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2018–2019 GSA-USGS Congressional Science Fellow Final Report

Is Your Science Policy Relevant? And a Few Lessons

During my 2018–2019 Congressional him to ask for advice on some topics I was unfamiliar with even
Science Fellowship in U.S. Senator Tom though his research did not technically touch on any policy.
Udall’s (D-NM) office, I had the oppor- Lesson 1: Take the time to meet with your representative’s staff
tunity to work on drafting several pieces (e.g., GSA Geoscience Congressional Visits Day). This may
of legislation. The pieces of legislation result in Hill staffers seeing you as being relevant to the policy-
that I worked most closely on were making process without you having to actively pursue research
related to wildlife corridors and to refor- in science policy.
estation on U.S. Forest Service lands. During my email exchanges with this scientist, he provided
In the broadest sense, I consider myself me with the contact information for another scientist in his field
Caitlin Keating-Bitonti to be a geologist, and in the narrowest and recommended that I reach out to this individual to gather
sense, I consider myself to be a micro- further and slightly different insight into the bill. This resulted
paleontologist. Thus, I do not have much knowledge of wildlife in my first true cold email to get additional information relevant
ecology and wildlife management, or plant physiology and forest to the bill, and also a working relationship with a second aca-
ecology, yet here I was in the Senator’s office working on legis- demic, who, again, had no policy experience.
lation that involved all of these fields. Once the bill was close to complete, I began shopping the bill
To those in Congress, I was a scientist, but I felt that I did around to offices in the U.S. House to identify a representative
not have the expertise to confidently approach these pieces of who could lead the bill there. When discussing the details of the
legislation as a scientist. One aspect of Congress that I truly bill with one interested office and sharing how it was drafted,
appreciated was the freedom to frequently respond to queries those staff members were intrigued that I had solicited the feed-
with “I do not know” or “I am not an expert in that” or “let me back of academics, one of whom happened to be from Senator
find out and get back to you.” About midway through my fel- Udall’s home state. Thus, they requested that I reach out to
lowship year, I started building confidence in my ability to experts at research institutes or universities located in their
work on legislation and began ramping up the level of intensity home state for input as well before they signed onto the bill.
and effort I was putting into these two bills. This included To identify a contact person to satisfy this office’s request, I
soliciting feedback from scientists who worked on these spe- Googled names in relevant academic departments and then sent
cific issues where I lacked the requisite expertise. I did this by out more cold emails. Without going into the details of why I had
sending cold emails asking for help. emailed them specifically, I asked if they had the time and inter-
I worked closely with five academic scientists over the span of est to review draft bill language. Again, I was beyond impressed
my fellowship year to help strengthen the legislation I was pre- with the willingness of scientists to provide insightful comments
paring for introduction. With these scientists, I worked to craft without questioning the motives or reasons for a cold email from
meaningful definitions for terms used in bills (many bills have a a different state’s Senator’s staffer. Lesson 2: Keep your profes-
definition section and it is crucially important to get those defi- sional web page current and well organized to both help others
nitions right); to create strategies to implement relevant science find you and quickly identify your expertise.
methodology and data into the bill; and to identify means to As I shopped the bill around on Capitol Hill, word spread
quantify the success of a program should the bill be passed into about it—as most things do on the Hill. A few outside, non-
law. I was beyond impressed with the willingness and thought- governmental groups requested to review the drafted bill. The
fulness of these scientists, and I am grateful to them for their comments I received on the bill from these groups led me down
generosity in working with me. a rabbit hole. Fortunately, to properly address and respond to
How did I identify these scientists given I was not working on these comments, I recalled a congressional briefing on land-
paleontology-related legislation and there is no scientist hotline slides (unrelated to the bill I was working on) that I had previ-
for policy makers to call? ously attended. One of the expert panelists spoke about some-
The first scientist with whom I established a working relation- thing tangentially related to the comments I had received, so I
ship was a professor at a university in New Mexico and, thus, a took a chance and cold emailed him for help. This person pro-
constituent of Senator Udall’s. While this academic was in D.C. vided me with a prompt response and started an email chain
for a scientific conference, he made the trip up to Capitol Hill to with a colleague who was better informed on this issue. Through
meet with me to request that the Senator maintain funding for this email exchange, I became better informed and able to
the National Science Foundation in fiscal year 2020 and con- address the comments that I received from the groups. Lesson 3:
tinue to provide broad scientific research support—as most aca- Be willing to participate in congressional briefings. Hill staffers
demics do when they visit their congressional representatives, attend these briefings to learn and some might even follow up
who are appropriators as well. We also spent some time chatting with you.
about his research lab and its ongoing projects. Our conversation To answer the question: Is Your Science Policy Relevant?
made a strong impression on me. As I dove deeper into one of Yes, you and your science can be policy relevant. I encourage the
the pieces of legislation I was tasked with for my fellowship GSA community to visit or contact your congressional represen-
year, I remembered the expertise of this scientist and emailed tatives to let them know about your science and to be open to the

32 GSA Today | November 2019