Virginia
Schutte, PhD

SciComm Office Hours are casual, public, seeded Q&A sesssions. The seed person sets the topic based on a question or challenge they have, and I give them top priority during the session to ask their question(s) first. They generally run out of questions by 20 or 30 minutes into the hour, at which point I'll open up the session to anyone who wants to ask anything about any topic. To ask a question anonymously, attendees can message me privately through the session chat. Sessions are not recorded and I don't save the chat. These are meant to be the pinnacle of casual- folks can come and go, be on- or off-camera, ask questions in the chat or out loud, etc. My only rule is that the space be safe for anyone to be completely themselves.

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I'm always taking new requests for future SciComm Office Hours seeds- contact me to request a topic, date, and time that work for you. You can request a repeat topic if you like. Please don't be afraid to ask for help or for a peer cheerleader- odds are that if something's on your mind, someone else is thinking about that too!

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Upcoming sessions

• Oct 25, 3-4 ET: materials review. Register

• Nov 1, 2-3 ET: website work-along (watch and ask questions as I build a website live in Wix, and/or use this as accountability co-working time to work on your website). Register

• Nov 4, 11-12 ET: getting paid for scicomm. Register

• Dec 3, 12-1 ET: getting started in scicomm. Register

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Previous session topics

Here are the topics we've discussed in previous SCOH, in case this helps you know what kind of subjects you can seed a session with. Feel free to request a repeat of any of these sessions.

• Engagement and community on social media

• Job searching

• Job applications + interviews

• Freelancing

• Getting started with a scicomm career

• Landing your first scicomm job

• Marketing

• Materials review (in which I reviewed products, like resumes and websites, live)

• Networking

• Scicomm outside the USA and EU

• Setting career goals

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Why I do this

I started SciComm Office Hours after an audit in early 2022 of who I was giving free support to. I was helping friends of friends, who came from a pretty homogenous background and were already in or near to my existing network. But I want to widely offer free coaching and advice to anyone to make sure I use my service time to really serve. In other words: I don't want to reinforce privilege!

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With SciComm Office Hours, I can give customized time to anyone, just as I would during a private coaching call, but without charging my private client coaching rates.

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I'm very proud of the results and reach of these sessions, as measured through attendee feedback and repeat participation.