“I got great advice from alums of the paper now in journalism—Dartmouth didn’t have a journalism program, so they encouraged me to major in a subject that I would eventually want to write about,” says Matthews. “That’s how I ended up studying environmental studies. I traveled to southern Africa on a term abroad to study sustainable development and the environment, and I also worked in a biogeochemistry lab on an experiment on climate change in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica.”
Matthews continues, “I decided I wanted to learn how to write well about science. I believe some of the world’s biggest problems have to do with science—development, energy, climate change, obesity. But this also means that these problems can be solved via science. Being able to write about these issues in an engaging manner is critical for bringing information and fact to the forefront of discussion. I like to think that better coverage will result in better solutions.”
Read the full story, published 1/14/13 on Scientific American’s Incubator blog.
