Congratulations to our graduating Honours students!

Our students recently finished their courses, each coming from science backgrounds, each studying wildly different things, and each coming out of their sci comm experience more knowledgable in the field and confident in their skills.

Read below for their experiences, or click here to find our more about taking your Honours in sci comm.

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Catharina studied Biology and majored in sci comm.

What brought you to CPAS? What led you to take an honours?

I always wanted to be a parademic. I grew up in Canberra, so I figured ANU would be the place to help get me there. I didn’t know sci comm existed.

I gained practical sci comm experience, doing different things all over Questacon over 6 years, since working there since High School – like presenting shows, managing the centre and the galleries, leading tours. Even during my honours, my job meant I got to help develop and present a show over an expo at Japan. I loved my job and sci comm so much. It led me to CPAS, where I learned even more.

When it came to take an honours, all my friends said don't! But all my experiences made me decide I wanted a slice of what sci comm research had to offer. I ended up taking the Honours after a year's break, with a research topic on health communication: how the public deals with complex information from osteoporosis and cancer foundations.

Did the CPAS Honours program meet your expectations?

From my friends' stories, focus can sometimes seem impossible in other Colleges. I found it so different – really good and really accessible.

Ethics proposals were tough, fine. There were intense moments, yes. But in CPAS I found you aren't given a project – you can do what you want and are given lots of feedback the whole way. It also doesn't get in the way of your growth. That Japan expo I helped at happened during my Honours, and I had the flexibility to be able to do that.

You also get so many amazing experiences and meet so many amazing people. 

Why should everyone study sci comm at CPAS?

Science can be so scary. People might not understand it. People might use it to divide us.

But in CPAS, all your peers and colleagues champion you. There are so many different expertise in CPAS that bleed down to your Honours project.

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April studied human biology, and minored in sci comm

How did you connect your undergrad course with sci comm?

I've always been interested in bioethics and law school. I came to ANU from overseas because my mom was an alumni here. I've been helping out at student recruitment, and been active in The Science Society. Along the way, I found science communication, and took enough courses that I said I might as well take a major! 

Studying at CPAS, I realised that every single one of us is doing science already – but it’s about making sure we all become literary in science

As I was finishing up my course, I realised I liked talking about science more than being in a lab. And since I was always looking at population health, I was happy to find a place I can start my own project instead of building on someone else's. 

How did you find taking your Honours at CPAS?

It's so much better than what people said!

I studied how patient organisations help individuals with chronic conditions better understand their conditions, using PCOS as a case. I wanted to know about how these patient organisations fill the gap between health care systems and patients.

CPAS is a smaller school, I found a lot of support. Everyone advocates on your behalf, roots for your success, and wants you to do your best There was a lot of transparency, and my questions were always answered, from all across different disciplines. And my cohort was small and tight.

It was also not as intense as what I saw my other friends in other schools going through. Even with the intensity, I had downtime in different periods!

What do you take away from your experience?

It reinforced my confidence in my own abilities, in my own research. I can do things! And now I have my own research project under my belt.

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Tara has an undergrad in astrophysics, and majored in scicomm

How did you discover sci comm?

I've been familiar with sci comm for a while! Since participating in the National Youth Science Forum, when I was still in Victoria.

I chose ANU specifically because I could study both Astrophysics and Sci comm. While here, I was able to get a job as a gallery assistant in Questacon, and that just made me love sci comm all the more.

Any regrets about taking a year to do an Honours?

I decided to do an honours instead of jumping straight into a job, and it was really good and well worth it. It was one of the best years of my life. 

I studied EV policies, looking at how they're communicated in scientific based media and European policy documents. It was more hectic than I thought, but also better than I thought it could be. It really has been one of the best years of my life. I had so much support from all the academics and the HDRs, and my supervisors were such experts in what I was studying.

I genuinely like it so much. I come out of it wanting science communication in my future.

What's your advice for anyone who hasn't started their sci comm journeys yet?

Even when I was interested in CPAS, I didn’t know how to get started. But there’s way more freedom than you think – just jump into any class. Every starting point in CPAS is a different but equally good starting point.

You won’t regret it. All the staff, the whole community, right down to all the HDRs – everyone tries to engage at your level. There's no gap. You're not talked down to. As long as you're in CPAS, you're a peer, and you can reach out to anyone

I promise, as an ANU science student, the best part of your day is going to a sci comm course.

For more on CPAS, our courses, and our programs, see this video: