Note: The following remarks, made by Joe Quiroz of the Desert Museum, were part of a panel presentation at a Project Kaleidoscope Meeting held in Irvine, California, in November 2003. Also on the panel were Dr. Elwira Sliwinska, a BRAVO! faculty sponsor from Bydgoszcz, Poland; Eric Yip, a BRAVO! undergraduate participant; and Carol Bender, Director of UBRP and BRAVO! The theme of the conference was “Infusing a Global Dimension into Undergraduate Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Programs.”
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Currently, I am the Director of Education at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. As the name implies, it is an institution that spans the international border to cover an ecological region in northwestern Mexico and the southwestern United States. I have only been working there for a month, and my job will be to consolidate the research, education, publications, and outreach programs under a consistent theme. But for the last 15 years, I have built and
directed programs in Latin America for The Nature Conservancy.

The subject of these Project Kaleidoscope assemblies is the improvement of undergraduate education in the science and technology fields and there will be much discussion about the need to broaden the field of experience of students to include a global perspective.

I doubt that many people question that the practices embraced by the scientific method are international in scope and application already, so I suggest that we need not focus on internationalizing science, but rather the need to internationalize the scientist.

In my experience, most of the students who graduate from STEM programs branch out beyond academic and research careers, and in fact many eventually find themselves sooner or later in management positions. In other words, they will have the responsibility of making significant decisions as well as influencing the decisions and behavior of others.

When I hire specialists and managers with science and technical skills I am
looking for individuals who are able to bring more than their technical skills to the job. They must also possess talents and experience that allow them to effectively place their knowledge into the decision making process.

The Nature Conservancy works in more than 35 countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, the Pacific, and Asia. In the case of the Conservancy’s work, it is of course important to be conversant in the language of the country, but it is more important to understand the cultural differences that distinguish a country, or even regions of some countries, from others. Therefore, a person with an impressive resume and local language fluency may still not be the ideal candidate for our programs.

We have found that a candidate must be conversant in five important areas to be of use to us. I make the analogy of these five areas to the five fingers of my hand. I can do many things with even one finger, but it is not until I use all of them in concert that I can do my finest work. A person must be able to articulate scientific knowledge that is painstakingly gained with the economic, social, political, and governmental sectors of our society.

With my past organization, The Nature Conservancy, we have been fortunate to attract some of the brightest and best candidates in the world. Despite that, we are still frustrated, far too often, with the lack of perspective and understanding in those skills that make the difference between having excellent information, and getting that information to the point of decision in a form that can be appreciated and used.

This situation inspired a new effort in the Conservancy to harvest and deploy lessons learned in science management that can help decision makers take full advantage of the lessons gained through experience. The intention is to convert a field of information into a fund of knowledge. The result is this: more efficient use of resources, fewer errors, reduced risk, and more conservation accomplished.

Allow me to interject a personal anecdote. When I was an undergraduate, I changed my major in my second year from pre-medicine to wildlife management. One day as I was explaining this change to a dear uncle who had little formal education but was very well equipped with common sense and business savvy, he grew very quiet. I asked him what he thought of the change. He politely told me that he had never heard of anyone trying to manage wildlife and it sounded very foolish to him. He continued that it is not that wildlife need to be managed, but rather the behavior of people who use, displace, and abuse wildlife. Of course he was right then, and he would be right today. It is all about the people.

Information derived through science and technology is good, but it is valuable if it benefits people and their living conditions over the long term. In the practical work of applying scientific knowledge, whether as a cell biologist, a GIS specialist, a management generalist, or a policy developer, we depend upon the person’s ability to get critical information to the white-hot point of decision.

A recent report on a respected radio news program featured a certain U.S. Senator declaiming, with impressive authority, that the findings and recommendations of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the National Academy of Science on Global Climate Change are a great hoax. He continued with the following statement that I quote from Senator James Inhofe’s website. “CO2 works like a fertilizer and higher temperatures usually further enhance the CO2 fertilizer effect.” He goes on to say, “what gets obscured in the global warming debate is the fact that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant. It is necessary for life. Numerous studies have shown that global warming can actually be beneficial to mankind.”

Is the good Senator a fool, or nefarious, or naïve? He is most likely convinced that his advisors would not set him up in a way that could bring him humiliation on a global scale. While it may be true that under certain experimental cases, the Senator’s statements are true, are they the results that overarching national policies should be based upon? It would be easy to criticize the media, his political party, and overzealous campaign funders, but shouldn’t we, the educational community, also be questioning our own ability to instill critical thinking abilities in our national consciousness?

There exists the very real possibility that this Senator, and his kind, will use false logic, incomplete information, and forceful language to shape policy. While the short-term objectives of this Senator may be served, the long-term cost to many people around the world may be significant. I am not trying to argue for reductions in carbon emissions, but simply to use this example to illustrate the effect of badly communicated information. The best information of the best-funded research groups on earth is of no value if it cannot inform the decision process at the time and of the scale where it could do the greatest amount of good.

So what responsibility do we hold? Along with the development of critical minds capable of distinguishing evidence from anecdote, I suggest we are also charged with the task of helping those minds to unfold their humanity. Is it any wonder that so many American schools of medicine, that once selected candidates only with undergraduate majors in the hard sciences, have shifted to include language, art, history, and even business majors (given of course that they make up
the basic prerequisite credits)? Broadening
the perspective of doctors has been good for medicine, and good for people.

One definition of prejudice I found in my dictionary is “the act or state of holding unreasonable preconceived judgments or convictions.” Is that what our U.S. Senator is doing? And by extension, those who believe him without question? Would that senator’s voters be very quick to believe him if they had the ability to distinguish between evidence and opinion?

Mark Twain once said that travel is the enemy of prejudice. There is probably nothing that could match the experience that Eric Yip, BRAVO! participant* had in the rainforests of Ecuador to help him understand the way in which the people of the Amazon valley use information. And it is well known among Peace Corp volunteers, that although we ostensibly send our people around the world to provide assistance, the real beneficiaries of the two years spent abroad are those of us who come home more humble and wise. It should be no surprise that the great majority of those people I hired for jobs both in and outside of the United States in the last 20 years, had experience in more than one country.

Previously, I touched upon the need in the workforce for technically trained people who can get critical information to the point of decision. I also touched on the responsibility of the education community to foment the broadening of the student’s understanding of the global audience affected by science. There is one more; plain economics. An institution developing products and methods to be used by others without intimate knowledge of the users will simply be out competed.

But I do not suggest that every student should be trained to be a public relations specialist for science and technology. In fact, this is far from any suggestion that I would make. What I do ask, is that students be offered the chance and encouraged to increase their understanding of how information is applied around the world. The way we seize opportunities to do just that will be the topic of many future discussions.

No country has the exclusive right to create knowledge. Those who refuse to constantly improve their skills of sharing and articulating knowledge risk becoming stagnant pools. Biologists know that broad pollination leads to hybrid vigor, improved resilience to stress, and greater survivability. Our knowledge is no different.

* For more information refer back to Eric Yip’s article in the October 2003 newsletter

Joseph Quiroz, Director of Education, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum