A Roadmap for Strengthening STEM-in-Society Programs

It’s well-established that when professionals of differing expertise come together, they can find solutions more effectively than they can with like-minded colleagues. Shobita Parthasarathy is on a mission to convey that message to the 90 higher education institutions across the United States that train researchers to grasp how ethics, policy, and society can both influence and improve science and technology.

As fields like artificial intelligence and human organoid research remake the world at breakneck pace, and polls suggest that the public feels disconnected from research at institutions of higher education, preparing students for careers that steer science toward the public interest is essential. Yet the very university major, minor, and certificate programs that achieve this preparation commonly lack departmental homes, not to mention clear advocates at higher levels of their institutions’ administration.

Parthasarathy, professor and director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy program at the University of Michigan, calls in a new perspective article for STEM-in-Society programs to form a network to centralize resources, provide new avenues for collaboration, and mobilize to advocate for more funding and recognition. The article, coauthored by research analyst Erin Burkett, also recommends that university administrators discourage the creation of STEM-in-Society programs within STEM departments that have weaker emphasis on social science and humanities. Administrators should also pursue the untapped market of mid-career STEM-in-Society training. And it calls for philanthropy and government funders to support the building of the network and to adjust their grant-making requirements to incentivize STEM-in-Society training more broadly. The perspective appears in the summer issue of the journal Issues in Science and Technology, published August 20th. It builds on a report from March that was supported by The Kavli Foundation.

“We are very excited about the publication of the report, which examined the status, opportunities, and challenges of STEM-in-Society programs. We found, for example, that their interdisciplinary strength is also their weakness: it makes it harder to get resources for example,” Parthasarathy said. “We hope that our recommendations help these programs advocate for themselves particularly to university leaders and funders, and expand their offerings at a moment when most of the world’s challenges lie at the intersection of science, technology, and society.”

STEM-in-Society programs first emerged in the 1970s, a time when both breakthroughs like recombinant DNA and research like the Tuskegee syphilis study spurred deep questions about how science should operate within society. Different programs emphasize different facets of STEM-in-Society, such as bioethics or policy. But all the programs are multidisciplinary; humanities and social science scholars work alongside scientists, training students to interrogate the social and political implications and context of their research. According to Parthasarathy and Burkett’s spring 2025 report, “Broadening Horizons: How STEM-in-Society Programs Train Socially Responsible Scientists, Engineers, and Policy Leaders,” alumni of these programs say that the soft skills they honed through these programs helped them advance in their careers more rapidly than lab work–focused peers.

Despite these benefits, the programs’ multidisciplinary nature can lead to challenges in systems designed around individual academic departments. Tensions can emerge when STEM-in-Society programs train students from other departments with what they feel is relatively little compensation, or when STEM departments create their own STEM-in-Society training, unaware that training already exists.

A strong network of STEM-in-Society programs can counterbalance these issues, Parthasarathy and Burkett write. Members could share strategies to work effectively with larger and better-funded STEM departments and administrators or lessen the burden on small programs’ faculty by centralizing resources like career guidance. Higher education administrators can promote communication between existing STEM-in-Society programs and STEM departments and develop what Parthasarathy and Burkett’s report concludes is an untapped source of revenue—curricula for mid-career professionals. Finally, Parthasarathy and Burkett note that when the National Science Foundation instituted its “broader impacts” requirement in grant proposals, the research community responded by generating university infrastructures to support increased public engagement. A move by funders to encourage training at the intersection of humanities, ethics, science, and policy could have similar ripple effects. “Ultimately, I hope that that this report enables the growth and proliferation of STEM-in-Society programs across the country,” Parthasarathy said. “Every student should have access to this kind of training at their college or university, so that the next generations of scientists, engineers, policy leaders, and citizens can work together to ensure discovery and innovation truly serve society.”