While many environmental science majors spend their summers in campus labs, as a rising third-year Brianna Leech found herself in a NASA research center, building presentations on the spread of invasive tree species across the state of Utah.
It was less a typical research gig than a crash course in building and communicating data on the ground. In a small cohort at a NASA research center, Leech, AB'26, teamed with three students from wildly different backgrounds and was handed a real client: the Utah Department of Natural Resources. Their task was to track invasive tree species creeping across the state, processing satellite imagery into a wildfire-risk tool that flagged where the department should focus its tree-cutting efforts first.
“There was a feeling of a bit of everything: sending emails, attending meetings, scientific technical skills, and presenting science—with posters, flyers and research papers for NASA staff,” said Leech.
The opportunity came up in office hours at a class for the science communication minor at UChicago. Leech was rattling off her interests to Jordan Bimm—her professor, and the developer of the program’s curricula. They talked about mapping, sustainability, and the writing and public speaking skills sharpened in his classes. Bimm immediately thought of a former student who'd done the program and pointed her toward it.
"It's something that I would have never thought to do if Jordan wouldn't have helped me put it together in my head,” Leech said.
UChicago’s Science Communication minor had set the whole thing in motion, connecting Leech to Jordan and equipping her to communicate environmental data on the ground. By the time she reached NASA, she could make satellite data translate into something a land manager could actually use in their work.
Learning by making
That hands-on ethos sits at the heart of the science communication minor. Rather than just a final exam, courses often end in a finished product. Students might produce a podcast, report a piece of science journalism, or communicate about exhibits on a museum floor.
"At the end of the quarter you're always producing something, and it's usually something that I could take and show to other people later on,” said Leech.
For example, Leech created a podcast digging into the science behind popular movies. The first episode tackled Interstellar, unpacking how the producers consulted with physicists to explore concepts like black holes, time dilation, and relativity.
“We see so many physics and chemistry concepts in these blockbuster movies, but we don’t really get them fully explained," said Leech. “I really loved making that. I had so much fun.”
Bimm, who not only designs, but teaches many of the program's course offerings, builds that learn-by-doing spirit into the classroom. A prolific science communicator himself, he teaches from his own practice in real time.
“Whatever's happening to me at the moment, I bring the students along with me. When Artemis II was flying around the moon, I was getting inundated with media requests—so I'd show students what a reach-out email from a science journalist looks like, and a recording of me talking to the TV producer,” said Bimm. “So when they're in that position, it won't be the first time they're encountering it.”
Are facts enough?
But the program isn't just about producing things. Behind every podcast episode and museum panel sits a set of theoretical questions that have preoccupied science communication researchers for decades. How do you actually get people to care about science? And is explaining the facts, laying out a rational argument, and citing solid data enough to change anyone's mind?
"A lot of times when people get a science communication course, they're only getting the practical side,” said Bimm. “But even if you just take one class with me, you're still going to get a theoretical foundation in the key frameworks—so students understand the history and the different approaches that are possible.”
That approach resonated with Elijah Tan, a rising third-year studying astrophysics, who took the introductory course as his way into the minor—and now recommends it to fellow students.
One case study from that class stuck with him. After the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, nuclear fallout drifted onto the hills of Cumbria in northern England. Government scientists, betting the contamination would clear within weeks, didn’t recommend a ban on sheep sales.
They were wrong. The region's peat held onto the radioactive cesium in a way the clay soils they'd studied never had. But rather than own the error, they reversed recommendations abruptly—alienating farmers and corroding their credibility.
A scientist might think: “The evidence changed, so the recommendation changed. So what?” But an explanation that talks past local knowledge, or a story that reverses the instant the data does, can corrode the very credibility it's meant to earn. In other words, these scientists were working from what experts like Bimm call the "deficit model."
"The deficit model is the default model that scientists just assume always works—the idea that just providing facts and information will be enough to convince people to believe what you're saying and have a positive attitude towards science,” said Bimm. “The research for the last 30 years has shown this doesn’t work in practice."
Elijah Tan
When Tan shared a piece on a new nuclear microreactor, he ran into another similar lesson. Scientists, immersed in their own work, tend to assume everyone else thinks the way they do, and that what fascinates them in the lab will obviously interest a reader too. But that often isn’t true.
“One of my friends in the class, in the nicest way possible, just asked, 'Why should I care?’” said Tan. “And it was a great question, because I just thought it was neat."
The question forced Tan to rethink the piece. Rather than relying on readers to be compelled by the subject, he showed the stakes—how a reactor small enough to be transported could be flown into a disaster zone, for instance, instead of the logistical nightmare of providing a whole supply chain of diesel. It was a lesson in writing for the reader’s interest rather than his own.
Tan, who dreams of drawing science comics for a living, sees the minor as preparation for whatever shape his career takes—whether in journalism, an astrophysics Ph.D., or institutional work. More than any single skill, he values how it has trained him to think about what an audience actually needs.
The next chapter
The minor is now being offered as a track within the Climate and Sustainable Growth major, led by the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth. It’s a natural fit, given how central climate is to public debate, and the conversation on how to communicate complex science to the public.
"It's one of the big science problems of our day. Everyone is talking about it, everyone is worried about it, but we still seem to be sliding further and further into it,” said Bimm. “Part of the way out of this isn't just science and technology—it's going to be a new generation of people who are able to effectively and responsibly communicate about it."
For Leech, who wrote an editorial on the overlap between climate and sports as part of the minor—she came away struck by just how far the subject reaches. Climate science, she realized, “can pretty much be applied everywhere.”
That flexibility is part of the point. Whether the subject is climate, a nuclear microreactor, or invasive trees creeping across Utah, the minor is teaching students to carry science across the gap between the lab and the layperson.
And while the partnership with the Institute is new, Bimm has already seen three years of students come through the minor—and he knows what the payoff looks like.
"You can see them selecting the tools that I've taught them and implementing them at the right time. That's just so rewarding—not only have they taken this in, but they're now capable, smart, savvy communicators,” said Bimm. “This is exactly what the world needs."
