Student Organization Takes STEPS to Connect Science with Policy Issues

September 9, 2014 |  Dartmouth Now

Download slides from a September 29, 2014, presentation (PDF).

As scientists and scholars grapple with shrinking research budgets and out-of-touch politicians, a group of Dartmouth graduate students have founded the Science Technology and Engineering Policy Society (STEPS), an organization working to engage students at the intersection of science and policy.

Founding members include IGERT graduate students Julia Bradley-Cook, a PhD student in ecology and evolutionary biology, and Ali Giese, a PhD student in earth sciences. Both attended the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Summer Policy Colloquium, in Washington, D.C., in June 2014, along with IGERT earth sciences PhD student Gifford Wong.

STEPS is s natural outcome of previous science and engineering outreach and communications activities developed in collaboration with the IGERT program and the Institute of Arctic Studies at the Dickey Center.

"The Institute of Arctic Studies is excited to host and work with STEP on their outreach to graduate and undergraduate students interested in how science informs policy and how the policy process actually works, and also when it doesn't," says Ross Virginia, Director of the Institute of Arctic Studies. "Many of the students founding STEP come from the IGERT Polar Environmental Change Ph.D. program where training in science, policy, research ethics, and science communication are stressed. STEP and IAS are natural partners."

Read more about STEPS on Dartmouth Now.