Policy for the Planet celebrates 1 year! How Voices for Science helped to launch this website1/13/2022 Policy for the Planet just celebrated its 1 year anniversary! It’s hard to believe we’ve been writing posts and summarizing legislation for over a year now! It seems only fitting to give another shout out post to the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) Voices for Science (VFS) program, as it played a big role in our efforts to launch this blog, and it’s taking applications for the 2022-2023 cohort through February 1. Last year, we wrote a post about Morgan’s experience with the VFS program, which trains scientists to effectively communicate science to different audiences. Participants are selected for one of two tracks based on their interests: communications, where they learn how to speak with journalists, media, and public audiences, or policy, where they learn how to build relationships with policymakers at the federal, state, or local levels. We both participated in the policy track. Once participants are selected and participate in training with the full cohort, they’re then split into smaller groups by geographic location and have an AGU policy staffer as their mentor for the year. Under their tutelage, each person develops an engagement plan, and then meets with their regional groups once a month to discuss progress and get feedback. Participants design their own projects and come up with their own ideas to conduct outreach either solo, in collaboration with others in the program, or other people interested in helping with the project(s). Our policy track cohort members came up with some great ideas, like conducting science policy fellowship or career webinars, writing policy op-eds and memos, and beginning podcasts, among many other things. While Morgan was a member of the 2020-2021 VFS cohort, we collaborated to start this website! After an awesome AGU Congressional Visits Day experience (virtual, of course) meeting with Representative Stauber, and staffers from Senator Smith, Senator Klobuchar, and Representative Omar’s offices, we began to understand the important role that scientists can and should play in the policy process. We decided that we wanted to continue reading and learning about science policy. Preparing for Congressional visits was a surprisingly academic exercise, from researching policy makers, reading science-based legislation and drawing connections between the two. Throughout this process we learned just how much environmental legislation is out there! Our goal was (and still is) to encourage awareness of science in policy by using our expertise to bring visibility to proposed environmental legislation and communicate it in a more digestible form. This endeavor took a lot of planning and thought, but with the mentorship of Morgan’s VFS cohort, we came up with the idea for Policy for the Planet! While designing the website and ironing out details, we also presented an introduction to science policy to our department, and led a state-level water policy discussion with interested scientists in industry and academia. This year, Mary joined the VFS program’s policy track for the 2021-2022 cohort and continued what we started. We both recently graduated with our PhDs and moved on to science policy positions in Washington, DC -- and truly owe our start in science policy to the opportunities created through VFS. While settling into new routines and adjusting to the fast pace of DC life has taken most of our focus, the VFS program has kept us motivated and on track with Policy for the Planet. Mary’s cohort is and has been a major source of support for the website. We’re not done yet -- we have a vision for PFTP and the website is still in progress. There is a lot to come in 2022 as we continue to build our platform and follow along with Congress’ historic investments in the environment and climate change mitigation. If you’re interested in VFS there is still time to APPLY for next year’s cohort! Applications for the 2022-2023 year are open through February 1: https://www.agu.org/Share-and-Advocate/Share/Sharing-science-network/Voices-for-science
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