Open to students who completed the Summer Ventures program or another academic research program.
Learn self-advocacy and communication skills to tell your story -- in person, in college essays, and professionally -- of a research experience or other key extracurricular experiences.
Identify gaps in research communication you started or drafted (poster, paper, talk) or start a draft of a new one to finalize and present at a research venue (competition or conference).
Take this course and you can….
Build or revise a skills-focused resume
Identify key message and story of your experiences in essay format that showcase your skills
Highlight your “brand” in short, brief elevator pitches
Practice and refine key principles of good visual research communication
Apply stronger planning skills to your communication
Create, refine, share a poster or research paper based on your experience
“Learning the quality of my own soft skills, something that I probably would have not acknowledged on my own before hand.”
“I found the practice presentations to be very helpful in developing the skills necessary for symposiums and competitions.”
You gain critical skills in a research experience or other high-impact extracurricular school or summer opportunity. This course teaches you how to identify, focus, and advocate the transformative (soft) skills that students gain in a research experience, and how to frame them in common recruitment tools like:
A college essay
Summer/scholarship program applications
Interviews
Resume
During this course, you will improve key aspects of presenting student research, including explaining, diagrams/tables, identifying key messages and headings, and meeting professional standards for citation. This provides time to rehearse presenting your research at conferences or events such as NC Science and Engineering Fair, Junior Science and Humanities Symposium, State of North Carolina Undergraduate Creativity and Research Symposium, and similar events.
You will engage in a mix of skills-based activities (self-paced, can work ahead) and projects with fixed deadlines tied to our face-to-face meetings. The class is a mix of learning principles and applying and practicing them with examples embedded in the course, and producing your own work.
Weekly meetings on Wednesdays at 8:30 p.m. via Zoom for 50 minutes (9 p.m., Oct. 23) in 2024
Approx. 3 hours per week of commitment
Register for more details or contact Chris Thomas at thomas@ncssm.edu