Writing Across the Curriculum

Learning to Write for a Public-Facing Audience:

    A Chemistry Professors Writerly Journey  

by Nancy Sasaki, PhD

Since teaching her Chemistry + Art first year seminar class in 2016, Dr. Debbie Gale Mitchell, a chemistry teaching professor, began to recognize a significant gap in public-facing science writing: there was no accessible, comprehensive account of how light interacts with matter across the full spectrum of spectroscopy. While popular books on visible light and color were available, they tended to isolate narrow phenomena rather than present spectroscopy as a unifying scientific framework that underpins technologies ranging from medical imaging to climate science. This realization marked the beginning of Dr. Mitchell’s transition from disciplinary expert to public science writer. 

Dr. Mitchell’s commitment to accessible science communications, however, predated her current book project. Beginning in 2014, she used social media platforms such as Twitter (and later Instagram and TikTok) to share accurate chemistry information in approachable, creative ways. Her posts blended chemistry with everyday practices, including makeup application and bullet journaling as a strategy for countering widespread scientific misinformation to help increase chemistry literacy among general audiences. One post that connected spectroscopy principles to cosmetic pigments reached over one million views, underscoring both the public interest for accessible science and the effectiveness of integrating disciplinary knowledge with familiar everyday practices (such as putting on makeup). These experiences ultimately shaped her decision to pursue what would become her most ambitious scholarly writing project: a nonfiction chemistry book for a general audience. 

At the beginning of 2021, Dr. Mitchell began drafting an initial version of her spectroscopy manuscript. After about a year of trying to write on her own, she joined a Writing Accountability Groups (WAGs) led by DU writing professor Dr. Geoff Stacks. WAGs are facilitated, small-group writing communities designed to support faculty productivity, work–life balance, and sustained engagement with scholarly or creative projects. Dr. Mitchell credits this experience as a turning point in her development as a writer, “The experience … gave me the confidence to keep going.” Interestingly, she recalls Dr. Stacks’s observation that committed readers already possess foundational writing expertise as helping to reframe her identity as a “scientist who writes” to “writer who practices science.” This insight also encouraged Dr. Mitchell to become a more confident writer.  

Building on this momentum, Dr. Mitchell participated in additional WAGs lead by writing faculty Dr. Kara Taczak, Olivia Tracy, and Megan Kelly. She describes these groups as instrumental in helping her maintain steady progress and accountability across multiple academic quarters. Complementing this work, she also took part in writing workshops hosted by Lighthouse, a community-based organization offering faculty-led workshops for writers at all stages.  Together, these writing communities provided not only structural support but also a space for reflection and experimentation and also figuring out more about her writerly identity as public-facing scientific writer. Mitchell continues to use the Writing in Place (WIP) opportunities supported through the Writing Program to continue the final stages of publishing her book. 

By spring 2023, Dr. Mitchell had completed five sample chapters, enabling her to secure a literary agent. Her book proposal, Resonance & Radiance: How Light Reveals the Chemistry of Our World, was acquired by MIT Press in March 2024 and is currently in the editorial stage, with a projected publication date of March 2027. Reflecting on her motivations for undertaking such an extensive project, Dr. Mitchell explains that she hopes readers will gain insight into how scientific knowledge is produced and applied from understanding air quality indices and MRI technologies to tracking rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. At its core, the book seeks to demystify spectroscopy and make its relevance visible to communities beyond the academy. 

What began as an effort to counter scientific misinformation on social media has thus evolved into a sustained scholarly writing project and a new mode of academic engagement. For Dr. Mitchell, this journey represents not only the expansion of her disciplinary teaching into public scholarship but also the formation of a supportive, interdisciplinary writing community and a renewed understanding of writing as an integral component of scientific practice.