Massachusetts, Michigan, Rhode Island and Wisconsin are launching 2025 with grants to explore the development of science policy fellowships.
The fresh start is timely, with states facing complex policy issues in the year ahead, from technology regulation to workforce shortages.
Inspired by federal science and technology fellowships, state programs provide legislators with direct access to researchers who can provide timely, digestible, nonpartisan research. Often placed within legislatures or executive branch agencies, fellows can be reached by the click of a button—or are sometimes just down the hall.
NCSL’s Center for Results-Driven Governing, with support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, awarded planning grants of $100,000 to nonpartisan organizations in all four states. Planning grants allow programs to allot time and resources to activities such as consulting stakeholders, developing a fellowship model and fundraising. Over the course of a year, grantees will explore options for bringing science, technology and engineering expertise right to decision-makers’ backyards.
Here’s a look at the plans underway in each of the four states.
Massachusetts
NCSL awarded a planning grant to the Scientific Citizenship Initiative, or SCi, a nonprofit that creates simulation-based classroom learning to equip scientists for civic engagement. The NCSL award allows SCi to build out existing fellowship structures and conduct focused fundraising efforts to create the Massachusetts Science and Technology Policy Fellowship.
In an announcement, SCi says its goal for the award is to build a program that “will ensure public policy decisions in Massachusetts are informed by the latest scientific research” and offer researchers with doctorates in STEM fields an opportunity to “apply their expertise in real-world policymaking.”
Michigan
Jumping into 2025 with bipartisan support from lawmakers and a planning grant from NCSL, the Science, Technology and Public Policy Program, or STPP, at the University of Michigan will explore a legislative fellowship for postgraduate scientists and engineers. “We were fortunate to receive enthusiastic support for this initiative from stakeholders in higher education, as well as the state Legislature,” the program’s education manager, Julie Berson Grand, says in a news release. The fellowship would be modeled after federal and other state programs, keeping in mind policy issues that hit close to home.
Rhode Island
Launching a state fellowship has also been a longtime goal of the Rhode Island Sea Grant College Program, a statewide program housed at the University of Rhode Island. A new planning grant from NCSL could make it possible. Envisioning a yearlong, full-time fellowship, Rhode Island Sea Grant plans to recruit fellows from the state’s colleges and universities to work in legislative and executive offices. Fellows would provide science and technology expertise to advance policymaking.
Threading the needle of that dream, the program is already writing fellow job descriptions, seeking funding and building partnerships within academia and state government.
Wisconsin
The Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, or WID, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is eager to explore the potential of a fellowship program. “This initiative could create a direct pipeline for STEM professionals to inform policy,” says Andrew Hanus, director of WID’s Illuminating Discovery Hub, in a news release. The institute plans to connect scientists and engineers with Wisconsin’s legislators, who would together tackle complicated policy issues in their communities.
During the planning period, WID will seek input from academic and governmental institutions and other state science policy fellowships to tailor a program model that addresses the state’s unique challenges.
NCSL’s Role
With a commitment to nonpartisanship and evidence-informed policymaking, and with support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, NCSL’s Center for Results-Driven Governing launched the state science policy fellowship project in November 2022. The project aims to increase legislator and legislative and executive branch staff awareness about state science policy fellowship programs and to support existing state programs, as well as states interested in developing new programs. In addition to managing the planning grant process, the Center for Results-Driven Governing coordinates a peer-learning network, providing existing and developing programs the opportunity to share best practices, tools and strategies.
Maddy Tyner is a policy associate in NCSL’s Center for Results-Driven Governing.