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Applications are open for the SciComm Identities Project (SCIP) Fellowship 2025. The SCIP Fellowship is a one-year professional development opportunity for pre-tenure faculty at U.S. institutions who identify as underrepresented racial or ethnic minorities.
Opportunity Details
The SCIP fellowship is designed to test a training curriculum based on intercultural communication theories. We hope SCIP will elevate science communication activities as a valued aspect of academics’ institutional contributions. We aim for this project to increase representation of underrepresented minority scientists and engineers as science communicators and as public intellectuals in environmental news coverage to foster culturally relevant conservations about environmental issues.
The SCIP Fellowship is a one-year professional development opportunity for pre-tenure faculty at U.S. institutions who identify as underrepresented racial or ethnic minorities. The Fellowship will have a different thematic focus in each of its three one-year cohorts. Each of these foci relates, broadly, to climate change. SCIP Fellows will gain science communication expertise and practice and build their professional networks in ways that may support new collaborations and research insights.
Fellowship Thematic Focus:
January – December 2023, Cohort 1: Energy
January – December 2024, Cohort 2: Water
January – December 2025, Cohort 3: Food
The fellowship is designed for researchers at the pre-tenure career stage to:
Training
SCIP Fellows will participate in science communication training focused on a wide range of skills and competencies, including strategic and inclusive science communication, intergroup dialogue, adapting to situations and audiences, sharing personal stories through compelling narratives, writing style, framing and messaging, interviewing skills, and working with journalists.
Fellows must commit to participating in two one-week immersive trainings during the fellowship, as well as six web-based, interactive training modules conducted on a bi-monthly basis throughout the fellowship year. The modules will provide additional training on topics such as equitable community engagement and developing substantive, inclusive broader impacts components for proposals. The virtual meetings will provide a supportive space for Fellows to test their ideas for podcast episodes, receive feedback and technical guidance, and discuss concerns or other topics as determined by the cohorts’ needs and interests. Virtual meetings may be held asynchronously to accommodate Fellows’ varied schedules.
Evaluation
Fellows also must commit to responding to pre- and post-training surveys and participating in interviews to inform the research questions of the SCIP project.
Podcasts
SCIP Fellows will receive training to develop a podcast episode. This experience will prepare SCIP Fellows to participate in other communication and public engagement activities beyond the fellowship, and, perhaps, to become engaged as science communication trainers themselves, whether in their own classrooms or in other settings. SCIP Fellows will receive training in developing narratives, interviewing guests, and recording techniques. Fellows will have access to ongoing mentorship and assistance from the SCIP Podcast production team via online “office hours.”
As part of the SCIP Podcast, each Fellow will develop a podcast episode over the course of their fellowship. The resulting podcast will cover a broad spectrum of topics and perspectives on the annual research themes and providing a wider range of diverse perspectives on environmental and climate change research to expand public interest and engagement with these critical topics.
The SCIP team is testing a novel peer-review process for these podcast episodes as a way to expand institutional thinking about “what counts” as academic scholarship. With this approach, Fellows will be able to add new scholarly works to their academic records and CVs during the fellowship, while creating broadly accessible and compelling podcast episodes about their research interests.
Fellows are expected to be available and participate in all of the following workshops, unless marked optional:
Fellows will receive financial and other support as follows:
The fellowship is open to researchers who study any aspect of natural science, social science, or engineering related to the theme of that year’s cohort. The SCIP Fellowship is designed for people who:
Please note that the SCIP Fellowship is only open to tenure track faculty who are pre-tenure (assistant professor level), postdoctoral scholars who have a confirmed tenure track position that will begin by August 2025, and graduate students who have a confirmed tenure track position that will begin by January 2025.
-You can view the application questionsahead of time to prepare your responses.
Complete the fellowship application, including a 250-500 word essay describing your goals for the fellowship experience.
–Submit a CV
Fellows will be selected based on their stated interests and goals for leveraging the training through, for example, their research, teaching, advising, and/or public engagement. Selections will maximize the diversity of each fellowship cohort concerning race and ethnicity, geography, discipline, and gender. Fellowships will span one year, from January through December.
When completing the application in SurveyMonkey, please keep the following points in mind: