IGERT Fellows Use Improv to Communicate Research (Nature)

January 7, 2014

Two Dickey Center IGERT Fellows are featured in an article in Nature about science communication and Dartmouth's partnership with Stony Brook University’s Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. The center will work with Dartmouth faculty, undergraduates, and graduate students on improving their skills in communicating their research, in part through the use of improvisation.

A handful of IGERT fellows took part in the training. Two graduate students in ecology and evolutionary biology, Jessica Trout-Haney and Christine Urbanowitz, describe how the training helped them. "Telling a personal story has made giving talks much more authentic, and fun,” said Trout-Haney. After her initial trepidation about taking part in improvisation, Urbanowitz says it improved her confidence. “Improv allows you to trust yourself enough to know that you'll be able to figure out where you're going with your presentation without having it memorized."

To read the entire article, go to the Nature website. Read the Dartmouth Now story on the Dartmouth website.