By Jim Turner
UNDERGRADUATES GAIN PUBLIC
POLICY EXPERIENCE THROUGH INTERNSHIPS IN THE NATION'S
CAPITAL.
What do the offices of several leading senators,
the House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce
Committee, the White House Office of Management and
Budget, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the
World Bank have in common? (1) All influence what engineers
work on, how they do it, and even how much they are
paid. (2) All typically are run by lawyers or those
with M.B.A.'s who don't always understand
how engineers work or think. (3) And all sing the praises
of the talented engineering students that MIT and the
University of Virginia (UVa) are sending them each summer,
free of charge.
Five years ago, former UVa engineering dean Richard
Miksad joined forces with MIT's ongoing schoolwide
summer intern program, directed by Tobie Weiner and
political science professor Charles Stewart, to design
a program that would provide undergraduates with firsthand
policy experience in Washington, D.C. Miksad, Weiner,
and Stewart recognized the role engineers can and should
play in assisting legislators to better understand the
technological aspects of public policy. Engineers ignore
public policy at their peril. Those making government
decisions affecting engineering use the best available
information, but if engineers don't help them
understand how the world of engineering really works,
imperfect solutions can result.
Now, all around Washington,offices are opening their
doors to engineering students. Last summer at the White
House, the Office of Science and Technology Policy engaged
an undergraduate intern from UVa, while an undergraduate
engineer from MIT worked at its Office of Information
and Regulatory Affairs. The first intern to work in
the Office of the Science Adviser at the State Department
was from UVa's engineering school, while the first
engineering student to work on patent legislation at
the House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee
came from MIT. Once these offices experience the talent,
they usually ask for more students.
And this is just half the story. At UVa, Washington
leaders, either individually or as panel participants,
talk to our students about their agencies and their
jobs. They also explain how they went from being undergraduates
interested in technology to running an agency or advising
a president, about how lobbying works or how the press
gets technical information, or whatever other topics
interest the students. This summer's speaker series
started with Supreme Court Justice Breyer and ended
at the CIA. Visits to the White House, senators and
representatives, agency heads and their top engineers,
as well as Washington, D.C.'s private sector leaders
in science and technology policy took place along the
way. The students selected who and where they wanted
to visit and the program did its best to accommodate
them. This process invariably gets students thinking
in new strategic ways about the choices they face as
they finish their undergraduate study. Both MIT and
UVa require related coursework, lectures, and papers
before and after the summer internships.
These programs are changing lives, and the students
know it. They have won Marshall Scholarships and other
prestigious grants; two have run for office. Some pursue
policy work in Washington, D.C; others do not. Yet regardless
of where our students head, they will understand the
intersection of technology and policy better than their
peers. Hopefully, students from other engineering schools
soon will also move from the edges of public policy
debates to interaction with its most important participants.
Jim Turner is a technology policy specialist
for the House of Representatives' Committee on
Science, and he serves on the Dean's Advisory
Committee for UVa's School of Engineering and
Applied Sciences. He helps each summer with the MIT/UVA
intern program.
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