At the Office of Science & Research Communications we perform both traditional types of media relations, such as producing news releases and media advisories, and writing articles for the faculty-staff newspaper and alumni publications, and unconventional efforts, such as publishing a multimedia research magazine, working with the local science museum on tours that allow them to observe scientific research as it happens and consulting with national scientific organizations to help them improve their outreach efforts to the general public.

Traditional Media Relations
The Office of Science & Research Communications develops stories about newsworthy research in the fields of science and engineering being conducted on campus. Working closely with the Vanderbilt News Service and the News & Public Affairs Office at the Medical Center, the office uses traditional methods including news releases, media advisories and query letters to bring these stories to the attention of local and national media.

In addition, the office collaborates with the faculty-staff newspapers for the campus, The Register, and for the Medical Center, The Reporter, to distribute these stories to the Vanderbilt campus community. Similarly, it works with Alumni Publications to help keep Vanderbilt alumni informed of the interesting and important research taking place.

Vanderbilt's Online Research Magazine
In addition to these traditional methods, the office is pursuing a number of non-traditional approaches to science communications. One of its major projects has been the development and production on an online research magazine. It is one of the first online magazines produced by a university that utilizes the multi-media capabilities of the Internet to tell stories about university research. By combining clearly written text with photography, illustrations, animations, and video and audio recordings, Exploration is pioneering efforts to use this new medium to do a better job of informing the public of the basic nature of the scientific process and to give its viewers a closer view of the personalities and motivations of individual scientists and engineers, who are the real explorers of the modern age.

Because of the close association with Vanderbilt's Communication of Science, Engineering and Technology major, Exploration also features a unique student voice. In its Students @ Work section it features the writing of science communications majors writing about their experiences as interns working in research laboratories on campus and writing about the experience of other students who have taken opportunities to work on various laboratories scattered around campus.

Laboratory Tours
In the academic year 2001-2002, the office initiated a pioneering new approach to science communications. Partnering with the Adventure Science Museum, we developed a laboratory tours program that brings science-museum-goers to campus for tours of selected research laboratories. Guided by science communications majors, tour members get to see what actual research laboratories look like, see demonstrations of the work being conducted in the laboratory and hear dedicated scientists and engineers discuss their work and explain why it is important. So far, two pilot tours have been organized: one of engineering laboratories in conjunction with National Engineering Week and one of neuroscience laboratories in conjunction with National Brain Awareness Week. Based on the success of these two tours, the office and the science museum have submitted a proposal to receive federal funding to develop this program further.

Partnership with Research!America
Office director, Rick Chappell, consults closely with the Research!America organization on the science communications workshops that the group is organizing at universities around the country. He and World's Apart co-author Jim Hartz provide their insights into the problems that the scientific and engineering communities have in communicating with the public and provide suggestions for specific policies that scientific organizations can adopt to reduce them. During these workshops, the two also work with individual researchers to help them improve their communications skills.

National Advisory Board
The office's efforts benefit from the advice and suggestions of a National Advisory Board. The 10-member board meets annually. Its members are Allan Bromley, professor of physics at Yale University and former Presidential Science Advisor, Jim Hartz, science broadcast journalist, Madeleine Jacobs, editor of Chemical and Engineering News, Leon Lederman, resident scholar, Illinois Math and Science Academy and Nobel laureate in physics, Robert Logan, associate dean of the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri, Bob Meyers, director of the National Press Foundation, Boyce Rensberger, director of the Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT, Kathy Sawyer, science reporter at The Washington Post, John Seigenthaler, chairman of the First Amendment Center, and Paula Apsell, executive producer of the science program NOVA at WGBH in Boston.