Finding the Story in the Science: Avery Truman's Path to Valedictorian

When Avery Truman arrived at Utah State University as a first-year student, she knew she loved science but she didn’t yet know what to do with that love. She knew she was curious about the natural world, fascinated by everything from wildlife to astronomy. She knew she liked to write, too. What she didn’t know was that those interests could combine to become her path.

Looking back now, as valedictorian in the S.J. & Jessie E. Quinney College of Agriculture & Natural Resources and an emerging science writer headed to MIT for graduate school, Truman laughs at how uncertain those first years felt.

“I remember signing up for environmental studies initially just because it seemed like it fit what I thought I wanted to do,” she said. “But then as time went on, I think I switched my major in my first year probably seven times.”

She eventually landed back where she started, in environmental studies, adding a second major in geography and a minor in unmanned aerial systems (also known as drones). At the time, though, the destination was far from clear.

“In my head, I had this picture of wanting to work with renewable energy,” she said. “But I had no idea what that meant or what that looked like.”

One thing was certain: Truman didn’t imagine herself becoming a writer.

“I remember specifically telling myself I didn’t want to be a writer,” she said. “I loved to write, but it didn’t feel like an important enough career.”

Like many students drawn to science, she assumed that impact came from research, data and technical expertise, not from the words used to explain them. That assumption began to change during her first year at USU, when she took a chance and joined The Utah Statesman staff. Her reason for applying was simple.

“My dad was a journalist for a few years when I was really young,” she said. “I thought, ‘He did this in college, and I like to write. I could try it out.’”

Around the same time, she enrolled in a study abroad course on coral reefs, traveling halfway across the world to Heron Island, Australia. It was there, not in a lecture hall but on a living reef, that two seemingly separate parts of her identity began to merge.

Each day on the island, Truman wrote blogs about what she was learning — not only what the reef was composed of, but how it felt to be there. She wrote about beauty and complexity, about organisms intertwined in delicate systems, and about the sense of wonder that comes with studying the natural world. Even then, she showed a rare ability to make science vivid and accessible, translating observation into meaning.

Earlier in her time at The Statesman, Truman noticed a disconnect among others on the writing staff that would later define her work. When the editor offered up a climate science story assignment, Truman assumed it would be among the first to go. Instead, it was the last.

“Nobody else wanted to do it,” she said. “That frustrated me a little bit, because science is just the coolest thing in the whole wide world to me.”

Over time, that frustration turned into focus. If others weren’t eager to tell science stories, she would. Truman rose quickly through The Statesman ranks, becoming lifestyles editor and eventually managing editor while maintaining a 4.0 GPA. At the same time, she realized something crucial about communication.

“I had no idea science communication existed,” she said. “It wasn’t until I had those internships and worked at The Statesman that I realized writing is one of the most important jobs, especially today, because the gap between scientists and the public is huge.”

That idea was crystallized in another course. During an outdoor lab experience, she and her classmates collected samples from a river to assess its health. When Truman turned in her assignment, it was nothing like the others.

“I wrote this really long essay about the experience,” she said. “Everyone else wrote about the data, the math, the observations. I remember thinking while we were doing the field work, ‘This is how I’m going to write about this experience.’”

In seeing how different her work was from the other students, she realized her brain worked differently. Where classmates focused on results, she focused on narrative — on why it mattered.

That instinct has carried her beyond campus. Truman earned two highly competitive internships at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Washington, D.C., working in both the Office of Communications and the Office of the Chief Technologist. There, she interviewed scientists and wrote about complex missions like Artemis and the DAVINCI probe.

Even surrounded by experts, the challenge remained the same.

“They’d go really technical and it was above my head sometimes,” she said. “You don’t want to tell a NASA scientist to dumb it down.”

She doesn’t even like the phrase “dumb it down” and has come to think of science writing as translating science for non-scientists. Her work reached an even larger stage when she was selected as an executive communications intern for the National Geographic Society, chosen from more than 9,000 applicants. She spent last summer writing on behalf of the organization’s CEO and found herself at the center of global science storytelling, proof that her work could make a tangible impact.

That sense of impact is something she values. When she wrote about NASA’s Artemis mission two years before it dominated headlines, it felt discouraging that few people noticed. Recently, as public interest surged and staff at The Statesman and everyone else seemed focused on the Artemis mission, she felt something else instead: validation.

“That article has probably had more views now in the past few weeks, even though it was written two years ago,” she said.

This fall, Truman will take her next step at MIT, where she is one of just eight students accepted into the science writing graduate program.

“I’m still in shock,” she said. “I looked at the list of names of the students who have been accepted and thought, ‘How did I make this list?’ I can't even express how grateful I am to have even been considered for this.”

In retrospect, she sees how the pieces fit together: a grandfather who inspired her love of astronomy, a father who modeled journalism, a coral reef halfway across the world, and a student newspaper assignment no one else wanted.

“It feels so clear now,” she said. “As a science writer, you get to explore what you’re curious about, learn alongside experts and then tell people why it matters.”

As Truman reflects on her path, one belief stands out above all others: stories have power. They bridge gaps, spark curiosity and can connect people to ideas that shape the future. For a valedictorian who once thought writing wasn’t “important enough,” that realization has made all the difference, and it’s one she now carries forward, translating the natural world for all of us, one story at a time.