Matthew Nisbet
Professor, School of Communication

Matthew Nisbet, Ph.D. is a social scientist who studies strategic communication in policy-making and public affairs, focusing on controversies surrounding science, the environment, and public health. He is the author of more than two dozen journal articles and book chapters, and serves on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Press/Politics and Science Communication. His scholarship has been cited more than 300 times in the peer-reviewed literature and in more than 100 books.

Nisbet’s current research on climate change communication is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation where he is a Health Policy Investigator. He has also worked as a consultant to the National Academies, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Science Foundation and other leading organizations. Nisbet is a frequently invited speaker at universities and meetings across North America and Europe and he has lectured on more than two dozen college campuses.

Kate Sheppard
Environmental Reporter, motherjones.com

Kate Sheppard covers energy and environmental politics in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. She was previously the political reporter for Grist.org and a writing fellow at The American Prospect. Her work has also been featured in the WashingtonPost.com, NYTimes.com, The Guardian, The Center for Public Integrity, The Washington Independent, Washington Spectator, Who Runs Gov, In These Times, and Bitch. She was raised on a vegetable farm in southern New Jersey (yes, they do exist), but has adapted well to life in the nation's capitol. She misses trees and having a Congressional representative with voting power, but thinks D.C. is pretty great anyway.

Juliet Eilperin
National Environmental Reporter, Washington Post

A born-and-bred Washington, Juliet Eilperin graduated in 1992 magna cum laude from Princeton University, where she received a bachelor’s in Politics with a certificate in Latin American Studies. In the fall of 1992 she went to Seoul, South Korea on a Luce Scholarship, which allowed her to cover politics and economics for an English-language magazine. Returning to Washington, Ms. Eilperin wrote for Louisiana and Florida papers at States News Service and then joined Roll Call newspaper after the Republicans seized Congress in 1994. In March 1998 she joined The Washington Post as its House of Representatives reporter, where she covered the impeachment of Bill Clinton, lobbying, legislation, and four national congressional campaigns.

Since April of 2004 she has covered the environment for the national desk, reporting on science, policy and politics in areas including climate change, oceans, and air quality.

-Huffington Post

Jane Hall as Moderator
Associate Professor, School of Communication

Jane Hall specializes in media and politics, particularly in issues of special interest to young people. A weekly commentator on Fox News Watch, she also moderates SOC's American Forum series on NPR station WAMU. Hall is a frequent contributor to Columbia Journalism Review, the Harvard International Journal of Press and Politics and other publications. She teaches reporting and media studies. In 2007-2008, she developed a year-long collaboration between her students and washingtonpost.com about the presidential election. Working out of New York, Hall covered the media for nine years for the Los Angeles Times. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the Los Angeles Times Editor's Awards and the Los Angeles Press Club Award.