This July, ESAL is offering a way for you to take your learning to the next level by connecting with other civic-minded people in STEM. We will host our first learning cohort for The Toolkit from July 6th to 31st, 2026. Participants in the cohort get access to the course materials week by week and receive access to weekly discussion sessions to go deeper.

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.

A coalition of non-partisan organizations hosted a Legislative Day in Atlanta, Georgia at the State Capitol that attracted over 500 Georgians. ESAL's Taylor Spicer attended and reported about the experience and the value of attending Legislative Days in your state.

​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.