OHIO Alumna Amy Nordrum to host lecture on the ethics of science communication

Amy Nordrum will present a lecture on the ethics of science communication this Thursday at 7:30 p.m. in the last of a series from Ohio University’s Institute for Applied and Professional Ethics and will be held in Schoonover 145.

Nordrum is currently the news manager at IEEE Spectrum, a magazine of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, which is the largest professional organization devoted to engineering and the applied sciences.

Bernhard Debatin, director of the Institute for Applied and Professional Ethics, said he is looking forward to hearing about her experiences and the ethical challenges she has faced in the course of her career.

“Amy Nordrum is really an interesting journalist. She has done environmental reporting, she’s done science reporting,” Debatin said. “She is also somebody who constantly works on improving her abilities.”

Nordrum is a 2008 OHIO alumna with a bachelor’s in journalism and earned her master’s degree in science journalism from New York University in 2014. She is also completing an MBA with a focus on media management at NYU’s Stern School of Business.

When deciding on if she wanted to study science or pursue writing, Nordrum found a way to embrace both in her career. Prior to working at IEEE Spectrum, she wrote about health care, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals for International Business Times.

“I really like that act of trying to find out more about the world — trying to understand better the world that we live in. I'm a very curious person,” Nordrum said. “Covering science is one of the ways I get closest to that… it's really one of the most intellectually stimulating things I think I could be doing with my time.”

Nordrum said she will be talking about the new interesting aspects of covering science, the decisions she has made and the ethics involved. She is also looking forward to hearing other people’s thoughts and questions on her lecture.

"I'm looking forward to sharing some very real examples of decisions that I've made in stories that I've covered that I think will be really instructive to students,” Nordrum said. “I'm going to be very open about them and just talking through different decisions I made.”

Debatin said she is a role model and hopes that students will be inspired to consider science journalism as a fulfilling career opportunity.

“I think she's just an amazing individual, a great journalist and also a really good storyteller,” Debatin added. “I'm really pumped about her coming here.”