Science Communication Minor

Offered at: San Luis Obispo Campus

The Science Communication (SC) minor enables students to investigate how individuals and societies create, disseminate, maintain, and challenge perceptions of science, technology, and risk in multiple contexts. The minor focuses on key debates and controversies involving science and technology, public understandings and misunderstandings of scientific and technical expertise, industry-public relations, cultures of regulation and compliance, hazards, uncertainties, crisis management, and the politics of evidence. Through hands-on projects, SC students will develop and practice specific skills for communicating about science and technology to various audiences across multiple media formats. A broad range of elective courses allows students to customize the SC minor to their particular interests, enabling them to pursue knowledge in a focused subject area or further refine communication production skills. Students completing the SC minor will be prepared to understand, engage with, respond to, and communicate about the profound challenges and choices we face related to science and technology in the 21st century. The SC minor is not open to students who have declared a minor in one of the other STS minors: Ethics, Public Policy, Science and Technology (EPPST); Gender, Race, Culture, Science and Technology (GRCST); and Media Arts, Society and Technology (MAST).

Program Learning Objectives

1. Understand and evaluate the construction, dissemination, and reception of messages in a variety of scientific, social, political, and cultural contexts.
2. Identify, analyze and contextualize the roles that various publics, scientists, and scientific groups play in communicative processes related to scientific communication.
3. Explain key concepts, terms, and frameworks from research on science communication, and apply these concepts, terms, and frameworks to conduct interdisciplinary research and/or engage in creative activities in individual and group settings.
4. Apply science communication concepts, theories, and frameworks using effective, ethical and inclusive communication skills to communicate about the complex relationships between science, technology and society to multiple audiences.
5. Recognize emergent scientific and technological challenges, promote more socially responsible scientific and technical practices, and work, collaborate, and interact more responsibly and effectively in an increasingly diverse and globalized workplace and world.

Minor Requirements and Curriculum

• At least half of the units must be from upper-division courses (3000-4000 level).
• At least half of the units must be taken at Cal Poly (in residence).
• No more than one-third of the units will be taken with credit-no credit grading (CR/NC), not counting courses with mandatory CR/NC. Departments may further limit CR/NC grading if desired.
• A minimum 2.0 GPA is required in all units counted for completion of the minor.

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Topic courses require department approval. Please contact department for a list of approved topics.