Page 32 - Acoustics Today Spring 2011

Fig. 2. The author took part in Senator Bingaman’s annual Student Leadership Institutes in New Mexico in February, 2010. This discussion focused on the costs, causes, and potential solutions to high drop-out rates in New Mexico.
learned that Senator Bingaman, the senior Senator from New Mexico, serves on several key committees for those issues: he is Chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, he is on the Finance Committee (and chairs the Finance Subcommittee on Energy, Natural Resources, and Infrastructure), and he serves on the Heath, Education,
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whom I met that year.
Just before orientation, a former Fellow told me that the
first several months on the Hill were like getting shot out of a canon. I found that to be a good description. It was thrilling, terrifying, exhausting, and exhilarating all at once. The pace of work on the Hill can be beyond frenetic, especially if the issue you are working on has hit the front page of the Washington Post and the New York Times. More commonly, the pace in the Senate is “hurry up and wait.” While I did not work on the big issue of the year (health care), being in an environment with that much intensity can be both addictive and overwhelming.
I assisted Senator Bingaman’s Senior Education Counsel on a wide range of education issues (Figure 2). While the pri- mary education issues that I covered were science education and education technology, I also learned about rural educa- tion issues, workforce development, Native American educa-
During placement I dis- covered that his staff included a fair number of former Science & Technology Policy Fellows as well as other scien- tists who made their way into the policy realm. Most impor- tantly, I learned that he set the tone for an incredibly talent- ed and down-to-earth team. When his office offered me a spot on his education team, I was very excited and felt tremendously fortunate. Little did I know at that time how lucky I was to receive that offer; my wife is a Senate staffer
Labor, and Pensions Committee.
tion, early childhood development, K-12 policy, and higher education. Almost all of my day-to-day work in the office involved communication: writing memos to brief our staff and Senator Bingaman, working on speeches and letters, tak- ing meetings with constituents from New Mexico, attending briefings on and off the Hill, reviewing legislative language with staff from other offices, and reading and writing lots of email.
For example, meetings with constituents from the state and with interest groups in Washington served several pur- poses. Lobbyists would seek information on the Senator’s position on an issue, or would ask the Senator to take a cer- tain position on a bill which had been introduced, or to sup- port (or oppose) funding for a particular program. Our job as staffers was to gather information on the request, summarize it into a few bullet points, and brief senior staff either verbal- ly or in writing. Perhaps more commonly, these meetings were a chance for both staffers and lobbyists to learn news about bills that might be moving forward in House or Senate committees, or about how various interest groups might be reacting to the latest development in a given issue area. As you likely know, the term “lobbyist” can have a negative con- notation. However, that term includes anyone who asks a member of Congress to take a position on a given issue, including a scientist who argues for improved standards in education or funding to support basic research. I quickly learned that effective lobbyists shared some common traits. Above all, they were expert on the issue that they covered, and could quickly and concisely deliver their message— meetings on the Hill rarely last more than 30 minutes. They could produce the arguments for and against their position, and they treated staff with respect and courtesy regardless of
28 Acoustics Today, April 2011