Posted by Jody Peters, PalEON Program Manager

The elevator pitch (a 30 second to 2 min synopsis of your research) is critical for sharing science with other scientists and the general public. However, developing this pitch usually does not come naturally to most people. It is something that needs to be practiced. Recently Jason McLachlan and Sam Pecararo from the University of Notre Dame, had the opportunity to practice their pitches in featured segments on Outdoor Elements, a show on our local PBS station. Not only did Jason and Sam have to prepare their elevator pitch, but they also had to come up with visual props that would be interesting to view on TV.  We think they both did a great job condensing their science stories into a few minutes!

Jason’s segment, Paleobotany & Climate Change, originally aired on Feb 9, 2014 and focused on PalEON in general and specifically described some of our work with tree data from the Public Land Survey. After he was taped for this segment last fall, Jason wrote a blog post about what he wished he would have said. Compare what he wished he would have said to what actually was aired!

Sam’s segment, Tree Coring, originally aired on February 16, 2014 and featured Sam coring a tree and talking about using tree rings to get an idea of how climate or other environmental variables influence tree growth.

Check out these segments to see Jason and Sam’s elevator pitch for some of the work of PalEON! Click on the links or photos above and scroll down to where it says “Play segment” to view. Each segment is approximately 7 minutes long.