Meeting Abstract
The rise of active learning in science education has an analog in the world of science communication. The notion of a passive audience has been destroyed by the surging popularity of social media. Today’s audience talks back; in fact, the voices and choices of active reader-commentators commonly drown out the voice of the sage. This online world may seem a largely hostile one to scientists, but three decades of experience helping scientists communicate gives Rosalind Reid reason for optimism. She will share some recipes for successful science communication, identify novel opportunities that exist in the new environment, and explain how “science as a way of knowing” might be an especially powerful starting point—assuming scientists are willing to think about new ways not just to communicate but to do science.
Biography: 
Rosalind Reid (@rosreid) is Executive Director of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, an educational nonprofit dedicated to improving the quality and quantity of science news reaching the public. She was Editor of American Scientist, the interdisciplinary magazine of Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society, from 1992 to 2008. During her tenure with the magazine, she developed hands-on workshops on science illustration for scientists. She has now presented “Picturing Research” talks and workshops across the U.S. and in six other countries. Co-organizer of the MIT/Harvard Image and Meaning workshop series on visual communication of science, she was the first Journalist in Residence at the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and again took a “science immersion” leave to serve as a Fellow at the Harvard Initiative in Innovative Computing. She served as Executive Director of the Institute for Applied Computational Science at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences from 2010 to 2013 and as CASW’s Program Director 2012-13. A graduate of Syracuse University with an M.A. in public policy sciences from Duke, Reid learned the science beat as a research news editor at North Carolina State University in the 1980s. She is a member of the National Association of Science Writers, has served on awards committees for the National Science Board and American Institute of Physics, is an honorary member of Sigma Xi, and continues her affiliation with the Harvard engineering school as an Associate. She is currently serving on the Organizing Committee for the 2017 World Conference of Science Journalists. She succeeded Ben Patrusky in her current position in September 2013.
