III. Engaging the Next Generation: Strategies for Supporting Students

Integrating PIT fully and intentionally into the student experience is a core priority. “Students are naturally interdisciplinary, and we often train them to not be,” said Eric T. Meyer, dean of the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. “The best universities are ones that give students opportunities to transcend disciplines in thinking about complex problems that excite them.”

Colleges and universities across the country have made great strides in expanding interdisciplinary opportunities, though challenges remain. Key challenges include:

• Interdisciplinary programs still lack essential diversity among participants;
• Scaling experiential programming is unwieldy;
• Need for universities to be deliberate in building pipelines and job opportunities; and,
• Lack of a clear and shared terminology makes it difficult to broadly market opportunities.

Progress toward addressing these challenges falls into three main categories: a) expanding and developing innovative curricula, b) promoting experiential learning, and c) developing a career pipeline.

With high-profile scientific- and technological-policy issues from climate change to artificial intelligence dominating the headlines, students are increasingly eager for a curriculum that prepares them to address real-world challenges. In some cases, this interest expressed itself in increased enrollment in classes and programs that already tackle these issues.

At the University of Michigan, for example, enrollment in the graduate-level Science, Technology, and Public Policy certificate program jumped from an average of 15 students per year to 35 in just one year. Faculty partially credited the increase to the current political environment, though they said it also reflects a larger recognition of the increasing role technology occupies in day-to-day life. Two key strategies interviewees identified for ensuring curricula include a PIT lens were transforming the classroom to emphasize practical applications of technology-related issues and leveraging university resources to build cross-disciplinary student cohorts between historically technical and non-technical fields.

1. Transforming the Classroom

Beyond supporting existing interdisciplinary instruction, colleges and universities have also adjusted existing curricula and created entirely new ways to bring PIT into the classroom. These innovations are happening at all levels, starting at the very beginning of a student’s undergraduate years.

“We have a design sequence that starts in your first year where you start thinking about your responsibility as an engineer that isn’t just about solving a challenge but adding something to this world,” said Erhardt Graeff, assistant professor of social and computer science at Olin College of Engineering. In the Design Nature course at the beginning of the design sequence, students create a playtime experience for fourth-grade students from an area elementary school and produce prototypes that the fourth graders themselves test. According to Graeff, having students engage directly with users in the beginning of their course work encourages them to consider questions like, “How do we understand the language of responsibility that is deeply entwined with engineering?”

At Georgia Tech, Fleming Professor Ellen Zegura and her colleagues are developing scenarios they plan to use with freshmen that model the types of technical and social interactions that local policymakers regularly contend with.¹ In a pilot of the curriculum this past summer, students played roles of different community members and were asked to reach an agreement on whether or not their community would be a test site for autonomous vehicles. About half of the roles were designed to be against the proposal and half were designed to be in favor, but the groups came to different conclusions about whether or not to allow the agreement.

At Georgia Tech and other institutions leveraging scenario-based learning, the idea is not necessarily to come to a consensus, but to thoughtfully and comprehensively engage with complicated questions of values and community priorities. “Even if you teach students nothing substantive about what decisions they should reach, getting students to start thinking about themselves as ethical actors, and their work as ethically important, is huge,” said Karen Levy, assistant professor in the Department of Information Science at Cornell University.

2. Removing Barriers to Form Cross-Disciplinary Student Cohorts

As demand for interdisciplinary instruction intensifies, some institutions have taken the step of creating new schools to support cross-disciplinary cohorts. For example, last year Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced the creation of the Schwarzman College of Computing.² Along with advancing the field of computer science, the college is focused on integrating computer science with other disciplines and using those cross-disciplinary insights to explore the social implications of computing.

“Students were saying that they were interested in computer science in various fields, like biology, urban studies, economics … We realized that we needed a new college for this, and this came from observant leadership,” said Melissa Nobles, the dean of the School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“Students were saying that they were interested in computer science in various fields … We realized that we needed a new college for this, and this came from observant leadership.”
–Melissa Nobles, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Similarly, University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) launched an interdisciplinary Division of Data Science and Information meant to make it easier for faculty from a wide range of disciplines, including computer science, engineering, the natural sciences, and social sciences, to collaborate and learn from each other. According to Deirdre Mulligan, an associate professor at UC Berkeley, this division provides much-needed scaffolding, including data science training for professors from other disciplines, that enhances student learning. “[The Division] means that there are more faculty that can speak to each other because it breaks down some of the knowledge barriers that can sometimes be substantial when trying to do interdisciplinary work,” Mulligan said.

Creating schools devoted to the cross-section of technology and other disciplines is one way to build a cohort of students with interdisciplinary expertise, but not all institutions are positioned to take that step. New or existing departments, or even individual classes, can also be venues for experimentation. Interviewees described two main approaches for promoting experiential learning: offering practical applications within courses and engaging with the community.

1. Offering Practical Applications

Increased attention to experiential learning has been another important point of progress in recent years towards strengthening public interest technology in the academy. An early model of this approach came from Georgetown’s use of practicums, often in consultation with other universities. In one practicum, Georgetown Law students and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) engineering students come together to work on privacy legislation. Interdisciplinary practicums allow universities to leverage expertise from faculty in different disciplines or even different schools, while using a specific policy problem as a lens for applying that expertise.

In another Georgetown practicum, students develop tools to deliver legal services or address other problems in the justice system. “Ninety percent of people are navigating the courts by themselves, and so there is a huge opportunity for how technology can help address these problems,” said Alexandra Givens, founding executive director of the Institute for Technology Law and Policy at Georgetown Law. One project that an interdisciplinary team of students created for the course this year was an app that transgender people can use to guide them through the legal process of changing their name. While Georgetown has taught the course since 2013, for the first time this year, it was billed as an invitational to which other schools could submit curricula. Faculty from 23 different schools did so, surpassing Georgetown’s expectations.

Of course, there is still more demand for these types of opportunities than universities may currently be able to meet. Deirdre Mulligan at UC Berkeley, for example, mentioned that one of her undergraduate data science courses had 75 students, with an entire additional class worth of students on the waitlist.

Another challenge is that these interdisciplinary programs largely attract students already well represented in the technology sector. This limits the perspectives that participants are exposed to when contemplating complex technological issues. As universities continue to experiment with creative approaches to practical learning, many are working to ensure that students from a variety of backgrounds understand that these programs are not just open to them, but to an extent designed for them. The very questions that public interest technology programming is built to confront impact a wide cross-section of communities, making different perspectives essential in developing solutions. “Recruiting diverse students is a priority … you are more likely to have a well thought-out process if you have a diverse group than if you don’t,” said Tithi Chattopadhyay, associate director of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University.

“You are more likely to have a well thought-out process if you have a diverse group than if you don’t.”
–Tithi Chattopadhyay, Princeton University

2. Engaging the Community

To fully explore the impact of technological advancement, colleges and universities are also forming partnerships with community organizations to engage students with contemporary policy questions around science and technology. For example, Miami Dade College offers computer science students the opportunity to work in social impact projects to provide community-based organizations with technological solutions that help them advance their mission. “Our approach at Miami Dade College is always a hands-on approach, always asking the government, nonprofits, or the private sector what we can be doing to apply this,” said Antonio Delgado, dean of engineering at Miami Dade College. Currently, a group of computing science students is working in partnership with Microsoft, Code Miami, and the City of Miami to create the Miami Budget website—a bilingual open source platform for citizen inclusion in the budget of the City of Miami.

“Our approach is always a hands-on approach, always asking the government or the private sector what we can be doing to apply this.”
–Antonio Delgado, Miami Dade College

Similarly, the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) views community engagement as a core component of its overall mission and approach to public interest technology. “One of the things that underpins our school is this idea is that we should use technology to advance the public interest and promote social justice,” said Eric T. Meyer of UT Austin. For example, students in the Master of Science in Information Studies program (MSIS) must complete a capstone project for a local partner, whether it’s a company, NGO, or government agency. Last year, one student won the UT Austin iSchool Dean’s Choice Award for her project with the Austin Public Library. She worked directly with library staff and patrons on a plan to make the library’s new building easier to navigate, and the library board has already voted to implement many of her recommendations.

Stronger connections between colleges and universities and the communities they operate in can be mutually beneficial, and university leaders stressed the importance of a collaborative, thoughtful approach. At the University of Virginia, a new Equity Center is overseen by faculty who consult a local advisory council. The council includes affordable housing residents, local health equity leaders, and other members of the community with the authority to review and approve university projects. Currently, at the request of the community, the Equity Center is supporting a data mapping exercise exploring how big data affects vulnerable communities.

“We need communities at the table, and need to be responsive to their concerns about data and technology,” said Louis Nelson, vice provost for academic outreach at the University of Virginia. With this framework, a responsible partnership involves being cognizant of both past and potential harms that can come from misuse of technological innovations.

The expanding opportunities for students to learn about PIT are exciting and essential for preparing future professionals to address the most challenging policy questions of our time. But those graduates need somewhere to go to apply that knowledge. While there has been progress, challenges remain for university leaders as they advise students on how to pursue PIT careers. “We have to train the next generation of translators,” said Todd Richmond, professor and director of the Tech and Narrative Lab at Pardee RAND. “They need to be able to have an intelligent conversation with an engineer or technologist, policymakers, and communities, and they need to be able to move seamlessly between these worlds.”

The PIT framework also offers a lens for university leaders to prepare students for a workforce that is changing rapidly. “So much of the future of work is defined by fields that haven’t even been invented yet, and by scholars who are able to more fully understand the problems and develop solutions. PIT fits seamlessly into that for us,” said Saif Ishoof, vice president of engagement at Florida International University (FIU).

Key areas of opportunity include expanding internships and fellowships, meeting employer demand, and marketing existing opportunities.

1. Expanding Internships and Fellowships

To fully prepare students to both fulfill the promise of technological advancement and address its challenges, colleges and universities have increasingly focused on connecting students with internship and fellowship opportunities. These often come from partnerships with local government, companies, and nonprofits at universities across the country, which offer students opportunities to gain work experience. “We can theorize how to do these things, but in reality, when thinking about public interest technology, it is applied work,” said Farida Laha, associate university provost for research administration & compliance at City University of New York (CUNY).

Internships are also an area where collaboration between universities can expand opportunity. “Most of our internship offerings are generally focused on students at Princeton, but with this program, CITP is expanding the scope to open up opportunities to students from other universities,” said Tithi Chattopadhyay of Princeton University. Currently, Princeton is working on giving computer science students from other schools the opportunity to attend a summer program where they will learn about consumer protection law before being matched with internships at government agencies.

The creativity that university faculty are demonstrating through different types of partnerships reflects great progress in designing pathways for students to directly apply their learning. To make sure these programs are sustainable and replicable, however, they do need to be fully resourced. “To me, when we are approached by these organizations to work with us, there is a question on how to sustain these efforts,” said Azer Bestavros, associate provost for computing and data sciences at Boston University (BU). At BU, students have opportunities to work with local and state governments on key technology issues like juvenile justice and algorithmic decision-making, but the work could use additional support. “We are putting a lot of our resources to keep these relationships, but this is a place where everyone needs some help,” Bestavros added.

Like the practical learning opportunities mentioned above, internships and fellowships face a scale problem, in that more students apply than can be connected to opportunities. For example, leadership at the nonprofit Coding it Forward noted that they are only able to accept five percent of applicants for their Civic Digital Fellowship (a government internship for students with technical backgrounds).

Part of the goal of offering hands-on professional experience is to expose students to potential careers in both the public and private sector. At Stanford, the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity is partnering with the university’s Digital Society Lab and Institute for Human-Centered AI on a fellowship program aimed at giving students experience and exposure with careers at the intersection of racial justice and technology. “Students can test out what a career path might be and the different ways of expertise that people can have in the space,” said Jennifer DeVere Brody, director of the Stanford Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. “People in the same space with a common goal will generate new and practical solutions to get public interest technology out there as an idea.”

2. Meeting Employer Demand

While these challenges remain, some university leaders contend that the framework provided by recent efforts to define and publicize PIT can support continued progress. While the jobs universities are preparing students for may currently be in short supply or hard to identify, the interdisciplinary skills students are building can nevertheless be marketable to employers in ways they may not expect.

In highlighting the potential for PIT, David Guston, founder of the School for the Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University, pointed to an experiment. “I directed a nanotechnology and society center previously, and we did a survey of the job market of employers who were interested in students with experience with nanotechnology,” he noted. “They were actually just as interested in people with broad technical knowledge and familiarity with nanotechnology from the perspective of regulation, public affairs, and advertising as they were in people with deep technical knowledge of nano.”

While employers across sectors are increasingly recognizing the importance of public interest technology expertise, some university leaders argue that this understanding is still in its early stages. “The biggest problem that we have is that computer science-related firms don’t understand what social scientists do, and they’re better off than the other group,” said Dan Black, professor of public policy at the University of Chicago. “Much more problematic is the places that are not that technology-oriented. The tremendous change in the marketplace has made these places incapable of understanding what they are missing.” To bridge this gap, higher education institutions will need to be deliberate in building mechanisms to link potential employers to the students being trained in interdisciplinary skills. If successful, these efforts will show employers what is possible and help them create the types of jobs that can put these valuable skill sets to use efficiently and effectively.

3. Marketing Existing Opportunities to Students and Employers

In some cases, interviewees suggested, the challenge is not necessarily that public interest technology jobs do not exist. Instead, these experts suggested that potential PIT jobs may not be clearly identified as such, since that terminology is relatively new. Graduates do not necessarily know where to look. When students ask directly for advice, university faculty may be able to reach out to their own individual networks to refer students or access job openings.

But interviewees suggested that robust career pipeline infrastructure is still lacking. “The career search is very resource intensive, and you need to have subject matter expertise,” said Alexandra Givens of Georgetown University. “Career services offices could not do this because these partners need to feel like an expert is coming to them.”

The good news for those working to strengthen the career pipeline is that progress is ongoing. Increasingly, the curriculum innovations mentioned above are also adopted with the career pipeline in mind. Experiential learning, including internships and partnerships with area employers, is beneficial not only for students but also for employers, who experience the benefits of a PIT skill set being applied to their sector. Strengthening these relationships can therefore lead to an eventual increase in opportunities as employers are exposed to what an interdisciplinary skill set prepares workers to do.

Also important to this work is ensuring that faculty are equipped with a variety of techniques to support students trying to navigate a limited job market. The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Michigan, for example, are partnering to organize the first annual Undergraduate Informatics Education for Public Interest Technology conference in 2020. The conference will focus on providing an opportunity for PIT educators to share information and best practices for providing an informatics education that prepares students for public interest technology careers.

Along with encouraging efforts to embed PIT into different sectors through experiential learning, The PIT-UN could be a venue for identifying and tracking job opportunities across sectors that require or would benefit from a PIT skillet. “I think that would be a great thing to come out of the network, to get a shared understanding of where these opportunities are,” said Professor Christopher Goranson of Carnegie Mellon University.