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INFORMATION FOR STUDENTS

Science, Technology, and Policy (STP) is one of the Policy Areas of Concentration (PACs) in the Kennedy School's Master in Public Policy degree program. (The requirements for the STP PAC are described at the end of this page.) A variety of courses in STP and related subjects are offered at the Kennedy School, and a large number of courses elsewhere at Harvard and at other schools in the Boston area are also of potential interest to STP students. STP courses are open to students in the Kennedy School’s other Masters Degree programs and to interested students from other universities.

The following issues and topics are among those addressed by STP courses:

• policy tools to nurture scientific and technological innovation needed for competitiveness, security, and sustainability;
• the development of national and international energy strategies, including strategies to meet the challenge of human-induced climatic disruption;
• the management of nuclear-energy and nuclear-weapons technologies;
• the shaping and management of the evolving global information infrastructure;
• approaches to determining the appropriate levels of public support for basic science and for science and engineering education.

STP and closely related courses offered at the Kennedy School in the 2007–2008 academic year:

Students interested in science and technology policy will find a number of courses relevant to STP at other Harvard schools and at MIT and Tufts’ Fletcher School. (KSG students may cross-register at any of these.) The following tips may be useful to KSG students interested in STP:

·        The Harvard University Center for the Environment maintains an excellent listing of courses on the environment—including public policy–related courses—at Harvard, MIT, and Fletcher.

·        MIT’s Engineering Systems Division (ESD) is a locus for teaching and research on science and technology policy. See ESD’s course list—especially the Technology and Policy section. Some of ESD’s courses are required for MIT’s interdisciplinary masters and doctoral programs in Technology and Policy.

·        MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) offers a number of courses related to technology policy. Browse DUSP’s course listings.

·        MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS), within the Institute’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, collaborates on a Ph.D. program in History, Anthropology, and STS (HASTS). Browse courses required for HASTS and upper-level STS courses in the MIT course catalog.

·        Courses of interest at Fletcher include DHP-P248, Seminar on Technology and International Security, and DHP P258, Clean Energy Technologies and Policy. Browse course listings.

STP-related courses are not restricted to students with strong backgrounds in science and technology (S&T). People who work at the intersection of S&T with public policy in the "real world" come to this intersection with a wide variety of backgrounds, and KSG graduates with many different specializations and job descriptions are likely to encounter S&T/public-policy interactions in some phase of their work. Indeed, the array of contemporary challenges and opportunities involving the interaction of S&T with public policy—AIDS, energy, biotechnology, climate change, industrial ecology, the Internet, nuclear weapons, telecommunications, toxic substances, transportation, and more—command the attention and understanding of every educated citizen.

Requirements for the STP Concentration for MPP Students

KSG MPP students who elect a formal concentration in STP would ordinarily take STP-100 in the fall of their first year and STP-150Y in both semesters of their second year. (The two semesters of 150Y together earn 1 credit.) The KSG requirement that an MPP concentration must contain three or more credits would then be met by taking, in the second year, at least one additional STP or STP-related course. Substitutions of courses other than those listed above for the third credit in the concentration requirement—or for STP-100 and/or STP-150Y as the first and second credits in the requirement—may only be made with the permission of the STP PAC advisers, Drs. John P.Holdren and Dorothy Zinberg. It is hoped that most STP concentrators will take additional STP-related courses beyond the 3-credit minimum, which can be selected from all of those listed above and others that will be added to it when their relevance is called to the STP PAC advisers' attention.