Washington DC Update

After letting this blog languish for a year, I'm resurrecting it to act as my official "Letter from the Capitol." Wow! How exciting to even write that.

As most of you know, I'm at the beginning of a Science and Technology Policy Fellowship sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). You can learn more about it here: http://fellowships.aaas.org

This fellowship program takes people with advanced degrees in science and engineering and puts us to work for the federal government for a year. Some of us work in the Congressional Branch, as staffers on Capitol Hill. The rest of us work in the Executive Branch across a dozen different agencies. I'll be working in the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator, a part of the State Department. This office administers PEPFAR, the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. I'll write more about my job and PEPFAR in a later posting, once I've actually started.

This week marked the beginning of the AAAS orientation for all fellows. This is eight days of lectures and workshops designed to give us some minimal background on how the federal government functions, its history, and how its cultures contrast with the ones we've all come from. This is also our only chance to spend significant time together as a group of fellows. Once orientation ends, we'll all split up and head to our various agencies (or to the Hill to placed for the Congressional Fellows).

It's been a fascinating week, if a bit exhausting. We started Wednesday. The highlight was a talk by Mark Talisman, a "Public Affairs Consultant to emerging democracies and other interests." This remarkable renaissance man is more like a walking encyclopedia of American history, congressional lore and DC knowledge. He lectured us eloquently on the history of the writing of the American constitution, contrasting it with his experience helping countries write their own constitutions. He talked about George Washington's strained relationship with his wife and the methane vapors that gave Foggy Bottom its name. He became the first of what I suspect will be many to talk to us about the changing nature of presidential power, and the carefully built-in tensions between the congress and the administration. Lastly, he invited us to a specially arranged visit to the Holocaust Museum (he sits on the board and was one of the founders).

Thursday we spent at Cannon House, a Congressional office building that houses, among other things, the staff to the Republican Finance Committee. We spent the day learning about congress and how bills become law. Only our last speaker pointed out that we were sitting in the room where most of the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee were held. Well, there's your feel-good history and then there's the rest.

Yesterday, we had an excellent session with Kei Kozumi, a former AAAS Fellow and employee, who now works in the President's Office of Science and Technology Policy. He walked us through the budgeting process before we all pretended to be the House appropriations committee for Commerce, Justice and Science charged with producing a budget for the 2010 fiscal year. The whole process reminded me of taking statistics my first year of graduate school. Everyone warns you how boring and awful it will be, but encountering it when you know you are going to need it really focuses the mind. We rounded out the day with a brief talk by Kathryn Dunn Tenpas, a professor from U Penn, who talked about the role of the President and how that has changed. She was quite funny, especially in how she managed a variety of arcane questions from us fellows. You can take the scientist out of the lab, but you can't take the nerd out of the scientist.

Well that seems like quite enough about orientation for now. I'll wrap up by saying that I'm well and happy, but missing my friends, family and colleagues in Madison plenty. Take care and stay in touch!

P.S. New pictures added to my flickr stream.