Reflections From The Chair
Raul F. Medina
Assistant Professor,
Chair, Graduate Student Forum
The Value of Effective Communication
People engaged in scientific endeavors have the wonderful opportunity to uncover the secrets nature conceals. Often times, these secrets are well hidden and finding them requires hard work, dedication, inspiration and patience plus a considerable amount of accumulated knowledge and specialized training. In our efforts to acquire the tools we need to uncover nature's wonders and to understand nature ways, we often forget an important aspect of science. We often forget to communicate our findings to people outside our specific fields in an engaging manner. You may ask why should people outside our fields care about our findings. Well, there are many answers to this question. Although you may be surprised, people actually do care.
If you think about it, most of our research is possible due to the funds that society (i.e., people) makes available through their contributions to federal and private entities. In conservation biology there is an old mantra stating that people do not preserve things they do not know. In the same venue people won't fund things they do not know or are not excited about. You may think that you are trying to comprehend an important yet uninteresting aspect of nature's collection of wonders. Probabilities are that if you are interested, several people will be as well. The difference between you and people outside your field is that you have spent more time thinking about these phenomena than they have and consequently you know much more about these wonders than they do. Thus, before lamenting people lack of interest in your study subjects you should try to transmit your excitement about your discoveries to them, so they know and so they care. I need to admit though, that societies' interests are not always a good measure of scientific relevance. However, why should you claim to be a misunderstood researcher before you even try to be understood?
Generating excitement can be a challenging task (especially for scientists). Learning to communicate in an engaging way may do the trick though. Like most activities in live, learning to transmit information effectively, requires a little dosage of innate abilities and huge amounts of practice. In other words if you are not a naturally born communicator you can learn to be one. The roman author Publilius Syrus already said several centuries ago "practice is the best of all instructors". The Graduate Student Forum is the perfect place to acquire the practice you need to engage us in your scientific world and to learn about your peers' research activities. The Graduate Student Forum is also an ideal venue to obtain and to give new ideas and points of view, to enrich your vision and to look at your research questions from a different perspective. As graduate students you should dedicate yourselves to be ready to do good science and to communicate your excitement to others. In a time in which hearing what scientist have to say may decide the future of our society as we know it, it is not only necessary but crucial to be able to effectively communicate to others at a faster and more engaging way than our field has traditionally done. Let the flow of information and excitement begin!