​Tim Oolman is an engineer with a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering who lives in Charleston, South Carolina. He told us about attending a City Council meeting and a State of the City address to learn more about his home.

Ryan Coogan wrote to ESAL about participating in a nuclear engineering student delegation in Texas, where students met with politicians and nuclear industry stakeholders to discuss safety and security, environmental impacts, and politics.

In this month’s Postcard, Terra White, PhD in Neurobiology & Behavior, wrote about her organization at University of California, Irvine., and the public forum they hosted last January, which 100 people attended.

In the second part of this month's "Postcard", Arti Garg describes a follow-up discussion she had with her city's economic development manager after offering public comments at a city council committee meeting. She wrote a one-page summary proposing that the city prioritize cleantech hardware in its development plan.

In this month's "Postcard", Griff O’Neill, a physicist by training currently working as an engineer in the semiconductor industry in California, describes how he sat down for coffee with two city council members from his community.

Jennifer Boehme is a marine scientist and advisor at the International Joint Commission in Windsor, Ontario, which is a commission of the U.S. and Canada that has oversight of border waters. She attended a city council meeting to understand local priorities for sustainable development, green infrastructure, and mass transit.

Tim Oolman has spent his career in industrial research & development, where his mission is to transform innovation into sustainable solutions in food and nutrition. As he looks toward the end of his traditional career, he is motivated to engage with his new community to address the broader challenges in our society and communities.

Leah Pagnozzi started "Take a Politician to Work Day" out of a desire to give a voice to her fellow scientists and engineers. The program’s main goal is to reach out and build connections with city and state representatives. They accomplish this by bringing representatives to campus for lab tours led by graduate students and post doctoral researchers. They hope to encourage the development of an organic connection between scientists and policy-makers.