Page 19 - Acoustics Today Spring 2011

The Jefferson Science Fellows (JSF) Program was initiat- ed by The Office of the Science and Technology Adviser to the Secretary of State. That office was created in response to a National Research Council’s study entitled “The Pervasive Role of Science, Technology, and Health in Foreign Policy”.7 That report highlighted the attrition of scientists from the State Department at a time when the importance of science and technology was expanding in nearly every component of foreign policy.
The second person to hold the recently-created position of Science and Technology Adviser to the Secretary (STAS) was George Atkinson, a professor of chemistry and optical sciences at the University of Arizona. As a scientist, he knew that researchers were accustomed to studying a subject over a long period, yet he also understood the necessity for poli- cymakers to make informed decisions quickly. “I began to see more clearly that these two communities (those of academic scientists and of State Department policymakers), which have long been understood to be different cultures, had to find better ways to communicate in a modern world.”8
Atkinson initially enlisted eighteen academic institutions that agreed to provide salary and benefits to faculty members who spend a year at the State Department and convinced the MacArthur Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation to provide grants of over $2 million to the National Academy of Sciences to support the Jefferson “experiment” for its first three years of operation. Subsequent funding was taken over by the State Department upon recognition of the value of the contributions the Jefferson Fellows made to their mission. Recently, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has also funded the program and, starting in 2009, Jeffersons are also working at USAID.
What’s acoustics got to do with it?
The Jefferson Fellows selection process begins with each of the now over 125 eligible academic institutions (those that have executed memoranda-of-understanding with the State Department) nominating as many as two of their faculty members. In addition to a resume, those nominees have to submit a statement-of-interest and two essays,9 along with three reference letters. The year I applied, eighteen of the applicants were invited to Washington to interview and shortly thereafter, seven of us were selected (see Fig. 1). Since Jeffersons are required to obtain a security clearance, my first responsibility was to complete the security paperwork and an extensive conflict-of-interest disclosure.
As you might suspect, the year in Washington is syn- chronized with the academic calendar, so Jeffersons start in mid-August. Our first two days were spent taking photos for badges, attending a security briefing, going to a swearing-in ceremony, and reading a three-ring binder that contains the two-page descriptions of positions for Jeffersons that various offices within the State Department and USAID have sub- mitted. Had I not requested the binder for the previous year shortly after being selected, I would have been overwhelmed with the diversity of opportunities.
The State Department is organized into functional and regional bureaus and that structure was preserved in the job
descriptions with individual bureaus listing one or more positions within specific offices. There were positions in intelligence and research; democracy, human rights, and labor; verification, compliance and implementation (e.g., bio- logical weapons treaties); international security and nonpro- liferation; international organizations (e.g., US representation at the UN); economic and business affairs (e.g., telecommu- nication policy or export control); oceans, international envi- ronment, and scientific affairs; as well as regional opportuni- ties in Europe, the Western Hemisphere, and East Asia. Needless to say, “acoustics” did not appear anywhere in any position description.
New Jeffersons are given just under two weeks to arrange interviews with the originators of the position descriptions that we found attractive before each of us had to make our placement decision, assuming the office we had selected indi- cated to STAS that we were acceptable. The office interview process was critical, both because it gave us an opportunity to meet the people with whom we could be working if we select- ed that office, but also because it was a very quick and intense introduction to a significant cross-section of the offices we might be interacting with once we “settled” into our home office.
Policy is made within the State Department by a “clear- ance” process. Some office might initiate a policy or program, but before it is approved and implemented, it has to be “cleared” by every office that might be involved in the rele- vant geographical or policy areas. Although an office might simply clear a memorandum initiated by another office (pos- sibly because that office had already been involved in the
Fig. 1. Six of the seven 2008-2009 State Department Jefferson Science Fellows. (Left to Right): Philip Hopke, Bayard D. Clarkson Distinguished Professor, Director, Institute for a Sustainable Environment, and Director, Center for Air Resources Engineering and Science, Clarkson University; Timothy DeVoogd, Professor, Department of Psychology, Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University; the author; Robert Butera, Professor, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Laboratory for Neuroengineering, Georgia Institute of Technology; Mohammed Zikry, Professor, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, North Carolina State University; and Michael El-Batanouny, Professor of Physics, Boston University. Not shown is Steven Geary, Professor and Department Head, Department of Pathobiology & Veterinary Science and Director, Center of Excellence for Vaccine Research, The University of Connecticut.
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