Where Science and Journalism Meet
Metcalf Institute executive director Fara Warner (right); former executive director Sunshine Menezes (bottom left); and inclusive science communication program specialist Emily Cribas (top left).
For 26 years, URI’s Metcalf Institute has been training journalists and scientists to be better science communicators. As climate change accelerates and misinformation proliferates, its work is more important than ever.
By Marybeth Reilly-McGreen
Often, science communication is just plain hard—for the scientific community to convey, for journalists to cover, and for the public to comprehend.
And there are counterforces to contend with; what is scientific fact for some is debatable for others. And social media can spread disinformation at record speed.
Leaders of URI’s Metcalf Institute are clear-eyed about the challenges faced by science communicators, but they also express optimism. Arguably, their position is justified; The institute has successfully enlisted scholars, state and federal agencies, nonprofit organizations, businesses, municipalities, community leaders, and news organizations nationwide to improve and expand climate and environmental issue coverage. Metcalf’s influence may not travel at the speed of virality, but every year, it gains ground. Metcalf Institute has trained more than 3,400 science communicators and scientists over the past 26 years.
Award-winning journalist Fara Warner became the institute’s executive director in November 2023, succeeding Sunshine Menezes, a clinical professor of environmental communication in URI’s Department of Natural Resources Science. Menezes served as Metcalf’s executive director for 17 years.
“Trust in news is always a problem, but trust in science has dropped, particularly since the pandemic,” Warner says. “What Metcalf does really well is to connect scientists and journalists in ways that are collaborative and cooperative, and that help us to build trust with audiences and communities—or rebuild the trust we’ve lost.”
Metcalf is focused on inclusive science communication, which means journalists, scientists, and communities listen to each other and work together.
To that end, Metcalf Institute has honed its focus on climate journalism while creating programming and training opportunities for the historically underrepresented. Inclusive science communication foregrounds respect for the people and communities that journalists and scientists engage with on the premise that mutual respect can repair and sustain trust.
“We have a two-pronged strategy that is about supporting scientists of color and those from underserved or marginalized communities so that they feel seen, heard, respected, and honored within traditional Western science, as well as teaching and training people within the science community the three principles of inclusive science communication: intentionality, reflexivity, and reciprocity,” Warner says.
Practitioners of inclusive science communication work with communities as partners, establishing what are best described as rules of engagement. Put plainly, communities have a say in how information about them is collected and reported. For instance, a researcher or journalist might agree to let subjects review their work pre-publication or formally credit them for their contributions.
Practitioners of inclusive science communication work with communities as partners.
Sometimes, the rules of engagement are, in fact, about engagement—with the communities in which researchers and journalists are working. At the 2021 URI Honors Colloquium, Sustaining Our Shores, Metcalf Institute alumna and author Elizabeth Rush spoke about connecting with coastal homeowners in the research and writing of her 2019 book, Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. “I started to figure out that I needed to leave my climate discourse at the door and to engage in conversation and to listen above all else,” Rush said.
Originally called the Michael P. Metcalf Institute for Marine & Environmental Reporting, the institute has sustained itself through challenging times, including the near-collapse of traditional print journalism, the global financial crisis of 2007–08, and COVID, Menezes says.
“I think the single biggest achievement is the growth of our team and our portfolio,” Menezes says. “It’s no small feat that we were able to navigate these challenges.”
Menezes credits donors, as well as John Kirby, dean of the College of the Environment and Life Sciences, for the institute’s financial stability, and she takes great pride in Metcalf’s embrace of inclusive science communication.
Another source of pride is the impressive list of award-winning journalist alumni. In addition to Rush, now an assistant professor of practice in the nonfiction writing program at Brown University, there is Rosanna Xia, an environment reporter for the Los Angeles Times and a 2020 Pulitzer Prize finalist for her reporting on the coast and ocean. Xia’s work has been featured in the annual anthology The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and her reporting, which connects science and policy, has influenced the creation of new laws and regulations. Other participants in the program have created films, podcasts, and websites for national and international media outlets.
Metcalf’s Annual Science Immersion Workshop is focused on equity-centered science communication.
Menezes also touts the biennial Inclusive SciComm Symposium, a conference that gathers science communicators from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds to collaborate on practical approaches to engage the public in science, technology, engineering, math, and medicine (STEMM) issues.
“I am most proud of the ways we contributed to amplifying the need for and value of inclusive science communication,” the former executive director says. “Our creation of the Inclusive SciComm Symposium in 2018 provided a call to action and a convening space for a growing community of practice related to equity-centered science communication.
“This work has had global impact, and it’s led to some of the most fulfilling collaborations I’ve ever had,” Menezes adds.
Emily Cribas is Metcalf Institute’s first inclusive science communication program specialist. She organizes the Inclusive SciComm Symposium.
“It’s a gathering of people—practitioners, researchers, and educators—who are interested in science communication as an equity-centered practice that seeks to change the way science is done and communicated, which centers and accommodates diverse types of knowledge,” Cribas says.
“Diverse types of knowledge” include, for example, Indigenous knowledge—exemplified in books such as Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass—and fishermen’s ecological knowledge; that is, personal, lived experience born of daily engagement with the environment.
Metcalf Institute has its sights set on changing the way science communication is done on a global level.
Additionally, in the last two symposia, Metcalf Institute has engaged with a group of community advocates called the “community cohort,” Cribas says. “What they’re doing is not often considered science communication—but that is exactly what they’re doing in a grassroots, ground-level way with communities by understanding their issues and coming up with and implementing solutions together.”
In June 2022, the SciComm Identities Project, led by Menezes, received a $2.8 million multi-institutional National Science Foundation grant. Metcalf Institute, along with Michigan State University and URI’s Science and Story Lab, is training three cohorts of early-career scholars from historically underrepresented communities in science communication. To date, 24 scholars in two cohorts have received yearlong training in innovative, multimodal, inclusive science communication. The third and final cohort will be chosen in 2025.
With each new cohort, a different environmental issue is addressed; themes are energy, water, and agriculture and food security. The SciComm Identities Project has attracted disaster scientists, stormwater engineers, public health researchers, cell biologists, and sociologists—representing a range of experiences, including first-generation Americans, immigrants, multilingual speakers, and scholars who are the first members of their families to attend college.
It is easy to take a Chicken Little approach to environmental and climate journalism and communication. Climate change reporting can induce a feeling that the sky is, indeed, falling—and atmospheric rivers and other extreme precipitation events would appear to support that.
But there is another approach, Warner says, that focuses on solutions and placing power back in the hands of the people.
Journalists engaged in hands-on science at the 2024 annual workshop for journalists.
“The traditional theory of change in journalism is that if we just keep telling people things are bad, they will do something,” Warner says. “Behavioral science tells us that that is not true. When people are told things are bad, they freeze. They feel apathy. They disconnect or tune out.
“But we can focus on solutions or responses to large social issues. And in my field of work, climate, the more we can show people not only the problem and what it means, but also that there are solutions and responses out there, the more they will be activated to engage and change—and do something.”
Metcalf Institute has its sights set on changing the way science communication is done on a global level, Warner says.
“The most compelling story out of Metcalf right now?” Warner considers. “For me, it would be that we have the opportunity to scale the magic that happens when you put a scientist and a journalist in a room together. We have journalists getting their hands dirty, getting into the science. We have scientists thinking about how to pitch their research to an editor.
“And what’s at the core? What’s the most important thing here? Everyone’s thinking about what the community needs to hear,” she continues.
“If we can replicate that experience with thousands of scientists and thousands of journalists over time, then I do think magic happens.”
Support for Metcalf Institute
Metcalf Institute is partially funded by an endowment established in 1997 in honor of Michael P. Metcalf, the late publisher of The Providence Journal. Additional funding is provided by private donors, foundations, and grants. The endowment, which supports Metcalf’s Annual Science Immersion Workshop for Journalists and a public lecture series, was enhanced in 2019 with private donations made in honor of longtime Metcalf board member, Rob Leeson.
PHOTOS: GRETCHEN ERTL; THERESE IACONO; BEAU JOES
What Can You Learn from Metcalf Alumni?
When the beat is climate and environmental journalism, topics can range widely—from the predator-prey relationship between wolves and moose to border life and butterflies. Check out the work of our Metcalf fellows.
Books
California Against the Sea: Visions for Our Vanishing Coastline
Author Rosanna Xia on the story of an overheated Pacific Ocean through accounts of the people affected by it: Indigenous leaders, residents, activists, and municipal officials.
Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore
Elizabeth Rush’s Rising, winner of the National Outdoor Book Award, couples firsthand accounts of coastal residents and climate activists with scientific observations of how rising seas are changing the American coastline.
Slaves for Peanuts: A Story of Conquest, Liberation, and a Crop That Changed History
Winner of the James Beard Award and the Harriet Tubman Prize, Jori Lewis’ Slaves for Peanuts is the history of how European demand for peanut oil powered the Senegalese slave trade, perpetuating slavery and indentured servitude in West Africa long after slavery was abolished in Europe.
Bonus Video: “Slaves for Peanuts: A Conversation with Jori Lewis”
A River Runs Again: India’s Natural World in Crisis, from the Barren Cliffs of Rajasthan to the Farmlands of Karnataka
Meera Subramanian chronicles the stories of five Indian citizen-activists and scientists in climate-ravaged communities working to create a sustainable future for their constituencies and country.
Citizen Science
ISeeChange.com
CEO and founder Julia Kumari Drapkin collects climate data and solicits community participation to provide real-time observation of severe climate events to support climate-resilient cities and communities.
Film
“Peru’s Desert Penguins”
Produced by Alexa Elliot for the Changing Seas series, this episode follows the Humboldt penguin as it navigates threats, including predation and near-fatal interactions with fisheries.
Podcasts
TahoeLand
Ezra David Romero shares scientific research to illustrate how climate change threatens the Sierra Nevadas’ Lake Tahoe.
Lessons from Isle Royale’s Wolves and Moose
Rebecca Williams reports with Mark Brush for Michigan Public Radio on a decades-long wolf-and-moose interaction study—the longest continuous predator-prey study in the world.
Business on the Texas-Mexico Border
Journalist Andy Uhler’s ongoing series for the online platform Marketplace on the U.S.-Mexico border wall dispute. One episode examines how an extension of the wall could imperil a critical butterfly habitat in South Texas.