Newsletter — January 2010
North Central Chapter News
Member News
AMWA Certifications – 2009
- Roxanne Landon earned an AMWA Advanced Curriculum certificate. She is a freelance medical writer (Excelsior, MN).
Kimberly McGhee earned an AMWA Science Fundamentals certificate. She is Managing Editor of Mayo Clinic Proceedings at Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN).
Wolfe Molitor earned an AMWA Science Fundamentals certificate. He is Development Officer-Campaign Operations at the Minnesota Medical Foundation, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
Ann Tennier earned an AMWA Core Curriculum certificate in Editing and Writing. She is a senior medical assistant at the Medical College of Wisconsin (Milwaukee, WI).
Anne Marie Weber-Main earned an AMWA Advanced Curriculum certificate. She is an assistant professor and research medical editor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
BELS Certifications – 2009
- Alyssa B. Quiggle earned the BELS certification. She is a medical editor at Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN).
Ann Tennier earned the BELS certification. She is a senior medical assistant at the Medical College of Wisconsin (Milwaukee, WI).
(This column highlights professional news and accomplishments of our members as a source of information and encouragement for others. Please submit information about yourself or a colleague to the chapter secretary [e-mail secr...]. If you submit information about a colleague, we will contact the colleague to ensure accuracy and to seek the colleague’s permission.)
Member Profile—Naomi Ruff
by Karen Steinhilber
Weather may not have drawn Naomi Ruff to relocate to Duluth from northern California, but she did find a warm and welcoming AMWA chapter waiting for her. An active member for 10 years in another chapter, she felt the North Central AMWA Welcome Packet was a nice outreach. She continues to enjoy chapter newsletters and credits the organization at large with helping to jumpstart her career as a medical writer and editor.
Naomi always assumed she would be a research scientist. “I thought I would make a good PI,” she recalls—only to find herself an unhappy postdoctoral fellow. She knew it was time to do something else. She had always enjoyed the communication side of science and was sought after by colleagues for assistance with their own writing endeavors. Feeling that writing her dissertation was the best part of her graduate studies at the University of California, she began to explore how to make a career out of scientific communication. Even though she was confident in her new direction, she worried that she would lose touch with the science when she made the jump from research to writing. Fortunately, that did not prove to be true.
Today, Naomi evenly divides her professional hours between medical writing and editing. She primarily writes scientific content for professional audiences (e.g., journal articles, grant applications, continuing education), and her expertise covers a wide range of topics—neurobiology, psychiatry, oncology, immunology, and cardiology, to name a few. Working directly with researchers continues to excite and drive Naomi, who loves the process of helping people communicate and think more clearly about their research. She brings a fresh set of eyes to the logic of research projects, in turn creating clarity for researchers and readers alike.
Always happy to give back to an organization she feels provided a network and resources to get her career off the ground, Naomi has served in various volunteer positions at both the national and chapter levels. She continues to teach a workshop in AMWA’s certification track—Introduction to the Nervous System.
Naomi can be reached through her website: www.ruffdraftwriting.com
Naomi Ruff
Upcoming Activities
1. AMWA North Central Chapter Book Club
by Mary Knatterud, book club organizer
The next meeting date is Monday, January 25, 2010. The selected book is Hospital: Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity, Plus Red Tape, Bad Behavior, Money, God, and Diversity on Steroids by Julie Salamon.
We will continue to meet at 11 a.m. at The Egg & I (2550 University Avenue, in the northwest corner of the old International Harvester building, now renovated, just west of Highway 280 near the Minneapolis-St. Paul border—with 2 free parking lots, a small one north of the restaurant and a large one east of it).
RSVP by 9 a.m. on Book Club Monday to me via email (MKna…), so that I can call ahead to have a table waiting for us.
For more information about the book club, including future selections, please click here.
2. SE Minnesota AMWA Writers and Editors Discussion Group—February Meeting
The next lunch is scheduled for Friday, February 26, 2010, from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. These every-other-month, bring-your-own-lunch gatherings are informal. All AMWA members and guests are welcome.
Mayo Clinic Campus
Plummer Building, conference room 1050
100 2nd Ave SW
Rochester, MN 55905
To get to the conference room, take the lobby elevator to the 10th floor, step out of the elevator and turn right, go through the “Editors” door, and turn left. The conference room is at the end of the hallway, the last door on the left.
For the full meeting schedule, please click here.