### Civilization is Communication: Bridging the Gap Between Science and Society ---------- STEM for Virginia | University of Virginia

### Overview ---------- As science advances, the gap between the "lay-population" and STEM fields will likely widen. This can lead to feelings of inaccessibility that could hinder future growth and, perhaps, cause wide-spread misinformation. A possible way to combat this outcome would be increasing STEM community proficiency in communication. - In short, we hope to explain why being able to communicate STEM ideas well is important, not only for others' benefit, but your own as well.

#### Narrowing the Gap ---------- 1. **Improving Learning and Understanding:** Being able to communicate well means you understand the subject thoroughly, likely corresponding to better grades 2. **Improving Collaboration:** Things are growing more connected, so it's important to have the soft skills necessary to take advantage of this reality 3. **Engage the Public:** Unfortunately, getting money in STEM is difficult, but learning to communicate makes it easier to justify your receiving of funding

### How to Improve? ---------- 1. **Eat the Frog:** Do it. Practice communication in a myriad of ways. Audio/video projects, presentations, written reports, etc. 2. **Receive Feedback:** Openly and earnestly seek out feedback. Practicing in a vacuum without considering improvements is meaningless. 3. **Two Eyes and Ears, One Mouth:** Listen and read more. There's much to learn from people who can do what you dream of, so study them.

### Read More ---------- - A great article can be found [here](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/importance-communication-stem-education-bridging-gap-between/) (much of this presentation was made while referencing it and its arguments) - *Guiding STEM Grad Students to Better Speaking* [here](http://stemforvirginia.github.io/files/comm_resources/Guiding-STEM-graduate-students-to-better-speaking-.pdf) - General resources folder [here](https://github.com/stemforvirginia/stemforvirginia.github.io/tree/master/files/comm_resources)