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Lessons from a thriving Sacramento-based program can help similar initiatives improve decisionmaking across the nation.
In 2009, the California Council on Science & Technology (CCST) launched a Science & Technology Policy Fellows program for the California state legislature, with funding support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. The program, modeled on the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) federal Science & Technology Policy Fellowships, was the brainchild of multiple people. Among them were CCST's then executive director Susan Hackwood, Mary Maxon (then with the Moore Foundation), and Bruce Alberts, who at the time served on the boards of both CCST and the Moore Foundation. Alberts supported the idea at the Moore Foundation, which put together a coalition of funders and provided a five-year matching grant of $3.5 million.
CCST was uniquely positioned to host this firstof-its-kind program. The nonpartisan nonprofit had been established in 1988 at the request of the California legislature to provide objective advice from California' scientists, engineers, and research institutions on policy issues involving science and technology. At the time of the fellowship programs inception, CCST had already been around for two decades and had built a reputation as a trusted, independent advisor to state policymakers.
Now that the fellowship program has been running for 15 years, we feel it important to reflect upon the many lessons we have learned. The fellowship has shaped the careers of 172 PhD scientists (so far) who have come from all over the country-and even the world-while helping to make Californias policies stronger and serving as a model for other states.
Although California is renowned for its technologyand-innovation-based economy, when the program began it wasn't easy to find policymakers who wanted scientists in their offices. We learned that scientists had a poor reputation among legislators and were often perceived as arrogant and narrow-minded. However, the state's fast-moving technology sector-combined with an executive branch whose rigorous rulemaking often serves as a model for the nation-meant that the state clearly had the need for a more formal structure for science advising.
Over the years, the fellows themselves have demonstrated the benefits of the program, leading to two major milestones: expansion of the fellowship into the executive branch in 2019, and a series of state...