St. Olaf to host national science communication leaders for conference on campus
The Institute for Freedom and Community at St. Olaf College will host a two-day Science Communication Conference on campus April 25–26.
The event will feature a keynote lecture, interdisciplinary panel discussions with scholars from across the country, and an undergraduate student poster session. St. Olaf President Susan Rundell Singer, a prolific STEM scholar and educator who previously led the Division of Undergraduate Education at the National Science Foundation, will participate in the conference and host a reception for conference participants.
According to Institute for Freedom and Community Director Christopher Chapp, a political science professor and one of the conference co-planners, the event will feature 14 scholars addressing different areas of science policy, including vaccination, climate change, artificial intelligence, and public engagement with these topics.
“The interdisciplinary nature of science communication research really showcases the value of the liberal arts. It takes learning from a range of disciplines to create effective health and science messages.”
— Institute for Freedom and Community Director Christopher Chapp
“Despite the broad training that students receive at St. Olaf, there are rarely opportunities to learn from a team of natural scientists, social scientists, and humanists about science communication, as we will be able to do at the conference,” says Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Physics Anne Gothmann, one of the conference co-planners. “As a professional scientist, I think it’s easy to stay siloed if we don’t create dedicated events to bring a diverse range of experts together.”
The conference will feature a keynote address by Kasisomayajula Viswanath titled Truth and Evidence: Public Communication and Science in the Era of Misinformation. Viswanath is the Lee Kum Kee Professor of Health Communication in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and in the McGraw-Patterson Center for Population Sciences at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
An award-winning researcher and mentor, Viswanath has authored more than 300 journal articles, book chapters, and books. He has served on national committees for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM). He currently chairs NASEM’s Consensus Study Committee on Understanding and Addressing Science Misinformation and serves on the Standing Committee on Advancement of Science Communication, as well as the Planning Committee on the Public Health Infodemic and Trust in Public Health as a National Security Threat.
Chapp encourages academics, students, and individuals from any background to attend the conference. “This conference has something for everyone,” he says. “The interdisciplinary nature of science communication research really showcases the value of the liberal arts. It takes learning from a range of disciplines to create effective health and science messages.”
The conference is open to the public. The keynote speaker’s talk will begin at 4 p.m. on April 25 in Tomson Hall 280. The April 26 panels will be held in Regents Hall 410 from 9 a.m.–2:30 p.m. The detailed schedule of different panels is available on the Institute for Freedom and Community website.