The Australian Science Communicators is proud to offer the Unsung Hero Award of Australian Science Communication

The award will be announced at the ASC Conference in Melbourne in February 2020.

Nominations close at 5pm on Friday 31 January 2020.

ASC Unsung Hero Award 2019 Nomination Form – Entry WORD
ASC Unsung Hero Award 2019 Nomination Form – Entry PDF

The Unsung Hero of Australian Science Communication is an initiative of the Australian Science Communicators.

Previous recipients are Kylie Andrews (2017) Kylie Walker (2015), Frankie Lee (2014) and Craig Cormick (2013). The award was launched by the 2011 National Executive and realigned from the previous ‘Unsung Hero of Science’ award (read some background here).

Criteria

The criteria for nomination for the Unsung Hero Australian Science Communication are:

1. Nominees (an individual or group) must be resident in Australia and actively engaged in science communication, interpreted broadly to include, but not limited to, pursuits such as:
   • teaching,
   • research,
   • broadcasting,
   • script and book writing,
   • science and policy,
   • science shows,
   • science promotion and
   • interpretation of science within cultural institutions.
2. The work the nominee is being nominated for must have been carried out in Australia.
3. Nominees should have not yet received significant recognition for their contribution to science and its promotion. This will almost certainly rule out a ‘top’ or popular science communicator. The nominee should have shown that they regard science communication as an integral part of scientific work.
4. Nominees should have a considerable or prolonged record (at least several years) in science communication.
5. The award is intended to recognise those whose contribution has been so significant over a period of time that they should by now have been recognised. It is unlikely that this would apply to a candidate whose contribution, however significant, is of short duration.
6. Nominators must give careful consideration to what counts as ‘science’ – for example, nominees from technological or environmental fields should be nominated not just on the basis of their contribution to those particular fields, but because the scientific side of their work is strong and their communication contributes to a better understanding of the process and practice of science.

Notes:

This award may be made to a candidate whose work is specifically in science education, promotion or communication in one or many fields where the science component of their work is highly significant.

Benefits of the award

Ideally, the award may assist the recipient in their work, for example by publicising a difficult issue or by recognising that they have been a ‘lone and unpopular voice’ in spite of their scientific achievements being strong.

The award may also help a recipient to focus attention on their efforts or give them greater credibility and help them overcome adverse or unfair criticism.

Selection Process

Selection is based solely on the written information provided on the nomination form.

A selection committee of representatives from the Australian Science Communicators will assess all nominations and determine award recipients.

In some instances the selection committee may request further information before making their final decision.

The Australian Science Communicators reserves the right to make no awards should the judges consider that the quality of candidates does not warrant awards, or should the nominated candidate(s) not satisfy the selection criteria.

Requirements for Award Nomination

The nominator must be a financial member of the ASC, but the nominee need not be a member. The nominator should first consult with the nominee and referees to ensure the nominee is aware of, and gives consent, to the application.

Each nomination must comprise a fully completed award nomination form. Preferable length: 2 pages.

Nominations close at 5pm on Friday 31 January 2020.   

Nomination enquiries to:
Lisa Bailey
President of the Australian Science Communicatorspresident@asc.asn.au

Send completed nominations to:
Kali Madden
Executive Officer – Australian Science Communicators
office@asc.asn.au

Nomination forms

Nominations close at 5pm on Friday 31 January 2020.

ASC Unsung Hero Award 2019 Nomination Form – Entry WORD
ASC Unsung Hero Award 2019 Nomination Form – Entry PDF

Presidents report

2019 has seen us celebrate 25 years of the ASC.  It’s been my first year as President, and I’d like to thank everyone who has been invaluable in helping me throughout the year, especially the executive committee and Kali as our invaluable executive officer.

Activity over the year:

• Regular communication through the ASC Channels including SCOPE, our member newsletter, the ASC-list and the Facebook Group. These avenues continue to provide useful ways for members to promote, seek collaboration or advertise and find new job opportunities.
• ASC has celebrated our 25^th anniversary with a recording on the future challenges for Science Communication, recently broadcast on ABC Big Ideas. We’ve also been collating reflections from past ASC presidents on not only the past but future challenges for Australian science communicators in the coming decade, currently being published through the ASC site.
• We were represented at the Eureka Science Awards.
• I participated in the World Conference of Science Literacy held in Beijing in October 2019 in my capacity as ASC President. In a plenary session to the conference I outlined the scope of science engagement activity in Australia and our future challenges including increasingly fragmented audiences, and ability to translate scientific knowledge into policy outcomes in a climate (no pun intended) of increasing environmental threat.
• Also as part of this conference ASC has been invited to participate in a working group to establish an international organisation – the World Organisation for Science Literacy. I will approach this with interest in the spirit of fostering international collaboration.
• We have also been busy preparing for the next National Conference, to be held in Monash in February 2020 with the generous support of our host partner the Monash Sustainable Development Institute. With a wide range of submissions I look forward to our (almost) annual conference event, the only of its kind for our unique mix of science engagement practitioners and researchers.

I’d like to acknowledge our outgoing Secretary Teresa Belcher for her contribution to ASC over the last 3 years.

I’d like to congratulate the state branches on supporting a wide range of diverse activities for our membership including

• The Storytelling for Science Communicator’s workshop in Melbourne in July
• The Friday Al Desko events in Canberra
• The 2019 ASC Careers event in Brisbane
• Communicate to Inspire event in Perth

And many many more.

Challenges have been expressed about the difficulty branches face in understanding what kind of support or processes they have access to in order to support their state based activity.  I appreciate the work that goes in from all our dedicated volunteer committee members, and so we look in 2020 to take action on this feedback with

• an improved communication schedule of regular meetings (see draft schedule here)
• easy access guide on how to access capitation and grant funding to support state based activities, click here to review.

This post is part of a series which asked past presidents of ASC: What are the biggest science communication challenges Australia faces right now and over the next decade?

Response from Craig Cormick

I feel the biggest science communication challenge facing Australia is the fact we all eat different biscuits but don’t know enough about those who eat different biscuits to us, nor why they prefer them and who they talk to about them.

Let’s call that biscuit diffusion. Its Latin scientific name would be: bis cotus diffusion.

In plain English, without the biscuit metaphor, that means there are more and more diffuse audiences that are further and further apart from each other, and there are more and more diffuse messages that we need to target those different audience with, and there are more and more diffuse mediums that we need to use to best reach them.

Many of us get that. But many of us don’t.

For as target audiences diffuse it is harder and harder to see the other audiences who do not sit somewhere near us. In a supermarket it is pretty plain to see that not everyone likes the same types of biscuits as us, because all the other biscuits are there in front of us – and if we stay there in the supermarket aisle long enough we will even see some people choosing Iced VoVos and some choosing Wafers and some even choosing Ginger Nuts (yeah, I know, what are they thinking?)

But in a more diffuse landscape the different biscuits are nowhere near each other, and might even be in different shops in different suburbs. So our capacity to know what other biscuits exist is diminished, and our capacity to know anything about those other biscuit buyers is diminished ever further.

And we tend to work with people who like the same biscuits as us, and we tend to prefer simple messages over complex ones. This means we know just how to reach those other people who prefer the logic and reason of Scotch Finger biscuits, and we spend much of our time talking to them. But we just can’t really understand those crazy Iced VoVo eaters! I mean, we’ve showed them the data and facts about the superiority of Scotch Fingers but they just keep on buying and eating Iced VoVos! What is wrong with them?

We really have to admit our biscuit failures and we need to really work harder to better understand those other biscuit eaters, and know what messages and what mediums and what influences they respond to. We need to better understand not just the Ice VoVo eaters, but those who prefer Honey Jumbles and Tic Tocs and Vita Wheat and yes, even Tiny Teddies!

It is no good saying the problem is with them. No more than we can say the problem is with those who refuse to accept our facts on climate change, or that we were taken by surprise by the outcome of the US Presidential election, or the Australian Federal election, or the Brexit vote.

We should have been talking to those people who don’t think like us and know where they are and know what their preferred mediums and influencers are.  And we should be working with them to frame messages to best reach them.

They are not the enemy – regardless of their different views – they are just different biscuits eaters to us,  and the biggest challenge for science communications is to stop doing things the way we have traditionally done them, and concentrate on how to best reach them, understand them, and successful communicate with them.

As a science communicator do you ever wish you could find out how much your skills are worth on the job market?

We do, which is why we have teamed up with ANU’s Centre for the Public Awareness of Science to develop Australia’s first profile of Australia’s science communicators.

We’re looking to hear from anyone who plays a role in science communication, including people who communicate about science as part of their role, including scientists, academics and volunteers.

By answering the questions in this five to ten-minute survey you’ll help you and others benchmark the salaries that different kinds of science communicators get for the different skills and services they provide.

We’ll release a report of the results from this survey at our annual conference in February and hope to publish relevant findings in an academic journal.

To start the survey just click here – https://anu.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_a9SJvGelO387mLP

The survey will be open until 5pm, Monday 23 September.

Once you’ve finished please consider sharing this survey with any friends or relatives you may have who also communicate about science so we hear from all kinds of science communicators.

Lisa Bailey

President, Australian Science Communicators

ASC conferences are the premier Australian networking, knowledge making and professional development opportunity for those making science and technology accessible. Thanks to our major sponsor Monash Sustainable Development Institute, we will be returning to Victoria for the first time in over a decade, with the conference to be held in the new Learning and Teaching Building at Monash Campus from 17-19th February 2020. http://asc2020.asc.asn.au/

The theme of our 2020 Conference will address the urgency of the challenges we’re facing: priorities, policies and best practice science communication for human survival. What is the role for science engagement in setting policy priorities? How do communication efforts leverage behaviour change?

We will soon be opening registrations for producers and presenters to pitch their ideas for conference sessions. We will be trying several new formats in the 2020 conference to allow for maximum participation, with plenty of time for the face-to-face discussions that are constantly rated the most valuable aspect of the conference.

We know that some ASC members are facing increasing constraints on the ability to engage with professional opportunities, so the 2020 conference is offered at 2017 prices (not adjusted for inflation), with an uncatered option also on offer. There are also super-earlybird discounts available for the first round of registrations. We’ve opened registrations as early as possible to also take advantage of end of financial year expenditure.

The ASC Conference is one of the only national opportunities to meet a wonderful bunch of approachable, creative and experienced professionals, keen to share and collaborate.

Register Now