Biophysical Society Bulletin | December 2022

Public Affairs

Why Science Advocacy Is Imperative While we may still be fresh from the 2022 mid-term elections and the upcoming change in power in one chamber of Congress, the one constant is constituent advocacy. Out of the 535 members of Congress, only a mere handful hold STEM (science, tech nology, engineering, and mathematics) degrees. Members of Congress are reliant on their staff to be knowledgeable on a wide variety of issues to keep pace with the breadth of policies under each committee’s jurisdiction. In turn, staff look to organiza tions such as BPS and its member experts—you—to provide real-world expertise on the policies they are considering. Advocacy in Washington, DC, can be a complex art, where both sides can be “right” and truthful at the same time; delivering a compelling message is everything. Truthfully, the efficacy of advocacy efforts depends on a number of factors, at least two of which you cannot control—the elected official you are trying to influence and the quality of the opponent and their message. However, we cannot win if we don’t engage with our best resources, our members. BPS has all the tools and resources available to help you reach out to your members of Congress through the BPS Take Action tool (https:/www.biophysics.org/policy-advocacy/take-action). With BPS advocacy tools, you can track the science issues moving through Congress, send letters to your elected officials with just a few keystrokes, and request BPS help in coordinat ing in-district meetings. It is imperative that science advocates on behalf of itself. If we don’t, who will?

NSF Survey of Earned Doctorates Shows Historic Drop in STEMPhD Graduates In October, the National Science Foundation (NSF) released data from the latest annual Survey of Earned Doctorates, showing that the 2020–2021 academic year saw 1,721 fewer STEM PhDs awarded by US universities compared with the preceding year. This change amounts to the largest annual drop in science, technology, engineering, and math PhDs in at least 40 years. Although the NSF was unable to directly attribute the drop to the effects of COVID-19, in the survey of more than 7,000 US-based PhD students, more than 60% of respondents stated that an “inability to conduct research” was the most common reason for delays in graduation. Another suggestion that the pandemic contributed to the overall drop in gradu ates comes from the differences among disciplines.

The physical and life sciences—fields that largely require in-person work—saw the largest drops in PhD graduates compared with pre-pandemic levels (12% and 7%, respective ly). Math and the computer sciences, on the other hand, saw increases. The dip in graduation numbers does not appear to have disproportionately affected historically underrepresented groups, which is surprising given the pandemic’s impact on people of color and women in academia. Underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities made up 15% of US citizens and permanent residents who graduated with STEM PhDs during the 2020–2021 academic year—a statistic that has steadi ly creeped upward over the past decade, from 12% in 2012. Women made up 43% of graduates in the 2020–2021 class, which aligns with the average over the past decade of 42%. The NSF’s preliminary data for the 2021–2022 academic year indicate that the drop in graduation numbers may be short lived, possibly because the 2021–2022 numbers include students who had originally planned to graduate during the

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