What Does a Science Writing Master’s Program Get You? Welcome back for another installment of Ask TON. What are the main elements of a typical curriculum? What are the benefits of doing such a degree? Is there any hope of graduating without incurring crippling levels of debt? Dan Fagin, director of the New York University Science, Health and Environmental Reporting program: Every science journalism master’s program is different, but the best ones are all focused squarely on teaching you to produce great work and otherwise thrive in the science journalism marketplace as it exists today—and also tomorrow, as best we can ascertain. That means teaching you to think critically, act ethically, innovate fearlessly, research thoroughly, organize your work rationally and tell stories with style and clarity. We do this by setting you loose to do the work of journalists, but in an environment steeped in intensive feedback from faculty and peers. It’s quite similar to the real world of journalism except that editing guidance is much more detailed and you work intensively on a range of journalistic skills so diverse that many professionals might never encounter them all in a lifetime: features, straight news, videography, data visualization, book proposals, beat blogging, magazine- length narratives, audio podcasting, investigative techniques and many others. Along the way, you meet and learn from dozens of high- level practitioners in journalism and science. You publish on your own and also in high- level internships (not the coffee- getting variety). The goal is to make you a superb science storyteller in any medium, thus making you irresistible to employers who can afford to be very picky thanks to the very challenging job market for staffers and freelancers. Before committing to a program, it’s very important that you ask some tough questions—of yourself, and of the program director. Are you certain science journalism is what you want to do? If you’re not, do some reporting and writing on your own and make sure you truly love the work. Journalism school, like journalism, is not for the ambivalent. Check to make sure that the program you’re considering is fully transparent about how all of its graduates—not just a few stars—fare in the job market. Political Science Real Estate Science Writing Sloan School of Management Supply Chain Management. Technology and Policy Program Urban Studies and Planning MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography/Applied Ocean Science and Engineering For any. Schedules can change from year to year, so look to see exactly who will be teaching you, and how large classes will be. Ask for course syllabi and read them closely. Even more importantly, ask recent alumni about their experiences in the program and afterward. After all, they were in your shoes a year ago.
Don’t be shy about asking the program director anything that’s on your mind; the best ones practice the transparency they preach. Besides, you might as well get used to asking awkward questions—it’s a core skill for great journalists! Asking questions is important because grad school is expensive. Depending on the program, your degree could cost $6. MIT Sloan Academic Programs From our flagship, two-year MBA program to the intensive, year-long MIT Sloan Fellows Program. The MSMS program is a nine-month, advanced master of science degree that broadens students' global perspectives.All grad programs offer some financial aid that reduces the total cost. Even so, many students end up relying heavily on loans, personal savings, family support, independent scholarships or income from part- time jobs. Debt loads are a serious issue, which is another reason why it’s so important to investigate a program’s post- graduate employment record and to speak directly to alumni. If you pick an excellent program and work hard there, the odds are good that you won’t regret your choice. Rob Irion, director of the University of California, Santa Cruz Science Communication program: Graduate programs in science writing differ in their curricula, their internships, and their career outcomes, so prospective students should do some comparison shopping. Take a close look at the credentials of who will teach your classes, as well as the early- career pathways of alumni. If their backgrounds and positions resonate with your own training to date and your professional goals, then you’ll probably find it worthwhile to attend that program. At UC Santa Cruz, we complete our training in nine months. There are two parallel tracks for our ten graduate students, all of whom have prior degrees in science or engineering. Our classes, which meet two days each week, cover newswriting, social media, feature writing, profiles and essays, policy and investigative reporting, and multimedia (photography, slideshows, podcasts, videos). All courses focus on the key elements of reporting, writing, and editing within each area, and each course is taught by a professional practitioner of that craft. Our internships, which also meet two days each week, place the students at regional newspapers, radio stations, university news services, and national online news services. These placements, required throughout the school year, give the students immediate practice—and a thick portfolio of published work by the time we’re done. At the end of the academic year, each student completes a full- time national- level internship. These often draw upon connections we develop for the students through our lecturers, our guest speakers and editors, our alumni, and at various national meetings we attend. It all amounts to a full- immersion boot camp in the practice of science journalism. It’s harder to do that on one’s own, but it’s certainly possible for motivated young writers. We view the benefits as accelerating the start of a new career for our former scientists; equipping them with strong reporting skills; rapidly building up a portfolio and a national reputation; and opening doors through connections with our national colleagues. The drawback certainly is the cost. We have some fellowships and some philanthropic support to offset a portion of the tuition for each student, and some of our internships carry a modest stipend. Some students earn money by publishing stories from classes as well. There is just one national scholarship for graduate training in science writing, through CASW (four awards per year). A few students have won competitions or arranged support through a foundation privately. It’s an investment, for sure, but our strong track record in jobs and highly productive freelance careers suggests that it pays off. Ann Finkbeiner, director of the Johns Hopkins Science Writing Master’s program: I’m going to take these in reverse order because the last questions are easier. I’m also going to answer only for the Hopkins program, since that’s the only one I know about with any confidence. Crippling Levels of Debt. The least financial aid the Hopkins program gives its grad students is an 8. Which is still a lot of money. But we’re a very small program and we do have several one- semester teaching assistantships and between the stipend and the tuition remission, students with the assistantships can come out of the program with little or no debt. I think. Drawbacks. You spend a good nine months of your life, you generally relocate, you’re possibly quitting or taking leave from a job, you’re not making money, your life in general goes on hold. Main Elements of Curriculum. The Hopkins program is unusually short, a one- year terminal masters running from late August to early May. We’re not a journalism program, and any journalistic practice is taught as it comes up. We focus on finding and structuring stories and writing them. The program is fairly intense—you put your head down and just write and rewrite and write and rewrite. For specifics, see the website (which I’m having trouble getting updated). Benefits/What One Learns. Maybe the best, most believable answers to this would come from the graduates. Certainly one benefit is that you become part of the network of program graduates and your teachers’ colleagues. The network not only introduces you to people who will hire and/or pay you, it also gives you access to a community of advisers who are doing the sort of thing you want to do. I think, however, that the biggest benefit is the prolonged period of doing little but writing and editing other peoples’ writing. Writing isn’t the kind of skill that’s picked up quickly and once- and- for- all. It’s the kind that gets overhauled and refined and redirected and polished over decades. A writing program gives you a head start on the process by giving you a close reading and careful response you’ll never get again—no editor has this kind of time. Ellen Ruppel Shell, co- director, Boston University Center for Science & Medical Journalism: Whether to enroll in graduate school–any graduate school in any discipline–is a weighty decision. The job market for any but a handful of professions is very tough these days, and journalism is, of course, among the toughest. So when candidates call to discuss their prospects, we generally respond with great care. But also with qualified optimism. Journalism, as we all know, is not what it once was. The internet has undone the link between production and payment–many writers–and scientists–produce content for little more than the privilege of sharing their thoughts with what they hope is a wide, engaged audience. Prolific essayist Samuel Johnson famously opined “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money,” but Johnson was born over 3. Today, plenty of very smart people are writing for free, and this puts the “job” of the “science writer” in an entirely new light. The question becomes, how can the professional science writer “add value” above that provided for free by the amateur? This is where a graduate program in science journalism can be quite helpful. Our graduate program, one of the nation’s oldest, has changed to accommodate today’s realities in a way we think pays off handsomely for our graduates. We offer instruction not only in writing, editing and production–for all platforms–but also encourage students to step back from the daily rush to think deeply about scientific issues that matter.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2016
Categories |