your on your view that effect is going to be employed in such a way that ultimately it will have an effect on the world well-being yeah thank you for that um and i guess kind of building off of this thread the next question i'll ask is for steve that first question um that's on the list but kind of building it beyond just international projects like what we're talking about right now with actionable science um how do you engage with um these broader audiences ahead of time like while you're writing the grant proposal to make sure that what we think is actionable is actually actionable for these communities um and so just you know what kind of experience do you have with that um and then for these international projects um you know knowing that they have different circumstances yeah yeah and here communication is really critical um and knowing uh the lay of the land as i mentioned my proposal i think is really important i think is really important is dsd i mean um i mean i did a big project in argentina um and i knew going into it there was a risk of doing sort of colonial science um and so what i did is i went there and i spent a lot of time there i talked to people all the way from the highest levels of the government that i could engage all the way down to the local stakeholders and i asked them what what would have the best impact here um and i tried not to bring my us uh preconceptions as to what would be most most benefit most benefit most um um keep keep is uh in terms of international stuff is that but what meet what is d i somewhere else doesn't necessarily mean what d i is here right and so you need to take that into account and you may have different sort of i don't know what the right word is but when you're talking to a funding agency here it's different than trying to motivate people in another country and so so you have to kind of keep that in mind and loosen up your ideas of what you might want to do yeah make it in there karen did you want to add anything to that nothing that wouldn't be redundant agreed yeah understanding like another another country's like socio-political and historical context is is only going to add add richness and depth to the work that you're trying to do um and provide you that context for knowing which direction to go and who are my best resources um and partners so yeah and i i guess i would also add that um it doesn't even have to be international right like even within what we call the united states i mean i'm here in hawaii so you know for my people um for for my culture it's it's very different in terms of how um scientists engage with our community um and we have um cultural protocols that um a lot of people aren't aware of um and so a lot of times yeah it's it gets really tricky we'll ask a fun question and i don't know if um every all the panelists um are into soccer um i don't know anything um but there was a question for megan of who who do you think is gonna win the world cup um i i i also i plugged in a reply for the mens world cup that's happening are about to happen soon um y'all i don't know i i'm hoping for france i'm a really big batte fan i'm i'm thinking france but like who knows i i'm i'm mostly for men's soccer i'm just a spectator i'm here to enjoy and see what happens i have a lot stronger feelings and opinions on the women's game um i'm very nervous about the us women's national team um in terms of the the overall team's health and wellness and and coaching decisions and i could go on and on a podcast recommendation if you want to learn more about soccer or just like be in in the conversation in a passive way um men in blazers a plus uh podcast if you want to know more about women's soccer especially it's from a global like including a u.s context but also global perspective that centered on um black women and women of color uh diaspora united i'll put them in the chat i see steve and wave here's my answer here's my answer here's my answer nice i know you had a question uh perhaps i was gonna comment on steam like because we have the football versalona players that are out there so women women there are like pretty frustrated so nice well there's um the next question i think is pretty good um to get us to wrap up for closing remarks um if there's any um advice that you could give in one minute for each of you to early career scientists um who are writing a broader impact or de i statement for the very first time what what where do you suggest we start um how do we start writing who do we start talking to um anything like that so if you could give us like a one minute closing remark on that um that would be great we'll start with steven oh okay um yeah i would say talk talk to your peers and your mentors um they're really going to provide examples for you help you skew help you skew help try to try and try to make it um you know get feedback from them so that it can be the best part of your project that it can be um and uh and and really just you know be creative i think the reviewers really are looking for something that's novel and uh and so so be be creative thanks micah don't be afraid to ask other people who might be outside of your your scope of research um for feedback and and just to get a different perspective of like as is what i'm saying making sense to somebody who's outside of this field um because you're already going to get great feedback from those that are inside your your your networks um but don't be afraid to to go outside of your circle to get some some feedback and you know kudos and praise too um yeah awesome thank you and then karen you know i'm not sure i'm going to speak to this as specifically as you'd like but i really believe that both megan and steven had really great suggestions in that let me explain where i'm going with this i'm not framing this very succinctly when i first started doing scientific technical editing i worried that i wouldn't understand the science and so what i did was i made friends with someone who could translate for me so i said translate this science to me invariably what they did was they made it accessible to me a lay person if you can take your statement your paragraph hand it to someone like megan said not specifically in your field or even in your field and say explain it to me like i'm in eighth grade you will have something that hopefully people will say uh-huh i get it that's amazing i love where you're going the second side of it is i like the idea of even using words like novel approach when i see that in a paper i'm like oh this is new now i'm excited now i lean in so find a way to present yourself as being fresh that's all i got to say nice thank you also one day i hope to have a really cool title like grammar witch don't wish i am universally loathed and people live in mortal fear of sending an email to me that i will turn it back and say that's i not me or lie not lay why should pity my husband okay so with that um thank you everyone for joining us today um the recording for this session um and the example statements will be available to you all soon uh your emails um and again just as a reminder uh we will have the next session sometime in january and that topic is convergent science um so hopefully we'll see you either at agu or ams um and that hope that you all have um some time off during the holidays um so yeah with that um thanks for coming everyone um and have a good rest of your day thank you everybody should we stop recording yeah i think that we can stop recording now yeah i think most of