IMMERSIVE SCIENCE COMMUNICATION: TRAINING GRADUATE STUDENTS IN EFFECTIVE MEDIA AND PUBLIC COMMUNICATIONS WHILE RAFTING THE COLORADO RIVER

In March of 2023, UC Davis convened its 22^nd student-focused “Ecogeo” expedition, in this case a 19-day rafting voyage down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon. The theme of the 2023 trip was science communication – training an interdisciplinary graduate-student group in effective translation and communication of research- and management-focused science. Training was conducted by the coauthors of this abstract: a UC professor and a New York Times climate and environmental reporter. The Colorado River and the arid US West remain under intense pressures, driven by climate change and many other anthropogenic stressors. Mitigating these stresses and managing these systems rely heavily on science and ongoing research. Academics are experienced in the conduct of research, but often poorly trained in effectively translating their work for non-scientific audiences. Tips and tools have been developed: to avoid jargon, for clarify, to enunciate key results and significance, and to organize narratives in a journalism-friendly format (e.g., the “inverted pyramid”). A mantra that evolved during the 2023 Ecogeo trip was “science as a foreign language” – the recognition that students have been trained over many years to learn a coded dialect to facilitate communication with other scientist. But journalists, political leaders, and the general public don’t speak that dialect, so that the message must be expressed in one’s native tongue. Ecogeo participants presented research-level syntheses spanning the hydrology, ecology, geology, engineering, etc. of the Colorado River and Grand Canyon. They were challenged to pare down their research into a crisp, perhaps brutally crisp, one-minute presentation followed by questions from the journalist that had to be answered without lapsing into jargon. Each evening, the students and mentors worked iteratively to refine their message and delivery – sitting beside the mile-high walls of the Canyon, with the Colorado River roaring beside the sand bar, and the desert stars pivoting across the sky above.