Wednesday May 16th 2012

Science and Medical Writing at Cronkite

In the years since Science and Medical Writing was first offered in Spring 1999, we have developed outstanding relationships with individuals and organizations known worldwide for their explorations of science and medicine in ways to improve human life.

That first spring, Cronkite Science Writers met with Dr. Robert Spetzler, world renowned neurosurgeon, director of Barrow Neurological Institute, and always a strong proponent of professional training in science and medical journalism.

Since then the course has steadily expanded its scope, thanks to efforts by Dr. Joseph Sirven, director of neurology at Mayo Clinic Arizona; Dr. Marek Mirski, executive director of the Johns Hopkins Hospital Neuro Critical Care Unit; and cosmologist Dr. Lawrence Krauss, founding director of the Origins Project at ASU.

Over the years, Cronkite science writers have delved into the lives of patients and the doctors trying to rescue them from devastating brain injuries in the Neuro ICU of Johns Hopkins Hospital, spent time in the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit at Mayo Clinic and given eye-witness accounts of neurosurgeries at Barrow Neurological Institute, and they have taken readers into the latest findings in sciences ranging from anthropology to astronomy.

Finally, the stories students developed reached a wide public audience thanks to Gary Gannaway, founder and CEO of WorldNow, a developer and hosting platform for many of the nation’s leading broadcast and multimedia news organizations. Gannaway and his team helped launch Cronkite Eye On Science more than four years ago, and WorldNow has hosted and supported it ever since.

Ed Sylvester
Professor
Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication
Arizona State University

A Window On Our Origins

The Origins Symposium from April 3 – 6, 2009 brought to ASU dozens of the world’s leading scientists in disciplines from astrophysics to paleo-anthropology in an unprecedented focus on the word that encompasses so many unknowns: How did the universe originate? How did we originate – toolmakers, story tellers, artists, investigators, consummate survivors?

Three years later, that meeting of minds continues to offer Cronkite science journalists – and anyone else wishing to see the symposium just as it occurred – a springboard into the most important science issues as viewed by dozens of the world's leading investigators. See the sessions at The Science Network.

Top Stories

Our lead stories represent a milestone in the decade-plus development of Science and Medical Writing at Cronkite. At the time of their posting, authors Serena Del Mundo and Erin Lough became the first Mayo Medical School students to receive Master of Mass Communication degrees from the school under a joint Mayo-ASU program that is a harbinger of great things to come. In Fall, 2013, the first students will begin working toward combined Mayo-ASU degrees in medicine and health care delivery that may be the first of its kind anywhere. On this page:

• Erin Lough turned an adventuresome year as a field biologist working at Los Amigos Biological Research station in the Peruvian Amazon into a powerful story of the destruction of the delicate rain forest with mercury used to extract gold from its rivers, mercury that also poisons the miners and their families even as it relieves their poverty. Read her story: All That Glitters. After completing her MMC studies, Erin braved significant dangers to return to Los Amigos to update her story at a time when government attacks on illegal mining made the research station a focus of local anger. She returned with photos that dramatically illustrate her story and is now updating it in hopes of national publication.

• Serena Del Mundo followed patient Donald Roth as he entered the neurosurgical operating room at Phoenix’s Barrow Neurological Institute for the first of several neurosurgeries to implant an electrical stimulator. Deep In The Brain follows Roth from surgery to recovery, and back to surgery for the final step. The goal was to quell the Parkinson’s tremors that curbed his life for seven years. The Eye On Science photo of Serena will be familiar to her colleagues considering the Cronkite program. She looks out from the cover of the Medical School Overview brochure.

As always, a talented group of Cronkite science writers pursued other major stories across the spectrum of scientific investigation.

• Erick O’Donnell explores increasing threats to the vast riparian ecosystems that keep the desert alive in Rivers Underground. Erick, a Barrett Honors College journalism senior, also illuminates one of the more complex issues of our time in his story on evolutionary development, or eve-devo, with ASU’s Dr. Manfred Laubichler.

• Childhood obesity has been a major American epidemic for several years. Journalism senior Allie Nicodemo talks to researchers at ASU and elsewhere who are developing solutions using approaches from both behavioral and computer sciences. She tells of their story in How Ready To Be Fit? Allie also reports on ASU scientists who are peering into dogs’ mouths for clues to very rare human cancers.

Ed Sylvester
Professor
Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication
Arizona State University


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