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Graduate students attend science, engineering advocacy workshop in Washington, D.C.

From left to right: Sarah Burtnett, Rob Newton, Adam Calderon, and Julia Ho Credit: Provided. All Rights Reserved.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - Four Penn State doctoral students had the opportunity to learn and communicate with representatives and other students around the country at the 2023 Catalyzing Advocacy in Science and Engineering (CASE) workshop, held by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) from March 26-29 in Washington, D.C. The workshop included sessions on policy, the federal budget process and how congressional offices and committees operate, as well as a networking reception, and congressional office visits, among other events.

The four Penn State doctoral students — Sarah Burtnett, animal science, Adam Calderon, clinical psychology, Rob Newton, industrial engineering and operations research, and Julia Ho, architectural engineering — had various takeaways from the experience, each highlighting areas they grew and learned, as well as what they were hoping to bring back and share with other Penn State students.

Communication between scientists and policymakers

One emphasis of the workshop was communication between scientists and policymakers, and understanding how the two groups can best work together to effect change. Calderon, who has always had an interest in science policy, was especially interested in learning how to get his message across effectively.

“The lesson that really stuck with me is that when you’re communicating with policymakers, although data is great, what’s going to stick and resonate with people are stories,” Calderon said.

Calderon added the workshop gave him a chance to learn from advocacy experts on how to talk to policymakers and stakeholders, and how to bring potentially complicated research into a short snippet and story for those policymakers to better understand and relate to.

“I took away that people care, but it’s really hard to get excited about something that you’re not interfacing with,” Newton added. “When you have these opportunities to humanize and make relevant the stuff that we’re working on here as grad students to policymakers, it was really important.”

“We’re each doing our doctoral research because we want to be helpful,” he added. “We want to see an impact from what we’re doing here, and it’s really cool when you can see that impact on the policy level as well.”

For Ho, one of the lessons she planned to bring back to her peers in Penn State was about communication.

“Learning to communicate our research is really, really important, and I think it takes a lot of practice,” she said. “I think we can get really caught up in our little science bubbles, so taking a step back from that every once in a while is important.”

Networking and Capitol Hill visits 

The students also had quite the opportunity to network throughout their experience in Washington. The group had conversations with individuals from groups such as NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, American University policy professors, past congressional staff members, and congressional staff from the offices of Rep. Glenn Thompson, Sen. Bob Casey, and Sen. John Fetterman, among other groups.

Each student mentioned the positives of having those in-person conversations.

“To be able to talk to a variety of people who on and off have worked on Capitol Hill was really inspiring,” Calderon said. “Exposure is also so important to show you that policy changes are possible and here’s how it’s done. It’s one thing to read about these things but it’s another to have conversations with people that have done this kind of work.” 

"All these representatives have constituencies, so while they’re dealing with federal dollars, they want to see that federal money come back to Pennsylvania,” Newton added. “If they’re pushing stuff like research and the opportunity is there for the money to come back to Pennsylvania via grants, that’s even more attractive.” 

Burtnett had the opportunity to share her passion and research with the office of Rep. Glenn Thompson, a Penn State graduate, who is also the current chairman of the House Committee on Agriculture.  

“I did my research and I saw that Rep. Thompson grew up on a dairy farm close to here and is really passionate about the industry,” Burtnett said. “It was cool going into it knowing that I would be able to talk about my research and talk to someone that would care a lot about it. It was fun to talk to someone that really cares because those are the people he represents.”  

Burtnett added that many former dairy farmers miss the work, and Thompson is like most in that category.  

“I made a joke that if he ever wants to come to the Penn State Dairy, it’s there,” she said. Before she knew it a staff member started the conversation of Thompson visiting Penn State and for Burtnett to give him a tour of the program and research, an opportunity Burtnett was excited about.  

Burtnett’s interaction with Thompson’s team made an impact on more than just her, as Newton added just watching it was one of his favorite moments of the experience.  

“That was the dream,” Newton said on watching the conversation play out. “They’re worried about the farm bill this year and all the sudden Sarah walks in, and she says, ‘Let’s talk about dairy,’ and they were excited. It was really cool.” 

While Burtnett’s moment stood out, the whole group was able to bring their own perspectives to each meeting throughout the week.

“When we met with the different representatives, we were able to have our own strengths on things we wanted to talk about,” Burtnett added. “I always enjoy things like that because it feels like a lot of us have the same goals. We’re trying to solve similar problems but we’re coming at them from different angles.”

Experiencing the workshop through different perspectives  

Connecting with students from around the country at the workshop was another positive takeaway for the Penn State group.  

“It was really cool to hear about what the other students are doing and have done for their research,” Ho said. “Everyone there was doing really awesome research from so many different areas and so many different schools. It was really cool to meet all those people and see what everyone else was interested in doing and their goals.”   

“I loved being able to experience the workshop with other Penn State students,” Burtnett said. “I feel like I learned a lot from the workshop, but I also feel like I learned so much from my other Penn State cohort that went down there.” 

“I think it’s just a really nice experience to meet graduate students from around the country,” she added. “I met so many people in fields incredibly different from mine.”  

Those interested in learning more about the CASE workshop can find more information on the AAAS website.  

Last Updated May 1, 2023