GSA’S ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC POLICY/GEOLOGY AND PUBLIC POLICY COMMITTEE AT 50+: LEGACY AND FUTURE OPPORTUNITIES FOR EARLY CAREER PROFESSIONALS

Looking back on my involvement in science policy and science diplomacy, I realize that my career was made possible by opportunities and choices that came my way only 4 years after my Ph.D. at the University of California-Berkeley. In 1971, the Geological Society of America (GSA) appointed Clyde Wahrhaftig (1919-1994) Chair of the new GSA Environment and Public Policy Committee, predecessor of the GSA Committee on Geology and Public Policy. That same year, I left a tenure-track position in metamorphic petrology at Boston College to join Orson Anderson and Charles Drake (1977 GSA President) to work on a natural sciences/social sciences/law/epidemiology project on impacts of water and coal development in the Colorado River Basin. Also in 1971, at the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics General Assembly in Moscow USSR, Drake as President of the Interunion Commission on Geodynamics appointed me Secretary of the new Geodynamics Working Group 5: Properties and Processes of the Earth’s Interior. California Resources Secretary Claire Dedrick appointed Wahrhaftig to the California State Board of Forestry in 1975 and because he was so effective, she chose me as Chair of the California State Mining and Geology Board in 1976 and then Director of the California Department of Conservation in 1977. These positions later led to my appointments on GSA’s Committee on Geology and Public Policy 1981-1984 and the American Geophysical Union Committee on Public Affairs 1984-1989.

GSA’s 2023 theme “Diverse Science for a Sustainable Future” offers today’s Early Career Professionals (ECPs) expanded new opportunities for future involvement in the science-policy interface at the national and international level. Their engagement now will be critical to the success of GSA’s efforts in science policy and science diplomacy in the coming decades. Scientific societies with their policy involvement and their effective professional networks play a key role in enabling today’s ECPs to engage and advance in the challenging arenas of science policy and science diplomacy (John, T. et al., 2023).

John, T., Cordova, K.E., Jackson, C.T., Hernández‐Mondragón, A.C., Davids, B.L., Raheja, L., Milić, J.V., and Borges, J., 2023, Engaging Early‐Career Scientists in Global Policy‐Making: Angewandte Chemie, e202217841, doi:10.1002/anie.202217841