The Craft of Scientific Presentations

Speaker

Melissa Marshall

Pennsylvania State University

Melissa Marshall is a lecturer of Communication Arts and Sciences at Pennsylvania State University, where she has been teaching since 2004. Marshall works with the College of Engineering to design and implement effective teaching methods of communication skills for engineering and science students. Marshall codeveloped and is the lead instructor for the Effective Scientific Presentations course that is offered to engineering students at Penn State.

In addition to teaching at Penn State, Marshall gives invited lectures and workshops at other institutions. She teaches a workshop entitled "The Craft of Scientific Presentations," a short course for graduate students, faculty, and professionals that seek to make their research presentations more memorable, understandable, and persuasive. Among the institutions where Marshall has been invited to lecture are Cornell University's Weill Cornell Medical College, Harvard Medical School, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, Laval University (Quebec), and the National Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (a division of the CDC). Additionally, Marshall provides annual scientific communication workshops to the Simula Research Laboratory in Oslo, Norway. In March 2009 she was invited to co-teach a national course on scientific communication to Norwegian PhD students in the science fields. This course took place in Oslo as a national effort by Norwegian universities and companies to improve the technical communication skills of their PhD students.

Marshall holds a BA in Advertising/Public Relations, a BA in Communication Arts and Sciences, and a MA in Communication Arts and Sciences, all from Pennsylvania State University.