News Release

SPH students halfway to creating 100 widely viewed science blogs in groundbreaking course

February 14, 2012, UM SPH release

A new course at the University of Michigan School of Public Health has earned international attention by assigning students to communicate to broad audiences about recently published scientific research. The course, Communicating Science through Social Media (EHS 796), is at the halfway point of challenging 10 Master of Public Health students to write 10 blog posts over 10 weeks of the winter 2012 semester. The resulting 100 blogs are being published together on the website Mind the Science Gap, which has had media coverage in Scientific American and other journals.

The instructor of the course is Dr. Andrew Maynard, Ph.D., Professor of Environmental Health Sciences at SPH, the Charles and Rita Gelman Risk Science Professor, and Director of UM’s Risk Science Center. In explaining why he created the course, Dr. Maynard says that for public health students and professionals, “the ability to translate complex science into actionable intelligence is more important now than ever in supporting policy makers and business leaders to make decisions that are grounded in evidence rather than speculation.”

University of Michigan School of Public Health Associate Dean for Research Alfred Franzblau calls this new offering “an exciting class,” noting that the students’ weekly blogs are evaluated in part by the replies they make to comments generated by the nearly 50 international mentors Dr. Maynard has enlisted to respond—as well as the general public.

Dr. Maynard rates the overall quality of the students’ posts as very high. “What has excited me the most though is the constructive comments of our mentors - people who have agreed to follow and critique the posts - and how the students are learning from these.” Included among the mentors are academics and established professional bloggers on subjects as diverse as cancer and new media (see the full list at: http://www.mindthesciencegap.org/mentors/ )

The top five most read student posts from the class are:

Zinc: The Secret to a Shorter and More Bearable Cold? (http://www.mindthesciencegap.org/2012/01/19/zinc-the-secret-to-a-shorter-and-more-bearable-cold/ - coverage in The Alchemist ChemWeb newsletter: http://www.chemweb.com/content/alchemist/alchemist_20120126.html)
Bed Sharing, Infant Mortality and a Never Ending Debate (http://www.mindthesciencegap.org/2012/01/26/bed-sharing-infant-mortality-and-a-never-ending-debate/
The Buzz About Caffeine Consumption and Reproductive Hormones (http://www.mindthesciencegap.org/2012/01/31/the-buzz-about-caffeine-consumption-and-reproductive-hormones/
Mad Cow Disease Just Got Crazier (http://www.mindthesciencegap.org/2012/02/01/mad-cow-disease-just-got-crazier/
Silent Discrimination: Issues of Environmental Justice (http://www.mindthesciencegap.org/2012/01/16/silent-discrimination-issues-of-environmental-justice/

To read all the students’ posts on everything from malaria-fighting genetically modified mosquitos, to fracking, to obesity, see http://www.mindthesciencegap.org/

Below: A collage illustrations posted by students in the first half of the 100 blogs.

collage

Contact: Terri Mellow or Mary Beth Lewis, SPH Office of Communications
Phone: (734) 615-2279
E-mail: sph.communications@umich.edu