GMS Social Media Interns
Open Positions: GMS Social Media Interns
GMS is developing a blog to celebrate and spread awareness of the science from its faculty, students, and postdoctoral scholars. These articles, posts, and stories will include a visually descriptive image provided by GMS, a link to a BU publication, and accompanying text of about 300-500 words that describes the research. The GMS website team is in need of motivated, knowledgeable Master’s or PhD students within any GMS program to write the descriptive text to publish for this science-focused blog.
What We Need:
We are looking for talented communicators who can translate the “science-speak” of faculty publications into bite-sized narratives for readers who understand science but are not experts in that field. The GMS Blog editorial board will provide the scientific publications, and the Social Media Interns will each write up to four blog contributions per semester at roughly 300-500 words each. Prior to publishing, the editorial board will then provide written edits to the interns to further develop writing skills for a website audience. For each submission published on the blog, the intern will be credited as the author (for your CV!) and receive $60 in compensation; each writing submission should take roughly three to four hours to complete.
Who You Are:
The ideal candidate will have excellent communication skills and at least one semester of graduate-level training in a biomedical science or clinical GMS program. Students may apply by submitting a writing sample as a “mock submission” for one of the publications below. If chosen for an intern position, the editorial board will try to match interns’ interests and training with publications; however, interns should expect to be reasonably conversant across several disciplines.
Writing Sample:
To be considered for a Social Media Intern position, choose one of the following publications and write a sample descriptive narrative of about 300-500 words. We want you to translate the
This is a basic science publication from GMS and BMC scientists that describes relationships between certain signaling molecules and colorectal cancer tumorigenesis. Turns out that one signaling molecule suppresses tumor growth and correlates with survival in cancer patients. How did they show this? [Tip: don’t get bogged down in details]
This is a publication from our faculty in the Biomedical Forensic Sciences program. They address the problem of fragility of fingerprints at crime scene investigations and how to take advantage of three-dimensional reconstruction techniques.
Hints: In broad terms– What did they conclude? How did they show this? Why is it important?
Submit your writing sample to DJ King (deking@bu.edu), GMS Marketing & Communications Specialist. The GMS Blog editorial board will review all submissions and choose several Social Media Interns based on clarity and expressiveness of the narrative to a general scientific audience. Please contact DJ King (deking@bu.edu) with questions.
Does anyone do this? Yes, in fact, they do.
From our own GMS Department of Biochemistry, here are some examples of what we’re looking for in a narrative:
http://www.bumc.bu.edu/biochemistry/2020/02/07/14862/
http://www.bumc.bu.edu/biochemistry/2019/12/18/infertility-in-fruit-flies/
This is a little longer than we’re thinking, but comes from our neighbors at Tufts:
https://gsbs.tufts.edu/facultyresearch/researchSpotlight