Science Writing From the Perspective of the UW Friday Harbor Laboratories

This is an excerpt from, Writing Right There, by Eric Morel. Morel is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English at the University of Washington and this spring taught the “Science Writing for Diverse Audiences” course at Friday Harbor Laboratories. 

Platform at UW Labs – Contributed photo

“One of the great benefits of studying science writing at FHL is the way stakes are reinforced by the location itself.  On several sunny days, I took my students out to a platform near the water, and what I liked about this platform—and indeed about sundry seats on the rocky points of the campus shoreline—was the visibility of the town across the harbor.  Especially as the course shifted its attention to writing about science for non-experts, this relationship between the foreground and background of the FHL setting made posing such questions clear rather than abstract.  We had discussions on the platform about how different writers including Elizabeth Kolbert, Alanna Mitchell, and Callum Roberts each made choices to convey the same information about ocean acidification differently.  For students who take a science-writing class at this field station, it is visually apparent that how we write matters for how we reach across the UW property line.”

Read the entire article in Friday Harbor Laboratories newsletter… Tide Bite July 2018, Vol. 59

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