 It's one o'clock on Tuesday, January the 18th and you are watching Science Sets Host. I'm your host Pete McGinnis-Mark and this is a real experiment, not only for me, your host, but also this is intended to be a new communications course for some of the graduate students at the School of Ocean Earth Science and Technology. Last week, we had the first of our shows where we tried to outline some of the background too and today we're taking the next step. With me, I'm really pleased to say we have two professional science communicators. We have Leon Gershwin from NOAA, which is the National Oceanographic and Amnestyrope Administration and Marci Grubowski, who is the science communicator at SOES. And the intent on today's show is to try and get a handle on how scientists like all of the graduate students who might be studying, say, oceanography or atmospheric sciences, planets, renewable energy or whatever, how do they communicate their particular subjects to the general public? This isn't a science talk per se, this is more how do you communicate? And that's why we've got today's guests. I would first turn to Marci Grubowski because Marci, your job basically is the science communicator for SOES. Can you briefly tell us, what do you do? Sure, so I essentially translate scientific findings from technical language into more of a story essentially. So turning that technical language into something that our community members, our legislators, other folks outside of that particular field of science might be able to understand and use in their field of study. Great, and can you just say, and do you just write articles? Do you go down some legislature and beat up people there? Or how do you communicate? Definitely not during COVID days. No, it's good distance. But yeah, I do a lot of written communication. So press releases, news stories, sharing that on our website, social media sites, as well as through local media, international media, and then communicating with our public, our community members, whether that's in person at a community meeting, for example, or a neighborhood board meeting or different outreach events where, Waikiki Aquarium has had these Maoka to Makai events and family groups come from across the island, individuals come from across the island. And they're just curious, what does SOF do? And we're able to break down that science into a digestible bit. So what's your background? And how have you developed this skill of communicating? Do you have a degree to research yourself? Or what kind of background do you have? I do, I have a geology backwards and a master's in oceanography. And as I was finishing up my master's degree and writing up my own research, I realized, hey, this was the great part. I finally got to tell a story about my research and turn that lab work and that field work into a real story that someone else could understand. And so that was kind of my first clue that, well, maybe there's more interest on my part in the communications realm. And then I just kind of did trial by fire various professional development opportunities. Lots of practice, I would write and iterate with researchers about how to communicate what they were doing. So always had the love and passion for science. In my family, we joke that my mom is the insatiably curious one. So always kind of had that aspect in my life. When you talk about the story, can you just say, yeah, how do you take a great science discovery that might be made within oceanography at SOES and pitch it to maybe different audiences? Maybe it's your mom there, maybe it's a legislature, maybe it's a high school student. Yeah, exactly what you just said really highlights the first thing you wanna think about, which is your audience. So are you talking to a fifth grader or are you talking to a legislator and or are you talking to your auntie at Thanksgiving? And you really wanna consider that person or that group of people. And so in as much detail as you can, you wanna consider, who are they? Where do they live? What issues might they be interested in or concerned about? And think about their frame of reference and what they might know and what you know and where those two things overlap is kind of the sweet spot as far as targeting your science method. I've been selling this whole series on TV as kind of like a 10 minute elevator tour where you get to meet somebody who normally wouldn't hear about the kind of work that's being done within souls, but you've got a limited amount of time. So I believe you've put together a slide and Michael if you could just bring up the slide. Marcy, could you just sort of run us through it? This is I think what you've described as developing your message. Yeah, exactly. So when you're talking to somebody and you have a targeted message for them, you have to pick and choose what it is that you're going to say. As humans, we just don't remember everything we hear. And so you want to come up with maybe three to five a comb messages. And what those messages might be are shown here, a couple of examples. So if you have science that might not be in the popular media just yet, you want to provide some context for your audience about what is it that you're talking about? And then I encourage students or researchers to kind of shake up the format for how they specifically talk about their research. So in academia, we have a very prescribed way of presenting research. Academic publication is the hallmark of how you would present your research. So you want to shake that up. Don't use that academic format because that's intended for other researchers. So you want to think of it more as problem, solution, if there's a recommended action coming up with that solution. And then certainly you want to show people what the benefit would be either to society or a group of people or an ecosystem and what the implications are for that intended action. And I'm curious to you, this form of presenting material to the general public, would that be as relevant say all the texts that you often put out press releases as this particular show? Do you see any differences in style that might work better in one medium than another? Yeah, so those questions or those bullet points are similar to the questions I would ask researchers to help me develop a press release about their work. But one of the main differences about written versus in-person communication is that with written, you really fine tune your message. You fine tune, you can word sniff till it's time to publish. And so you can be very precise with the words you're choosing. And that can be really great, but then that means once you put it out there in the world, that's it. You don't get a chance to have the conversation aspect of it. And so the in-person communication, what I love about that is that you can ask questions about what the person we are talking with is interested in. And then fine tune your message to what they are particularly interested in. So that's an advantage in person. And of course with this in-text series, what we're hoping for is eventually we will have online via chat and Zoom the actual conversation with some, not only of the guests, but maybe even some of the students involved online. Yes, and I think being able to think on your feet and coherently describe the technique, that is quite a good skill for students to develop. Well, thank you, students. Let's now move on to Leon. And Leon, we first met when you were a graduate student, right, correct me if I'm wrong, but you actually now the educational specialist Paul Noah, the National Ocean Graphic and Atmospheric Administration here in Honolulu is that right? That's right, Pete. So my official title on the Education Outreach Specialist at NOAA over at the Inoi Regional Center, which is our facility over on Ford Island. It's two World War Two hangers put together and we have about 700 NOAA staff that are there. And really my role is to work with all the different line offices in NOAA, whether it be looking at the atmosphere, sort of the surface of the sun all the way to the depths of the ocean and everything in between. That's kind of what NOAA focuses on. That's sort of my main role is being that bridge. And the wonderful background that you have behind you, that is actually slide number two. So can you just tell us a little bit? You graduated from SOAST and you're now with NOAA. What kinds of overlap do you see between SOAST and NOAA? Yeah, that's a great question, Pete. So actually graduated from the Global Environmental Science Program way back when. And now I've over know on a lot of the skill sets that I use kind of got familiar with in that program in terms of having that real holistic view of the earth, not just kind of compartmentalized in different offices, for example, was a big thing. NOAA's main mission is to really understand and predict changes in weather, climate, oceans and coast. So that's one part is understanding, sharing that knowledge with others and then also conserving and managing coastal and marine ecosystems. And there's a big SOAST connection. There's actually an institution called the SIMAR, which stands for the Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research. It's housed within SOAST. And their main purpose is to kind of pursue common research interests with NOAA and the University of Hawaii and SOAST. So anything in ocean, atmosphere, geophysical research, those are the connections that are made. And many of those UH staff are actually over on Fort Island at the NOAA Regional Center Facility working on a lot of those major problems. So you must be the role model for how the university trains professionals who then go into our community and talk about it. In an earlier series, I had Gerard Fion who were the Pacific Sonami Warning Center because he was our faculty. But the role that NOAA has as well as a SOAST in training new people to go out into the community, I think is very underrated. Would you or Marcy agree that our immunity did not recognize the value of SOAST? Absolutely. I part of my job, which seems like there's never quite enough hours to do this, but part of my job is to share with our community legislators, other research institutions what a quality research and education opportunity we have here at SOAST. So we are consistently ranked in the top 20 in the world as far as geoscience institutions. So that means if you think of other nations, top research institutes, various universities or programs across the country, right here on Oahu, you don't have to go far if you're watching this on local television. You don't have to go far to have access to this amazing resource here in our award-winning faculty and cutting-edge research. So yes, Pete. It's not the money that the researchers bring in, but it's highlighted even last weekend with the tonga of volcanic eruption, right? If there was a tsunami, there's volcanic ash and atmospheric phenomenon. I think it's really great that we have these technical resources. But Leah, one of the things I'm sure you have to spend a lot of your time about is communicating to the general public about the impacts of climate change. Can you sort of give us a little bit of a background on what climate change means not only as an individual living in Hawaii, but how does that impact your job? That's a great question, Pete. So I think climate change, as you know, is a cross-disciplinary topic, right? It's not people working in their individual silos of the oceanographers or the geologists or the atmospheric scientists, they're all really needing to work together to really understand the issue. And I think one of the big issues in terms of communicating that science to the public, which has sometimes been a challenge, is to really use the proper language in that communication and not to delve too much into the weeds. So as an example, if you don't mind bringing up the next slide that I have here, a very classic example that we've heard a lot in the news of the difference between weather and climate. We see instances where people bringing snowballs to the Senate floor to talk about, oh, look, this is an instance of why climate change is not happening. That's really a fundamental misunderstanding of just the difference between these two topics. So as an example, you can see the slide on there as weather is what it tells you to wear each day versus climate telling you what's in your closet. But it's to really hone in on what those analogies that will ring true to your audiences. So as another example, if you're a sports fanatic, you might go, okay, here's an example of if you're a baseball fan, whether or not be your turn at bat, right? Your individual at bat versus climate is your batting average over the whole, over the entire season, right? Or even finance, whether it could be something is the money in your pocket at any one day while climate is looking at your net worth over time. So there are a lot of analogies that you can use to kind of connect with people and honing in on those, depending on what your audience is, I think is really key in getting a topic of climate change or anything and communicating that effectively to the public. And so you must have climate change issues, funds and center on many of your best releases as well. Yeah, I mean, climate is huge, whether it's anything from what's going with rising sea levels. And I think another big connection to make is the public wants to hear what they can do about it. So if there's an action-oriented step that you can take, I know there's some fabulous work being done and so has there's a king tides project where people can go out and take pictures of the king tides that are happening in their locale and share that with others around the world. So if there's any kind of connection where you can get the community involved, that sort of takes your message one step further and sort of turns it into action. So that's another thing that you might consider in terms of a lot of your communications to the public or students or whatnot, is that what's next? What's in it for me? How can I get involved? So you handled the climate change issue because there are many people concerned about you. The economic impacts or the environmental degradation are always so vulnerable climate change issues. How would you advise a student to tackle that if she was presenting on the show? So kind of going back to that point about the audience and considering who your audience is, I really like to relate climate change as a huge phenomenon to specific, either events or observations that someone might be able to make in their own life. So connecting that to something that people have already experienced is a way to make sure that it doesn't feel like a far off someone else's problem. It is something that whether you live in the middle of the country or you live right on the coastline where there's erosion, there are effects throughout the world. And so finding some ways to connect to local issues and letting folks know that you can take action as Leon said right here, maybe with a community group, but also that this is each of our problem. It's a collective issue that we all can make movement towards solving. And if you don't mind me adding on, I think a lot of people are faced with this sort of dichotomy of what they can do. They can do things on the individual level, right? Okay, ride your bike, turn off your lights, all these types of issues by a hybrid car. They can get involved in the government level, right to your legislators, right? Get involved politically. But there's kind of that sweet spot in the middle that's often not talked about as much in terms of how to engaging with your community, right? So, as an example, at the NOAA facility, how do we engage people in terms of doing some sort of waste audit collectively as NOAA or even at SOAS? Like how are we engaging our immediate sphere of influence around issues as it relates to climate change? So it's one step up from the individual, but maybe one step down from the government action and kind of moving within that continuum, I think is a helpful frame for people who are what next? How do I get involved? Okay, let's delve a bit more into this because obviously we're going to be doing this whole semester in the Tech Series, but how does a student distill her research down to something that the layperson might be interested in? Trying to find the context is important, but do either of you have any other suggestions here? What landmines await anybody who's going to talk to the public or what seems to work best for them? Yeah, my first suggestion would be try out your take-home messages, try out what it is that you want to say, and you could do that in as low a risk environment as you can find. You know, maybe that's other colleagues, other graduate students, and do it with someone who is not in your field of study. So if you're a climate change scientist, try doing it with someone who's a volcanologist and exchange those messages and describe what it is that you're doing to that person who obviously is very well-versed in science in general, but not in your specific area. And get feedback about that. What's making sense? What's not about your message? And certainly science communication is just like any other mode of communication. Feedback that is well received and improve your messaging. So I would say come up with those take-home messages, practice them, refine them, and see what might be a better alternative if something's not quite working. Sounds like a forward jogging. Yeah. Take that out of you. Definitely. Liam, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, those are great suggestions that Marci brought up. I mean, look at who you can talk to immediately. If you've got kids or you have nieces or nephews, right? They are great audiences. They're gonna be completely honest with you if they're like, what are you talking about, right? So if you can talk to someone who's your middle school, high school, back on a range, that's similar to what audience you'd be speaking to for the general public. So find those audiences that are friendly and who will be honest with you. Kids are great at that. My seven-year-old will call me out anytime she has no clue what I'm talking about. So putting it in front of them, one step up might be to engage with your informal institutions. So Bishop Museum, Waikiki Aquarium, a lot of these institutions that interact with the public a lot, they'd be more than happy to have a lot of graduate students come and present their work there. As an example, Science on a Sphere, a big six-foot animated ball that's in locations all around the country. And that's an example where you could put some of your global research on there. So there are many venues that you can test out your stuff. As Marci was saying, first at a very level with kids and then maybe moving up to informal institutions and moving it up to, for example, doing a TV show. So it's a very kind of iterative process, I would say. TV show near the top. Don't encourage the students. We want them to take a leap. Yeah, and you can definitely take a leap and be willing to fail, right? I think that's part of it too, is put yourself out there. Get feedback, don't worry. Have those messages, I think that Marci said of like, here remain bullets, but know that it's there for refinement to get people to improve over time, right? So don't think it's the end all. It's just the way of getting it out there. Don't be afraid to push it out there initially and get feedback and willing to accept that constructive feedback. Speaking of message, Marci, maybe if we go back, Michael, to the first slide, Marci, can you sort of go over again, developing your message? Because this really is critical for us students. Sure, so with that contact bullet, the basic science, some science that's done it so us is not related directly to climate change. And so there might be a need to describe the basics about your field of study and get people up to speed with why your area of study is impactful and possibly connected to them, actually. You can think about microbiome research where maybe people are not familiar with microbiomes, but as we're learning, at the frontier of biology research is that microbiomes, microbes, are pretty much run in the show, whether that's in our gut or in our ecosystem. So that might be kind of the first bit of information you share with people. And then thinking of this, your communications as more problem and solution and then inferred benefits of doing that solution is a useful way to hook people's attention. Sometimes there is research that's done purely theoretical and that may not relate to storyline change, for example. But there's usually a way to connect people with a problem that you're addressing and the solution that your work has found. And so humans love stories. The Hollywood arc of a story, there's always a crescendo. There's always the peak of the story. And so we like problem solution. We especially like solution. Our brains like solution. So presenting the information in that way. And then as Leon and I have both said, giving folks a path forward. I don't want people to feel discouraged or like there's no action for us to take in the face of climate change. It's critical actually that we have a community that is scientifically literate that understands that science is actually the way out of the problems that we are currently facing. So I want people, as many people as possible to understand what are the problems that are being addressed through scientific inquiry? What are the solutions that are being found? And getting more people engaged in science means we have more problem solvers, more ideas that are coming forward and providing the way out of this, the way out of climate change or pandemics. It sounds as if we've highlighted climate change but there are many other issues as well. The Red Hill groundwater resource problem or the changing volcanic activity of Kilauea or finding water on the moony. Yeah, we hope that we'll have students discussing many of those topics, some of which do not directly impact the local community because climate change on the moon isn't particularly a burning issue but the basic format I presume is about the same. Yeah, and I would encourage anybody who's involved in science that sharing your knowledge and sharing your passion for science is potentially the invitation for someone else to come join science. We need their ideas, we need their creativity, we need a diversity of voices and backgrounds and concerns in science and we need those brilliant minds. So even if you're not studying climate change, share your science. I'll say nicely, Liam, we've got about 30 seconds left. How would you close? I guess I would add, in terms of how to communicate effectively, look at the people who are effective communicators. Catherine Heyho who does this global weirding series as it appears to on climate change or Ana Elizabeth Johnson. I mean, those are just a couple of examples but there are effective communicators that are out there. Listen to their podcasts, watch their TED Talks, see how they communicate effectively and sort of take some notes and incorporate that into your message. Well, great. Well, I know we're just about one hour of the time so let me just repeat. You've been watching Science at Soast. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Marc and today it's been my real pleasure to have Marcy Grubowski from Soast and Leon Gershwin from the National Ocean Graphic and Atmospheric Administration with us here today. This show is intended to be sort of the blueprint for some of the graduate students who will be appearing in subsequent weeks so I'm hoping that they will take note of what we've heard. It's been fascinating for me as well as I hope the audience as well. I want to thank you both very much. I know it's a trial to come on TV but hopefully it's been fun for both of you and maybe you can watch some of the rest of this series. So thank you to the audience for watching. This has been Science at Soast and we will return next Tuesday at one o'clock again with a different and hopefully student, presenter and guest as well. Until then, goodbye.