|
|
Great Global Crises Boot Camp
The Program
It’s time for a new beat in science journalism—great global science issues. This boot camp is designed to encourage you to pioneer this important, complex beat.
Many journalists cover the topics we’ll review during the Boot Camp—global warming, for example, or sustainable energy, or global health—but usually as separate phenomena. However, these and several other issues are interlocked. You can’t really cover one without acknowledging and understanding the links to the others.
“In my 22 years as a journalist, I have been to many workshops, conferences and seminars. This was one of the best—from the quality of speakers to the choice of topics to the overall organization.”
—Mary Ann Roser, Austin American-Statesman
To help reporters, editors and producers make sense of all this, MIT’s Knight Science Journalism Fellowship is offering a four-day course on some of the greatest global science issues. This will be an intensive course—all day every day—devoted primarily to lectures and discussions. Just twelve journalists will be admitted through a competition to join the twelve Knight Fellows already in residence at MIT.
The Boot Camp will teach the basics of each issue and address both the underlying science and the overlying social, economic and political factors. And it will explore connections among the different issues.
Scientists from MIT, Harvard and other institutions and agencies will teach throughout the workshop. You’ll hear from some of the world’s leading experts on these problems and learn where to find the best sources of information and analysis. At the end, we’ll talk among ourselves about the journalistic issues, especially how such complex matters can be covered in light of industry trends to make stories shorter and shallower.
Schedule and Faculty
Monday, March 19 |
6:00–9:00pm |
|
Welcoming Dinner at the Blue Room, Kendall Square |
| |
|
|
Tuesday, March 20: Population |
9:00–9:30 |
|
Introduction to the week.
Boyce Rensberger, director of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowships at MIT |
9:30–11:45 |
|
Introduction to global population trends and issues.
John Bongaarts, demographer and vice president of the Policy Research Division at the Population Council, New York |
1:30–3:00 |
|
Financial implications of an aging society. Jonathan Gruber, professor of economics, MIT |
3:15–5:00 |
|
Regulating fertility: what works? what’s needed?
Beverly Winikoff, professor of clinical population and family health, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, president of Gynuity Health Projects
|
| |
|
|
Wednesday, March 21: Climate Change |
9:00–11:00 |
|
The global climate machine: how climate works.
Ronald Prinn, professor of atmospheric science, director of the Center for Global Change Science, MIT
|
11:15–12:30 |
|
How scientists model global climate and make forecasts.
Peter Stone, professor of climate dynamics, MIT
|
1:45–3:00 |
|
The economics and politics of climate change.
Henry (Jake) Jacoby, professor of management, MIT, and co-director of MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
|
3:15–5:00 |
|
Examining climate, population and energy from a sustainability point of view.
John Sterman, professor of management and director, MIT System Dynamics Group
|
| |
|
|
Thursday, March 22: Energy |
9:00–11:00 |
|
Overview: energy in a carbon-constrained world.
Ernest J. Moniz, professor of physics, MIT. Co-director, Laboratory for Energy and Environment
|
| 11:15–12:15 |
|
Prospects for energy from photovoltaics and wind.
Emanuel M. Sachs professor of mechanical engineering, MIT |
1:30–2:30 |
|
Prospects for improving building efficiency.
Leon Glicksman, professor of building technology and mechanical engineering, MIT |
2:30–3:30 |
|
Prospects for nuclear power.
Neil Todreas, professor of nuclear engineering, MIT |
3:45–4:45 |
|
Prospects for capturing and sequestering carbon.
Howard J. Herzog, principal research engineer, MIT Laboratory for Energy and Environment |
4:45–5:45 |
|
Prospects for reducing transportation oil demand and carbon emissions.
Emmanuel Kasseris, MIT graduate student, Sloan Automotive Laboratory |
| |
|
|
Friday, March 23: Global Health and Disease |
|
|
Overview of the world health situation.
Majid Ezzati, associate professor of international health, Department of Population and International Health, Harvard School of Public Health. |
|
|
The threat of pandemic disease.
Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology, Harvard School of Public Health |
1:30–3:00 |
|
AIDS.
Joia Mukherjee, medical director of Partners in Health, a nonprofit that links Harvard Medical School people with the medical needs of people in developing countries |
3:15–4:30 |
|
The shortage of clean water.
Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security in Oakland, California. |
4:30–5:30 |
|
Journalistic issues.
Phil Hilts, freelance global health journalist, and Boyce Rensberger |
Fellows
A list of the journalists chosen to attend the boot camp can be found here.
|
