“It’s pretty quiet in this office,” said atmospheric chemist Maggie Walser, this year’s American Geophysical Union congressional fellow, when she arrived in September to work on the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Energy legislation debates were put on hold that month as members of Congress grappled with a bill to rescue failing financial companies. While some energy committee staffers lent support to the overburdened financial committee, Walser says incoming science and technology fellows were mostly left to “prepare for next year and learn our way around the building.”
Walser is one of 165 PhD scientists and engineers sponsored this year by various science organizations for one-year fellowships in Congress and at federal agencies. Walser’s AGU fellowship is one of six given this year by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) and its member societies. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, which manages the fellowship program, provides the...