We invited Dennis to give a three-part series of communication training workshops and meet with our graduate students, postdoctoral associates and research faculty. His presentations were superb, interesting and full of practical information that is already being used. He helped us include communication training expenses in a grant and we now intend to include such training in upcoming research and career development grant applications. Our goal is for University of Florida researchers to deliver outstanding presentations at conferences, fundraising events and community outreach activities. --- Ann Progulske-Fox, University of Florida
We will always remember your pointers when we communicate science to non-scientists and hope to see you back here again in the future to remind us of the simplicity of doing it. We are all very impressed with your commitment to spreading your message within the very busy scientific community. ---Meenal Elliott, West Virginia University
I wanted to express my appreciation and thanks for the science communication seminar series you presented for both the graduate students and postdocs at The Buck Institute. I found it very informative, especially the job interview section. I also enjoyed the interactive sections as it forced me to address certain challenges and topics that I usually don't spend much time on. ---Barbara Bailus, Buck Institute for Research on Aging
Dennis's recent presentation at the Spring meeting of the Northern California branch of the American Society for Microbiology was inspiring, on point, and provided clear techniques to enable participants to share their knowledge beyond the specialist sphere and influence public discourse. With concrete tips and engaging examples, Dennis was a great fit for our meeting. Dennis connected with our young scientists, who stand to benefit greatly from beginning to build these vital communication skills, and even impacted one of our keynote speakers, who gave a shout out to Dennis in his own talk for having underlined the importance of finding ways to connect with your audience. ---Jennifer Kyle, Northern California Branch-American Society for Microbiology
Sixty participants attended Dr. Mangan’s presentation which focused on simple techniques to help faculty improve their communication skills and deliver impactful messages about their work. Topics included condensing and communicating complex data, the use of improv training to increase credibility, and tapping into the power of storytelling to reach diverse audiences. As one participant noted “our NIH program official asked us to forward an accepted in-press paper along with a short paragraph about the significance and main findings. I have asked our Center's investigators to use Dennis Mangan's model of a triangle of specific to broad to summarize the paper's findings and the relevance (the "so what?" question) into one sentence.
---Quarterly News Digest article, UCSF