If you’re in engineering or science and love to write about technical topics consider applying for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellows program. If selected, you’ll spend the summer writing, researching, and sharpening your ability to communicate complex scientific issues to nonscientists. Applications for a summer 2008 internship are due by 15 January.

As a member of AAAS, IEEE-USA sponsors two fellows who will work for 10 weeks at a U.S. newspaper, magazine, or radio or TV station. IEEE-USA pays a weekly stipend of US $450 and covers expenses, including travel to Washington, D.C., for orientation and evaluation sessions at the beginning and end of the summer.

Recent interns include Charles Emrich, a 2006 IEEE graduate student member who worked at the Sacramento Bee in California. He has since earned his doctorate in biophysics from the University of California, Berkeley. Miriah Meyer, who is completing her doctorate in computer science at the University of Utah, in Salt Lake City, worked in the summer of 2006 at the Chicago Tribune.

A DIFFERENT PATH Sometimes students even discover a new career path during their fellowship. For example, the program launched Abby Vogel, a 2005 Mass Media Fellow and a Ph.D. candidate, into a writing career. She served her fellowship at the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia, where she wrote more than a dozen articles on topics such as astronomy, physics, and green building techniques.

“I applied for the fellowship because I love science and I love writing,” Vogel says. “I knew early on that I may not be cut out for a job in academia, because I was more interested in learning about other people’s research projects than digging deeper into my own.” An article that she wrote about her fellowship experience will run in the November/December issue of IEEE Potentials, the student member magazine.

“Being a science journalist is difficult because it’s hard to make science interesting to the average reader, and you have to ask the right questions during an interview to get good quotes,” she says. After finishing her stint, she continued to write articles for newsletters published by the U.S. National Institutes of Health. She also took journalism classes at the University of Maryland and volunteered during the summer of 2006 at the George Washington University Medical Center in the office of marketing and communications. She was invited to join the IEEE-USA Communications Committee and currently is the career policy editor for IEEE-USA’s Today’s Engineer.

Vogel says her writing experience has paid off. She works full time as a communications officer at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s research news and publications office, in Atlanta. She will complete her doctorate in December in biological resources engineering at the University of Maryland.

REQUIREMENTS Applicants must be U.S. members of the IEEE and undergraduate juniors or seniors, or graduate or postgraduate students majoring in the natural, physical, health, engineering, or social sciences field. In addition to the application, students must include a résumé, a two- to three-page sample of writing aimed at the general public, a short news story summarizing a recent journal article, transcripts of graduate and undergraduate work, and three letters of recommendation.

To read about the experiences of past IEEE-USA Mass Media Fellows, visit http://ieeeusa.org/communications/massmedia.asp. For an application, visit http://www.aaas.org/programs/education/MassMedia. If you have questions, contact Pender McCarter, IEEE-USA’s senior public relations counselor, by e-mail at p.mccarter@ieee.org.