Earlier this year, ESAL launched our first ever on-demand course: The Local Civic Engagement Toolkit. Designed to help you become an active civic participant in your local community, the curriculum teaches you how to make space for civic engagement in your life, effectively engage with state and local governments, how to connect with community groups, […]

On Friday, April 24, 2026, ESAL's Cherry Cheuk Lam Cheung, PhD, hosted the Indiana Statehouse Engagement Day, a civic engagement initiative designed to help STEM trainees and early-career scientists connect their research, lived experiences, and scientific training with local and state policymaking.

This closing symposium session is designed to help researchers, funders, and policymakers examine how participatory science is funded now, where the biggest structural barriers persist, and what more sustainable pathways could look like in practice.

This webinar is designed for early-career scientists in Indiana, including STEM students, who want to better understand what environmental justice is, why it matters in Indiana, and how they can get involved. Paula Brooks will share her perspective and experiences working in environmental justice and help connect these issues to real community concerns in the state.

Read more about an interactive discussion co-hosted by the Joyce Foundation, University of Virginia Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, and the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences Center for Scientific Evidence in Public Issues (AAS EPI Center) on March 11th outlining investments needed to ensure sustainable clean energy use in relation in the growth of data centers in the U.S.

Challenges to scientific and democratic freedoms are overlapping. Scientific advances have been underpinned by increasing democratic freedoms that are no longer guaranteed. Democracy needs all of us to show up. ESAL shares some ways you can join in this work.