Beth McMurtrie at The Chronicle of Higher Education has written an article entitled "Social Scientists Seek New Ways to Influence Public Policy." The following quote from McMurtie's article describes something that I have never heard of before, the International Summer Policy Institute at American University. 

So of course I googled this summer policy institute at American University. It turns out that it is for professors and postdocs in international affairs who want to learn how to write policy-relevant academic scholarship, including some information on how to more effectively reach target audiences. I think that this is a great resource. Especially in the current era of sequestration, where congress can rationalize shutting down scientific funding for a particular unit of science in a federal research funding agency (i.e. political science in the National Science Foundation).

A similar resource that was not mentioned by McMurtrie, is the To Think To Write To Publish project. It focuses on developing communication skills among scientists, science journalists, and social scientists who can make contributions to science and technology policy. One of the principal investigators is Lee Gutkind, the founder of the Creative Nonfiction Magazine. The second is David Guston, a prominent science and technology policy scholar and a past editor of Science and Public Policy.

Another network of scholars that McMurtrie mentions in The Chronicle  is the Scholars Strategy Network. This is directed by prominent sociologist, Theda Skocpol. Unlike the first two, it does not appear to provide training, however its staff actively pursues public venues for the affiliated scholars to share their research briefs.

I welcome further information about opportunities for training in how to make the social sciences more relevant to policy.

I first heard the term,'procrastiwork' from a 2nd year student during my first year in the graduate program in Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer. 'What's that?" I asked Gareth, ever so innocently. Since then, I have become intimately familiar with the word. Especially now that I have some deadlines for my dissertation writing coming up.  Let me try and catalog all of the ways that I have WORKED HARD on NOT writing my dissertation in the last ten days:

In a previous post, I talked about the difficulties for STS PhD candidates just starting the academic job search. Also, I am interested in alternative careers besides academia because the chances of any newly minted Ph.D. getting a coveted tenure-track academic position are pretty slim. These days search committees can pick and choose among many well qualified social science PhD's with competitive vitaes that can 'do' STS. All's told, I am attempting to figure out how to get an academic or non-academic job where I can use the skills I have honed to understand and address interesting problems of science, technology, society and social justice.

Four people have assented to allow me to post their responses to questions about the STS job search here on my blog.  Dr. Jennifer Tucker is the Associate Deputy Administrator of the National Organic Program at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).  Dr. Casey O'Donnell is an Assistant Professor at Michigan State University, Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies and Media. Dr. Sean Lawson is an Assistant Professor at the University of Utah, Department of Communication and Media Studies. Dr. JC is an associate professor at a university. Jennifer and JC graduated from Virginia Tech's STS program, while Casey and Sean graduated from Rensselaer's STS program.

I just read chapter 3 of Kyle Siler's dissertation, entitled “Nascent Institutional Strategy in Dynamic Fields: The Diffusion of Social Studies of Science”. Apparently it has been accepted in the American Behavioral Scientist journal which is wonderful news for Siler, and thankfully he has been kind enough to put up an earlier draft on his personal webpage.

Regardless of some limitations (see my comments below), his quantitative data is interesting. It appears that, at the present time, more U.S. science and technology studies scholars are affiliated with (in the following order): (1) general academic/ interdisciplinary departments; (2) sociology departments; (3) science and technology studies departments; (4) history departments. 

This was written by a very nice lady named Elisa, who made the interview painless and fun. Please see the following link:  http://www.rpi.edu/about/inside/issue/v6n7/sts.html