Is Knowledge Worthless If It Cannot Be Conveyed?

Whether your undergrad institution was a smaller liberal arts college or a large research university, you will find that researchers heavily populate graduate school teaching positions. The repercussions can go both ways: either you will find yourself intellectually stimulated by a cutting-edge researcher who is at the top of his or her field, or, you might find yourself frustrated by a gap between what the otherwise brilliant professor knows and the ability of said professor to convey a given lesson.

So far, I have encountered both kinds. However, might there be a silver lining? Well, a recent experience revealed something very fundamental about the challenges and potential of the MEM program…

Not long ago, I completed a video and essay for an engineering competition with three other students: one Ph.D. in Materials Sciences, one Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, and one Masters of Engineering Management. The project consisted of developing an idea for solving the many issues of growing metropolises. We went with green walls.

Our first meeting spoke volumes of our different programs as well as the relative strength of the Masters of Environmental Management program, if I may be so bold. The four of us sat down and started outlining some thoughts on green walls. I tried to explain a potential benefit of green walls relating to stagnant air moving from the bottom up for better air circulation. Unfortunately, I lacked the exact scientific lingo for explaining what I meant, but one of the scientists asked me if I meant static advection? I said, “Sure.”

The Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering went on, “You might be onto something. Let me do some back-of-the-envelope calculations.” He started scribbling down numbers and Greek symbols and circled the number “1.3” and then told me, “You’re right, it’s positive.” What happened here? A complete disconnect between a science and communication?

A few weeks later we were working on a three-minute video and a 1,000-word essay. In the end, I found myself contributing a lot about other sciences that the respective scientists were unfamiliar with, policy implications (which to them was the equivalent of quantum mechanics to me) and finally, the creative and visual aspects of conveying the science at hand.

Lesson learnt: the MEM program may very well be nebulous and frustrating at times, but ultimately you may leave the program with the most important tool: the power to convey. Because if nobody can connect the dots between scientific findings and breakthroughs with other scientists, policymakers, and the general populous, is there any real value to scientific knowledge?