Page 18 - Acoustics Today Spring 2011

COOK STOVES AND CLIMATE CHANGE
Steven L. Garrett
Graduate Program in Acoustics, College of Engineering The Pennsylvania State University University Park, Pennsylvania 16802
“As an acoustician, at this point I think I can safely say that Phil, Bill, and I were both making waves and riding waves in cook stove and climate related policymaking.”
Scientists and engineers are victims ences as independent investigators and
of a significant and subtle form of
discrimination. We are never
made aware of the policy opportunities
that are regularly afforded to those in
more traditional “policy-oriented” dis-
ciplines like political science or inter-
national relations. The significance of
this discrimination is societal loss of
our insights into the ubiquitous scien-
tific and engineering issues that are
central to both domestic and interna-
tional policy decisions. The subtlety is
due to the fact that the discrimination
is passive and unconscious. Many top schools in policy-ori- ented disciplines have “resident diplomats” who spend time on college campuses describing their experiences and mak- ing students aware of opportunities, like joining the Foreign Service, which is the branch of the State Department that provides personnel for over two hundred US Embassies and Consulates worldwide. In science and engineering schools, no such awareness is cultivated.
As a researcher in thermoacoustic refrigeration, my interest in science policy went back to the mid-1980s. By that time, it became clear the refrigerant gases (primarily chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs) were destroying the Earth’s
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protective stratospheric ozone layer. I found the story of
the development of what became known as the Montreal
Protocols,2 as told by Ambassador Richard Benedick, the
U.S. chief treaty negotiator, to be a fascinating tale of the
interaction between science, commercial interests, and gov-
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ernments. Although I found this to be interesting, I saw no
way for me to be involved in such issues beyond the devel- opment of refrigeration technologies in my laboratory that did not require ozone-depleting working fluids.
My ignorance of opportunities for scientists and engi- neers to make contributions to the development of policy changed with the arrival of a single unsolicited e-mail mes- sage sent by a college administrator to all of Penn State’s sci- ence and engineering faculty. It asked if any senior (tenured) faculty were interested in being put forward by Penn State as one of the University’s two Jefferson Science Fellow nominees. The message included a link to the State Department’s Jefferson Science Fellows web site4 describing how someone like me could work (temporarily) in the State Department. In this article, I would like to recount some of my experiences as a Jefferson Science Fellow, but my over- riding motivation is to make members of the Acoustical Society of America aware of the range of opportunities for them to participate in policymaking by bringing their sci- entific and engineering expertise, as well as their experi-
14 Acoustics Today, April 2011
communicators with teaching and writing skills, to issues that are unrelat- ed to acoustics.
In this article I will provide exten- sive detail on how I came to work at the State Department. These details might be useful to others, since I could never have envisioned my own transition from a “bench scientist” who had never, in sixty years, worn a suit on two consecutive days, to a science diplomat representing the nation which has claimed scientific and technological
leadership throughout the second half of the twentieth cen- tury.
The Jefferson Science Fellows Program
Upon arrival at the Jefferson website, my first impression was dominated by the variety of different specialties and academ- ic institutions represented by the twenty-four Jeffersons who
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had served during the first four years of the program. I was
particularly impressed by their distinguished international academic careers. As it turned out, one of the most enjoyable aspects of my year as a Jefferson spent living in Washington, DC, was my close and collegial interactions with the other six Jeffersons in my year-group, as well as with non-scientists who were serving in the State Department and other govern- ment agencies and non-governmental organizations. In many ways, those interactions were much closer to the ideal image I held regarding a “university atmosphere” than the actual reality of university life which tends to be dominated by so many daily responsibilities that it is nearly impossible to enjoy intellectual discourse with knowledgeable faculty members who are outside my home department.
The second feature of the Program described at that site which I found encouraging was the long duration—a Jefferson spends an entire year living in Washington, DC, and working at the State Department,6 followed by a subse- quent five-year “consultancy” commitment. Based on my experiences on university faculties and as a consultant, I know that every organization has a distinct “organizational culture” that is only revealed by living within it. If I do not understand the culture, I do not stand a chance of being effective within that organization. Again, that initial impres- sion also turned out to be valuable, since knowledge of the State Department’s organizational hierarchy, their worldwide system of embassies and consulates, and the “country desks” in Washington that are responsible for bi-directional com- munication with those outposts, were hard-won bits of State Department fluency that serve me well.