MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing: Curriculum

Curriculum Outline

Fall:
21W.825 Advanced Science Writing Seminar (24 units)
Elective (12 units)
21W.THG Thesis (12 units)

Spring:
21W.826 Advanced Science Writing Seminar (12 units)
21W.824 Making Documentary: Audio, Video and More (12 units)
Elective (12 units)
21W.THG Thesis (12 units)

Summer:
21W.892 Internship (12 units)

The Seminar

The Advanced Science Writing Seminar is the core, the intellectual home, of the Graduate Program. This "megaseminar," meeting six hours a week across the whole year, earns 24 MIT units per semester, making it the equivalent of at least two regular courses per term. It offers students workshops and critiques of their own writing, and that of published books, articles, and essays; discussions of ethical and professional issues; analysis of recent events in science and technology.

In Seminar, students might as likely discuss parallels between the internet and nineteenth century telegraphy, hear a distinguished science writer tell of her latest book, or hear a biotech entrepreneur lament how a recent best-seller distorted her field. They might learn of the latest research in communications theory, analyze a book's overall structure, or focus on a single paragraph in a single student's work.

No aspect of science writing falls outside Seminar's range. Students will learn to draw on all the tools of research, conceived in its broadest sense, to enrich their information-gathering skills—interviews, web sites, archives, scientific journals, personal experience.

They will sample daily science journalism and the culture of the newsroom, sometimes writing on daily or hourly deadlines, learn to sniff out news stories and separate the "revolutionary new discovery" of too many press releases from what is genuinely new and important.

They will explore the rich possibilities of the essay, applied to science, technology and medicine, in all the elasticity of its myriad forms, from formal, even academic, to light, personal, idiosyncratic.

They will be encouraged, too, to push the essay beyond its traditional confines, into more imaginative, creative, and literarily ambitious paths.

Students will be exposed to research on what the public knows of science, and what they don't know, and how they learn what they learn; about quasi-science and pseudo-science, and the science writer's responsibilities to the reader, to the public, to science, to her sources, to herself.

Seminar also features a Lab Experience Requirement, as part of which each student spends time in one of MIT's hundreds of laboratories, seeing its work up close and absorbing its life and culture.

MIT's is a one-year master's program, designed to cover much ground in a limited time. It is conducted at a rapid pace, and requires the energy and devotion of student and faculty alike. The Advanced Science Writing Seminar is designed to maximize the educational value of that year. It lets faculty more intimately integrate instruction on the essay, research methods, journalism, etc, with workshops and critiques in those subgenres. It permits a rich program of guest speakers and case studies all across the year. Treating the seminar as a whole, from the very beginning, as a unified academic experience, reduces the redundancy inevitably found among distinct but potentially overlapping courses. Seminar makes sure our carefully selected students get all of what they can get out of the year, and enhances the prospects for a unique bonding experience among each year's class.

Making Documentary

In the Spring semester, the Advanced Science Writing Seminar focuses primarily on the prose facet of science writing. Making Documentary focuses on the non-linear multimedia methods of storytelling. Students will create audio and video works of a variety of lengths. Some of the video documentaries from previous classes can be seen here: The Television Segment.

Recent Guest Speakers

Electives

The program's electives will help accommodate the wide range of education and experience of our students. Electives might fill a specific hole in the student's background; allow him or her to pursue a scientific area of particular interest; or grant a humanistic or arts perspective that will enrich his or her writing. One student, with a strong background in the necessary mathematics, might wish to enlarge his exposure to the hard sciences through coursework in physics. A second student might study science fiction, either through the Writing Program, or through Literature, or both. A third student with a special interest in the colonization of space, might take an ethics or philosophy course in the fall, aerospace life support engineering in the spring. You may see a partial list of subjects taken by previous students here.

The student's previous educational background will often suggest options; it may, however, limit them as well. Each elective choice will emerge through discussions among student and faculty, sometimes in consultation with the department in which a student hopes to take a subject. Many students will find that offerings from MIT's Science, Technology, and Society program, which includes courses in the history of science and technology, are particularly appropriate.

Thesis

The thesis is a substantial and ambitious piece of writing about science or scientists, completed over the course of the academic year; normally, it is around 10,000-12,000 words. While demanding the intensive research of a traditional academic thesis, this writing project is aimed at general, rather than academic, readers. It can be journalistic, literary, investigative, historical, even personal -- so long as it meaningfully bears on science, technology, or medicine. In any case, it tackles the subject with greater depth and thoughtfulness, and to a higher degree of polish and refinement, than normally possible in a regular classroom setting.

At first frequently, then less so over the course of the year, students meet in Thesis Seminar (a class distinct from the Advanced Science Writing Seminar) to discuss, refine, and develop their thesis projects. About six weeks into the fall semester, they are assigned individual thesis advisors with whom they meet regularly for the rest of the year.

Candidates for the Graduate Program should have in mind, even at the time they apply, several ideas about the sorts of topics or approaches they might wish to pursue.

2003-2004 Thesis Excerpts

Internship

With the help and under the direction of an advisor from within the program, the student will secure an internship for the summer following the regular academic year. Tailored to the background and interests of the student, and intended to broadly complement his or her classroom experience and career goals, the internship can take a variety of forms but must always include substantial writing. The student might find a place with a newspaper or popular magazine, a book publisher, a television or radio station, a science publication, a museum, or even a working independent science writer. In some circumstances, students might complete their internships by working with one of our core faculty on a writing project. Another alternative is to secure a regular science writing position, the first ten weeks of which would satisy the internship requirement. The internship is monitored by the faculty advisor during the summer, earns academic credit, and is graded pass-fail.

List of Previous Internships