Events & Calendars CHI Salon: "From Student to Explainer: The Public-Facing Work of Students in the Arts and Sciences"

Writing museum labels or web content for a public audience requires a mastery of the ideas that permit the author to be both brief and dense, specific but jargon-free. So what about teaching students to do it? What does it look like to teach students to communicate complex topics in art and science to a broad public audience?

In this panel discussion, Mead Art Museum’s Head of Education Emily Potter-Ndiaye will moderate a conversation with Professors Chris Durr (chemistry) and Dwight Carey (architectural studies and art history) to hear more about their recent student projects in public-facing writing and the pedagogies that support it. What does this look like for topics that normally require a deep base of background knowledge? What is specific to the discipline, universal across the curriculum? Where did their best efforts fall flat? And what do they take from the process as educators and scholars? Participants are welcome and encouraged to come with notes from their own practice to add to the discussion.