Quantifying the effectiveness of the Association of Ecosystem Research Centers (AERC) as an educational vehicle linking ecosystem research to public policy through hands-on training, congressional briefings, and Capitol Hill office visits

Background/Question/Methods

Career researchers in the ecosystem sciences and students entering graduate schools in these fields share a desire to conduct research, and communicate research findings, that positively impact public policy. Yet, few training opportunities exist in academic programs to learn how to communicate effectively with policy makers. The founding members of the Association of Ecosystem Research Centers (AERC) recognized the need in the early 1980s for researchers engaged in ecosystem science to organize and meet together once a year in Washington DC to educate funding agency program officers and Congress on the importance of ecosystem research in responsibly shaping public policy, and hence the importance of ensuring adequate governmental funding of ecosystem research. Since 1987, the AERC has expanded these annual educational activities to include: a communications training workshop, a congressional briefing held on Capitol Hill, and organized visits of attending AERC members to their respective congressional delegations to communicate the importance of funding ecosystem research. However, the AERC had not quantitatively evaluated the success of these DC activities. This was our main objective, using attendance or participation data from last fall’s two-day AERC annual meeting, and results from a graduate student-administered satisfaction survey of AERC participants in these activities.

Results/Conclusions

Survey results indicated that >94% of all respondents (19 of 22 AERC members participating in the 2013 activities) reported that the half-day workshop on communicating with public policy makers and the media, given by leaders of the Public Policy Office of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, was helpful, especially during the visits of AERC member participants to their respective congressional offices. All participants (100%) attending the congressional policy briefing on the “Role of Ecosystem Science in Food Security” reported that watching an actual congressional briefing at the U.S. House of Representative’s Rayburn Office Building was very educational and helped guide them in their visits with their own congressional representatives. While just half of the participants of the workshop took part in congressional office visits, all reported that their experiences were very worthwhile and that they would do it again. Participants uniformly felt that presenting their 2 min briefing statements on their own research was effective in communicating the importance of ecosystem research and its federal funding. Thus, results from this evaluation show that the annual DC activities that the AERC sponsors provide effective hands-on training to AERC researchers on how to effectively communicate with congressional public policy makers.