About Me

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I'm an assistant professor of neuroscience at Washington State University in Vancouver, where I use tiny zebrafish (the size of an eyelash!) as a model system to study human hearing loss and how we can prevent it. I'm also a long-time Toastmaster and I teach communication workshops. This blog represents the merging of my two passions - science and communication, which has really become one central passion - the science of communication. There's a revolution in science right now...the idea that we scientists should sometimes leave the lab and talk about what we do, and why we do it, to real people. This blog looks at why we should do this, and how to actually talk about science with non-scientists (and with each other!). Portions of this blog are also featured on Qualia, the AAAS MemberCenter blog site.

Thursday, November 29, 2012

Presentation strength training


From http://www.bboyscience.com/mental-health-strength/
In my quest for eternal youth (or at least slower signs of aging!) I’ve started weight training.  All of those bicep curls and shoulder presses are starting to pay off – I can actually see muscles in my upper body.

Just as we perform exercises to help our bodies look and perform their best, we can (and should!) perform exercises to improve our speaking skills. I developed a quick set of speaking exercises to work on specific aspects of public speaking: voice volume, eye contact, body language, and removing filler words.  These exercises work well in groups of 5-10 people but can be modified for different sized groups or situations.