Archive for November 11th, 2009
Science Writing
by stephen on Nov.11, 2009, under ChemSem 09
This week’s seminar was Science Writing. The speaker was Jyllian Kemsley, the Associate Editor of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN). She got her bachelor’s degree from Amherst College in 1994 and went on to Stanford University where she received her PhD in 2003. She took a science writing program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and for the next four years worked as a freelance writer before joining Chemical & Engineering News. She was an interesting speaker and easy to follow.
One of the new things I learned was that ACS is the world’s largest scientific society, having 154000 members. Another thing was that C&EN primarily does 4 kinds of stories, feature stories, news items, online news, and blog. The third thing was that the rewards for scientific writing include intellectual freedom, flexibility, and allows an individual to be highly creative.
The other students seemed to be pretty interested. The question and answer portion went well, there were a lot of questions and the speaker was able to answer them well.
The speaker encouraged me to learn more about the subject, since it seems like it would be a useful skill. However I do not think I would be willing to go to grad school for it.
The seminar was interesting because it was very different, it was a video conference and the topic was not one that we normally might have in a chemistry seminar. If I had to describe this seminar to a friend I would say, “benefits of scientific writing.”
Online Presentation on Science Writing By Jyllian Kemsley
by seonui on Nov.11, 2009, under ChemSem 09
Our guest speaker for the chemistry seminar held on November 5 was Jyllian Kemsley, who is currently an associate editor of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN). This seminar was special because we had a communication with the speaker via online, which was performed as a new form of presentation at Andrews University, and it was done very successfully.
Through the seminar, I learned a lot about science writing. She said that many science writers were recommended to have broad chemistry intelligence. In fact, she had B.A. degree in Chemistry at Amherst College and Ph.D. in bio-inorganic chemistry at Stanford University. Nevertheless, she is still making an effort to keep learning. In addition to science backgrounds, the talent for writing clearly and accurately is needed to be a good writer as well.
Another thing I learned from the seminar was that science writers are working in many more fields than I have thought. With science knowledge and writing skill, they are performing their job not only in science-focused media and publications but also at many different organizations, such as research institutes, government agencies, many companies, and hospital.
On the other hand, she said that science writers often face some difficulties, one of which was that they sometimes have to take care of an unfamiliar field. So, I was wondering during the seminar how she deals with this challenge in more specific way.
I think the seminar was very interesting for me because I could learn a lot from her. Actually, when I try to express my thoughts and opinion in written words, I sometimes have a difficulty. However, I realized that widely reading of scientific papers or local and national newspapers could help me establish a good writing skill. Also I would say to my ‘non-science’ friend or family that science writer can be a great job for one who is interested in writing with science knowledge.
Tell A Friend
