During the second semester, students will be required to do a research paper in an area of science and technology policy that is different than the area or areas within which they presently work or within which they have recently worked. Students during the second semester must move out of the areas where they already have established competence. This seminar rests on the assumption that science and technology have become major causal forces in contemporary society. Few important areas of public policy are now free of the influence if not the dominance of our increasing ability to understand and manipulate nature through science and technology. First, the ever-advancing frontier of science and technology establishes the boundaries of many public policy issues and problems and the tangible options for addressing those issues and problems.
Technology creates many issues, e.g., toxic wastes.
Science discovers many issues, e.g., asbestos. Thus, one of the goals of this seminar should be to gain some understanding of how science and technology evolve, that is how these activities are developed and used. Second, policy is influenced by the institutional structure of the policy system. In the U.S. that structure is bounded, in part, by the Constitution. The structure, however, also includes the complex set of special interest policy systems, often technology based, which link the executive and legislative branches of the federal government with the state governments, the private sector, and the university and non-profit sectors.