|
| |
|
| Masters of Arts in Science Writing First Semester | Second Semester | Internships | Visitors | Graduates | Application Information | Faculty Writing about Science is a one-year terminal masters' degree. The program is housed along with the highly-ranked graduate programs in fiction and poetry in The Writing Seminars. Accordingly the science writing program focuses not only on balanced and substantial reporting, but also on the craft and quality of writing. The required courses, like those of the department's other graduate programs, are workshops in which student writing is exhaustively edited by faculty and by the other students. In all their writing, students focus on developing story ideas and on presenting the science clearly, accurately, and seamlessly. The best stories also clarify for the general reader the context of a discovery, its technical and social implications, and the amount of confidence scientists have in its accuracy. Everything worthy is rewritten; you learn to write on the rewrites. The Hopkins program for science writing benefits from the world-class science at Hopkins-affiliated institutions. Students go to scientific meetings and talks, and interview researchers and visiting scientists. Students take three courses per semester; in the first semester, two are required courses; in the second semester, only one is a required course. Although we offer no courses in journalistic practice, students learn as they go about interviewing, pitching story ideas, writing hard news, writing features, handling embargoes, and about journalistic ethics. Though not required to, students will typically publish articles before the year is out. Unlike the MFA students, the science writing students need not demonstrate proficiency in a foreign language. In general, although the faculty helps students develop a well-rounded course of study, the program will ultimately be unique for each student. Students who do best tend to be highly motivated, opportunity-seizing self-starters. First Semester Graduate Workshop in Science Writing Science Stories Researchers visiting Science Stories have included: physician Harry Dietz on his research on Marfan syndrome; physicist Daniel Lathrop on how the earth generates its magnetic field; physician Al Sommer on eradication with vitamin A treatments of fatal night blindness in Nepal; cosmologist Alex Szalay on the design of the terabtye-sized databases for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey; anthropologist Sidney Mintz on cultural cuisines; psychiatrist Paul McHugh on the biological mechanisms of eating behaviors; sociologist Andrew Cherlin on the children of divorce; physicist Kailash Sahu on the discovery of new planets with the Hubble Space Telescope. Course work Second Semester Recent thesis topics have included: the unsuccessful search by clinicians, patients, and researchers for the cause and treatment of adrenoleukodystrophy, the Lorenzo's Oil's disease; the checkered history of research into fusion as an energy source; a profile of Polly Matzinger and history of her controversial danger theory of immunology; the balance between hype and reality in nanotechnology; an investigation of the practices and dangers of wild versus farmed salmon; an investigation of zoos' claims of conserving endangered species; the professional practices and personal costs of pre-implantation genetic testing; the spontaneous development of sign language in deaf Nicaraguan children. Elective courses Internships Our program doesn't require internships, but we do recommend them as invaluable sources of published clips. Most students try to arrange internships for the summer immediately following graduation, though an occasional student has an internship concurrent with the school year. Between our lists of internships and students' entrepreneurship, our graduates have been interns at: Science, ScienceNow, Nature, Nature Medicine, Science News, Discover, Seed, Physics Today, IEEE Spectrum, Harvard Health Newsletter, Dallas Morning News, Johns Hopkins Magazine, Johns Hopkins Medical News, New Scientist, Geotimes; the American Institute of Physics, the National Cancer Institute; the Discovery channel, RadioLab, and National Public Radio. Visitors The JHU science writing program frequently hosts a wide range of speakers and visitors. They share their real-world experience and provide students with an invaluable sense of what life would be like in different genres of science writing: broadcast journalism, books, magazines, newspapers, and public information. Visitors to the program have included:
Graduates Graduates of the JHU science writing program can be found working in nearly every part of the science writing universe. Some have been or are now on the staffs of newspapers and magazines, including Nature, Science, Time, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Los Angeles Times, U.S. World & News Report, American Health, Johns Hopkins Medical News, USA Today, Biosciences, Geotimes, Smithsonian, and The New Scientist. A few now have jobs designing science exhibits for museums. One is a science radio producer, another is at National Public Radio. Some write for universities or scientific institutions such as the University of Wisconsin, the Scripps Research Institute, the Marine Biological Institute, the University of California at San Francisco, NASA, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and the National Institutes of Health. Increasingly they write for websites: HealthSCOUT, CBS Health/Watch.com, SciTutor.com, and the websites of the American Physical Society, Celera, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Many are full-time free-lancers. Several write books. A few others, who interrupted professional training for a year, went back to law schools, medical residencies, and Ph.D. programs. While this program can be a valuable experience for people who might like to write about science as a complement to their main profession, the department is most interested in applicants who plan to have science writing as a career.
Successful applicants to the program in Writing about Science typically have undergraduate degrees in science, often master's degrees, and occasionally Ph.D.'s or M.D.'s. But the program does not require science degrees, only an intense interest in science and in furthering the public's understanding of it. We welcome applicants of all ages and levels of experience, though typically our applicants have been in the workplace for a few years, either as researchers or as writers. We usually accept between four and six students each year. To repeat: we are most interested in applicants who want to be professional writers. Application Information Applicants interested in obtaining information about the part-time M.A. writing program should visit the website for the Advanced Academic Programs Writing Programs (AAP), which is a separate though related entity at Johns Hopkins. See https://advanced.jhu.edu/writing Prerequisites for Admissions to the Writing Seminars The Application The supporting documents consist of the following:
Letters of Recommendation Writing Sample Statement of Purpose The statement of purpose must be sent electronically. Applicants for the M.A. Program in Science Writing should include a two-page statement of purpose that might explain, for example, why you want to write about science, what subjects you find most interesting, what writers you do and do not admire and why, and what in your own writing you'd like to work on. Transcripts Ann Finkbeiner, who freelances regularly for Science and The New York Times Book Review, is author of After the Death of a Child; co-author of The Guide to Living with HIV Infection (now in its sixth edition), which won the American Medical Writers Association's Award for Excellence; and author of The Jasons. David Kestenbaum, science correspondent for National Public Radio, has been on the staff of Science magazine and has written for The New York Times, New Scientist, and The New Republic. He received a Fulbright fellowship and has won awards for science writing from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, and the American Institute of Physics. First Semester | Second Semester | Internships | Visitors | Graduates | Application Information | Faculty |