Suzanne Ortega, PhD, past president of the Council of Graduate Schools, spoke on “Why Context Matters: Science For, With and In Community” for the Bob and Helen Bartee Family Advocacy of Science Lectureship Sept. 11.
Dr. Ortega urged her UNMC audience to be the personal stories advocating for science to the communities around them.
Dr. Ortega pointed to a time in her career when public trust had waned for public schools. Yet at the same time, she said, people trusted their own public school and their children’s teachers.
To build the case for science and the importance of graduate education in the public, Dr. Ortega said, tell a personal story to neighbors, friends, community members, even legislators and current or prospective students.
“We have to understand that building trust depends on building relationships,” she said in the lecture, held at the Maurer Center for Public Health and streamed virtually to UNMC attendees. “That it’s easier to discount that generic, faceless scientist than it is to discount the scientist who’s sitting next to you on a bar stool or in a coffee shop or meeting over a basketball game or sitting on bleachers at a kid’s game.”
Dr. Ortega said graduate institutions are in a historic moment where trust in institutions is eroding and more people question the value of higher education. But she said it’s important to continue communicating the value of science to the public.
She said there’s an urgency to that message – because the training of scientists takes time.
“It takes years of education,” she said, adding that “you can’t turn it on and turn it off again.”
This is the second annual Bob and Helen Bartee Family Advocacy of Science Lectureship, which was created by former UNMC vice chancellor for external relations Bob Bartee and his family.
The event also recognized Ann Anderson-Berry, MD, PhD, with the Bartee Advocacy of Science Award for exceptional community engagement by a scientist.
Dr. Anderson-Berry said she had learned from Bartee’s mentoring, then became an advocate in “what I’m passionate about to try to serve the populations where I have expertise.”
She said, “You are all advocates in your own way, and have the ability to amplify the message around what you’re passionate about and what you are experts in.”
