International Field Work B
Name: Batari Saraswati
Student ID: 09M51608

Science and Technology Leadership Association (STeLA) Beijing Forum 2010

Background about STeLA
Science and Technology Association Leadership Association (STeLA) is an organization founded with theobjective of developing leadership and create a network of the next generation in science and technology.
The organization is being launched by graduate students studying science and engineering through MITJapan Program with the desire to answer the question, "How can science and engineering studentschange the global community." The founders recognized the importance of multicultural andinterdisciplinary perspectives in addressing contemporary global issues, and became motivated toestablish a network where the young generation can exchange ideas on where we can lead the global
society and how we individual can contribute to the needs of society's leadership.
Every year STeLA held a forum in order to deliver the mission into real action. The forum is attended byparticipants from STeLA country members. The members of STeLA came from 4 different countries:
United States, Japan, China and France. Until 2010, the forums have been held 4 times: 1st forum inTokyo (2007), 2nd forum in Boston (2008), 3rd forum in Tokyo (2009), 4th forum in Beijing (2010).

Application Processes
To become a participant of STeLA forum, there are several processes required. Graduate andundergraduate students in science and engineering from STeLA country members (USA, Japan, Franceand China) can apply through web.mit.edu website. Applicants are required to fill application form andcurriculum vitae. Moreover, applicants are required to submit short essays regarding these following
questions: (1) Choose one current global issue in which science & technology play a role and discuss
how you think leaders from the scientific community should effectively address the issue?; (2) How do youenvision STeLA 2010 will enhance your career in the future? The applicants who successfully pass theessays screening process are required to attend a group interview. For 2010 Beijing forum, all processes
were done in June 2010.

STeLA Beijing Forum 2010
General theme of STeLA 2010 forum is Technology Transfer. The forum was held for 7 days, from August
15th – 23rd 2010. The content of the forum was divided into 3 main parts: (1) leadership curriculum, (2)thematic session, (3) group projectLeadership Curriculum (August 16th)
The guiding principle for the leadership education is the distributed leadership model developed at theMIT Sloan School of Management. Various cases, games, and exercises are modeled after educationmaterials developed at MIT, such as Distributed Leadership, 4 Player Model, and Visioning.
-The idea of distributed leadership is to identify 4 essential capabilities of a leader which are sense
making (understanding the environment and the problem), relating (connecting with people andresources), visioning (plan out the future and the necessary action steps), inventing (putting theplan into action). The importance of this model is to know when you have these capabilities andwhen you do not. No single person can perform all of these completely and therefore distributes
the leadership among other organizers are the most efficient ways.
Activity related: Beer-distribution game, Straw-tower game

-The 4 player model analyzes a format of group structure for effective leadership. The 4 roles of
the group are the mover (establishing direction), the follower (completing the mover), the opposer(questioning and correcting the direction), and the bystander (feeding alternate perspectives).
These four roles are dynamic through each individual and an organization may see these roles
changing from person to person.
Activity related: Paper-plane catch game-Visioning is the ability to plan out and ‘see’ one’s future. This ability is important in a leader. A
vision of one organization is the goal that a leader and the rest of the organization will aspire toachieve. Activity related: Drawing vision in A3 paper and show it to the other participants

Thematic Sessions (August 17th – 18th)
The thematic session is designed to provide real-world examples of scientific and technological globalissues. It is related with the general theme of the forum which is about technology transfer. There are 2
sub-themes: (1) Technology transfer in agriculture. (2) Technology transfer in energy. The thematic
session consists of scientific and technical knowledge (background reading, seminars, and lectures), site
visits, and group discussions

-Technology transfer in agriculture
As a main material, case of Green Revolution in India is presented at the forum. Green revolution
in India has occurred from 1940s to 1960s by transferring leading technology in agriculture, and it
was said as a big success. In this session, participants are required to make a correlation map ofstakeholders to analyze their relationship. After that, the discussions were conducted to talk about
which roles the leaders in science and technology should take.

-Technology transfer in energy
An introductory presentation about clean coal technology in China was presented. The
participants are required to do a role play to simulate technology transfer negotiation between
developed country and developing countries. This role play allowed participants to understandmany dilemmas faced by various parties in clean coal technology transfer negotiation, as well as
allow participants to apply leadership skills that learnt on the first day.

Group Project (August 19th – 22nd)
Participants were divided into small groups and were given a task of building a device to focus and collectenergy from the sun while simulating an international technology transfer situation. The tasks are divided
into 2: (1) Making a solar collector. Every group gets the same amount of reflective materials and one unitof solar panel to achieve the highest efficiency of solar collector, (2) Design an application of solar panelin daily lives. The group project culminates in the final presentation, in which groups will present thedevices that they built to a panel of judges and give a short presentation on what they learned from theactivity (August 22nd).
In this project every group explore the creativity and also leadership skills to achieve the goal. In the endof every day, participants spend about half an hour every day to reflect on their roles within the team andto actively apply their leadership learning to practice. To make a connection with the thematic sessions
preceding the group project, participants attempted to describe what they learned and the inspirations
they obtained from the thematic sessions with their machines.

Lesson learned from the forum
From the forum, I learned many new things. I am able to reach a new level of understanding about theimportance of leadership skills of science and engineering students. I also learned about the importanceof international network since we are the part of global community. STeLA 2010 brings new horizon to myperspectives, ideas and therefore I enjoyed the forum very much.

Pictures
Leadership Session

Thematic Session: Correlation Map

Thematic Session: Role play simulation

Group Project