WISL is pleased to continue its program encouraging doctoral candidates in the sciences and engineering to include in their dissertations a chapter that describes their research to a general audience. The goal of the program is to foster in researchers a commitment to communicating the significance of their work and their enthusiasm for it to an audience beyond their fellow researchers. WISL hopes that by starting this communication early, during graduate education, scientists will develop both an attentiveness toward how their work fits into a wider social context and the skills needed to convey this to non-scientists.

WISL is offering several types of assistance to degree candidates in order to facilitate the creation of such chapters. Included in this assistance is a set of guidelines on how to create a work that communicates technical information to non-specialists. Included are excerpts from several chapters that have already been completed, and these excerpts show the wide range of styles and formats such a chapter may take. In addition, WISL is offering the assistance of a science journalist to help degree candidates hone their chapters. As an incentive, WISL is also offering a cash award of $250 for each completed chapter submitted to it by UW-Madison doctoral students.