SOUTH KINGSTOWN – The University of Rhode Island’s Metcalf Institute recently became the beneficiary of a $1.7 million National Science Foundation grant to develop a fellowship that will train and support science communicators from marginalized communities in environmental science.
URI said the funding supports the five-year SciComm Identities Project, which starting in January 2023 will have three yearlong cohorts that will bring in 20 science communicators each year. Each cohort, URI said, will focus on a different climate change-related environmental issue – energy, water, and agriculture and food security.
Metcalf Institute Executive Director Sunshine Menezes said the idea for the new fellowship program came out of the institute’s Inclusive SciComm Symposium. The program was created because Menezes and her colleagues noticed that science communication conferences were still not addressing diversity and inclusion despite multiple conversations taking place within the field, URI said.
“We want to talk about how a person’s identities inform their science communication, and how their science communication training experiences could be more effective in the long run if training centered their experiences and identities within and outside of the academy, rather than assuming all science communicators share the same motivations and experiences,” Menezes said in a statement.
URI said the program is currently seeking applicants and details on how to sign up can be found online.
James Bessette is the PBN special projects editor, and also covers the nonprofit and education sectors. You may reach him at Bessette@PBN.com. You may also follow him on Twitter at @James_Bessette.
