DAILY LOBO new mexico
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
dailylobo.com Available on the
GET IT ON
Google play
App Store August 29, 2016 | Volume 121 | Issue 4
Actor helps scientists with communication By Fin Martinez @FinMartinez Last week the UNM Health Sciences Center hosted famed actor Alan Alda, who presented on a new partnership between Stony Brook University’s Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science and the HSC. The partnership is part of an innovative program founded by Alda that seeks to improve understanding and communication between scientists and the public by incorporating improv acting training into the routines of scientists’ explanations, thus making the information explained by the scientists easier to understand. “It’s possible to communicate amazing things if you know how to explain them,” Alda said. An actor known for his roles on M*A*S*H, E.R., and The West Wing, Alda first had the idea for his program after a near-death experience he had while in Chile, where he underwent an end-toend surgical connection of his internal organs, otherwise known as an anastomosis. “I remember (the doctor) saying part of my intestines had gone bad,” Alda said. “He explained the surgery and he put me under, and I lived. But his communication was great.” But it may not always be that easy. Alda said all too often doctors
and scientists do not explain concepts to their patients or to the public in an understandable way, which Alda attributes to “The Curse of Knowledge,” a bias that forms in a person when they have accumulated great knowledge about a particular concept, which may hinder their effectiveness at explaining it to others. “(It’s) when you have knowledge so in depth that you forget what it’s like to be a naive neophyte,” Alda said. “So you use language that isn’t common and you forget that most people don’t have this knowledge.” Alda related this to an experience he had while interviewing a doctor in Boston. He was asking her questions that she was able to answer in an understandable and personable way, akin to that of a science television show, he said. But at certain points, she changed her focus from Alda to the camera crew and almost instantly her tone changed and she began to describe the subject in an obscure sense. “I think that what she was talking about resembled a lecture she gave,” Alda said, “so she turned to the camera and lectured the camera.” Alda said she had to coax her back into her previous tone with questions which led her to resume communicating the subject she was explaining in a human way. He said the experience was an astonishing one.
Courtesy / John Arnold
Alan Alda paid a visit to Albuquerque earlier this week to announce a collaboration between the UNM Health Sciences Center and an innovative program he founded to teach scientists how to do a better job of communicating their work to a lay audience.
“I think the public is on a blind date with science,” Alda said. “We need to go from the blind stage of the relationship to the love stage.” Alda explained that there are three stages in a romantic relationship: Attraction, infatuation, and commitment. The public has
yet to establish the attraction stage of a relationship with science due to its tendency to possess the “Curse of Knowledge” bias, deterring public interest. “What we did is we included improv into our lectures to foster attraction,” Alda said.
“We use improv, not to make actors or comedians, but for scientists to use body language so that they remember to communicate feeling; not dumbing down the language, but presenting it in a way that’s understandable and relatable.”
Athletics faces growing budget problems By Cathy Cook @Cathy_Daily UNM Athletics is deeper in the red after overspending by a little over $1.5 million last year, according to Andrew Cullen of the Office of Planning, Budget and Analysis and Athletics Director Paul Krebs. That brings the Athletics Department’s cumulative budget deficit to $4.3 million. Krebs said the University is relieving athletics of $200,000 worth of expenses. The deficit stems from rising costs and a flat revenue stream, he said. These increased expenses include travel costs, scholarship costs and healthcare costs, he said. “As the Mountain West has changed membership over the last several years, that’s added significantly to our travel costs,” Krebs said. “Tuition has gone up, room and board, student fees. Whenever those costs go up, those are costs that we literally write a check to the University for - the total scholarship costs for our student athletes. So travel’s gone up, scholarships gone up,
a new NCAA rule involving cost of attendance has increased costs as well.” Funds for UNM cover healthcare increases for most of the University, but the Athletics Department does not have access to that pool of money. Instead, those increases are being paid by the department, he said.
“...we feel like we’re not getting the support from these external sources like our peers are, and that makes it harder for us.” Paul Krebs Athletics Department Director “We found ourselves in a worst case scenario: flat revenue and rising expense,” Krebs said. “We anticipated higher ticket sales than what we actually
Nick Fojud / Daily Lobo / @NFojud
The University of New Mexico’s Athletic Department is racked in a 1.5 million dollar deficit from the past 2015 year raising their collective budget deficit to 4.3 million.
generated, and I think in some ways that’s a reflection of the economy still struggling in New Mexico,” Krebs said. Other programs in the
same league as UNM receive roughly $6million more in funding through institutional support, student fees and state legislatures, he said.
“When you look at those four buckets of money, we’re next to last at the University of New
see
Overspends page 2
On the Daily Lobo website
Cook: Long-running Honors Forum lectures a ‘well-kept secret’
Lynch: Funniest “Back to UNM” tweets from the first week of classes
Reisen: Work begins on extensive South Lot lighting additions
Gonzalez: Late call plagues UNM Men’s Soccer in Indy
Trujillo: PATS launches nighttime shuttle service
Taglialegami: Ranked opponents give UNM Women’s Soccer winless start