Careers 2022

For scientists in the US, a common entry point to a policy career has been a fellowship from programs that offer placements in offices throughout the executive and legislative branches of government. The largest of those programs, the Science & Technology Policy Fellowships run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has swelled from an initial cohort of seven in 1973 to well over 100 annually in recent years.

Yet even with that well-worn route available to them, many students are not formally introduced to the option of pursuing a science policy career until well into their graduate studies, if at all. Over the years, a handful of science policy clubs have emerged at some universities to help fill the information gap, but until recently such groups were few and far between.

That has begun to change quickly, spurred in part by a grassroots group called the National Science Policy Network (NSPN). The nonprofit formed in 2017 to catalyze connections among science policy groups, seed new ones across the country, and highlight the pathways to a policy career.

“NSPN wants to provide a pipeline of ‘I’m interested in science policy, I want to learn a little more about it, I want to engage a bit more, I want to try out this internship, I want to take this course. And now I can see this suite of jobs, fellowship opportunities, and potential future career paths, and what this could look like 20 to 30 years from now,’ ” says Robert Stanley, a postdoctoral research associate at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory who is NSPN’s current national chair.

NSPN is the brainchild of three graduate students who had led science policy groups at their own schools: biomedical engineer Michaela Rikard at the University of Virginia; chemical engineer Holly Mayton at the University of California, Riverside; and biologist Avital Percher at Rockefeller University in New York.

Percher recalls that part of his motivation for starting the organization stemmed from the 2016 election and the ensuing March for Science . “There came up this conversation, ‘We’re advocating for science policy but we’re operating in a bubble. How do we engage with more people outside New York proper and expand our network a bit?’ ”

In reaching out of state, Percher met Rikard, and they teamed up to write a grant proposal for creating a network of science policy groups on the East Coast. The two soon met Mayton, who advocated scaling the concept nationally. Schmidt Futures, a philanthropic initiative founded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, entertained the proposal for the East Coast network but likewise pushed for a national scope, ultimately providing the first grant to establish NSPN.

Today NSPN has about 1300 members and 75 chapters spanning 33 states. Though still a largely volunteer-driven organization, it has several full- and part-time staff.

Most of the network’s funding comes from foundations. It supports staff costs as well as various grant programs for chapter development, professional development, and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) workforce diversity initiatives. The network also collects annual dues: $10 for undergraduates, $20 for graduate students and recent graduates (the bulk of its membership), and $40 for individuals at later stages of their career.

A primary focus of NSPN is to introduce its members to the various pathways to a science policy career and to a community of like-minded scientists. “When a lot of people discover they want to do science policy, they’re in grad school, they’re in academia, and it can be very isolating to realize, ‘I am now on a totally different track from most of my peers,’ ” Mayton says.

As part of its efforts to give members a taste of science policy careers before graduating, the network runs the Scholars-in-Residence Program , which offers a boot camp on relevant skills and sponsors members to work as paid interns in partner organizations. “There are so many other ways to influence policy besides working in the federal government,” Mayton says, citing jobs in state and local government and at nonprofits, scientific societies, industry, and universities.

Among the most recent hosts for the Scholars-in-Residence Program were the Washington State Academy of Sciences, which mobilizes scientists to inform public policy debates in the state, and the Union of Concerned Scientists, a national advocacy organization that promotes evidence-based decision making on issues as varied as climate change and missile defense. The boot camp focuses on developing skills such as identifying stakeholders, writing policy memos, and making elevator pitches to policymakers.

The three cofounders have exited the organization to pursue careers in policy and make way for a new crop of leaders. Mayton is now administrative director of the Internet of Things for Precision Agriculture research center at the University of Pennsylvania, Percher works for NSF’s chief data officer, and Rikard is a public health analytics fellow at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Stanley, the national chair, says he looks forward to the in-person networking opportunity in Houston, Texas, this spring at the group’s fifth annual symposium . “I just remember arriving there and having the feeling that these were my people,” Stanley says of the first symposium he attended, in 2019. The subsequent two meetings were forced online by the pandemic. Stanley is also excited about a forthcoming NSPN initiative to develop a curriculum for free science policy training courses.

Beyond its professional development resources, NSPN aims to help scientists directly shape the policymaking process. It is hosting a workshop in November on ways for scientists to advocate in their local communities, and it has partnered with the organization Science Debate to produce science-focused questionnaires for political candidates.

Percher sees potential for NSPN to organize advocacy for change within academia. He says NSPN members could press for action on “issues that we know are long-standing problems and, truth be told, that the ‘old guard’ has really not been able to improve,” such as reforms to postdoctoral training and tenure evaluation criteria—in other words, he says, “all these things that people write about a lot that do not have dedicated grassroots activism to push for.”

Editor’s note, 7 October: In the last paragraph, Avital Percher referenced reforms to postdoctoral training, not postbaccalaureate training as originally stated. The article has been corrected.