This class will take a look at the ways the worlds of science and public policy interact, using the “Farm Bill” as its central case study. Although major areas of science funding lie in other bills (e.g. The National Science Foundation, NSF, is funded through the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS) Bill, and the National Institute for Health, NIH, is funded through the Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies (LHHS) Bill) the Farm Bill is particularly relevant to Land Grant Universities such as the University of California. Appropriations that support cooperative extension and Agriculture Experiment Stations are included in the Farm Bill, as are major programs of competitive research funded by the United States Department of Agriculture. The course will look at the relationship between science and policy from both directions. In the first half of the course we will look at how science gets funded through the Farm Bill, both in the annual appropriations process and the four to five year cycle of writing the authorization bill itself. Students will have the chance to plan advocacy for a topic that could be supported by Farm Bill funds and to discuss advocacy with a science policy consultant. In the second half of the course we will flip things around and think about how the methods of critical analysis used in science can be employed to analyze policy and to design approaches for evaluating policy success and failure. Guest speakers during this half of the class will include science program managers from federal grant agencies.
About the instructor:
Dr. Neil McRoberts is a professor of the Plant Pathology Department at UC Davis and a plant disease epidemiologist and theoretical biologist. His research studies questions about the interaction between agricultural systems and the natural environment and human efforts to manage the interaction. Dr. McRoberts' work draws on a wide range of component disciplines from the natural and social sciences. He is the Executive Director of the National Plant Diagnostic Network.