“This is taxpayer money. How can we best be spending it to actually help people?”
That’s a question that’s occupied Saint John’s University alumnus Steve Henle ’06, Ph.D., for much of the last few months. Steve’s currently serving as part of the 52nd class of the Science & Technology Policy Fellowship (STPF) program sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
It’s a selective program and a distinct honor and would be noteworthy on its own. What makes it even more remarkable (and convenient) is that he gets to share an apartment in the Washington, D.C., area with his wife, College of Saint Benedict alumna Andrea Meuleners Henle ’06, Ph.D., who has also been awarded an STPF fellowship.
“There’s only been a couple of other married couples we know of in the history of the fellowship,” stated Andrea. “It doesn’t happen often.”
As the AAAS defines it, “STPF fellows are chosen from a select group of doctoral-level scientists and highly experienced master’s-level engineers to engage in a one-year immersive educational opportunity to gain hands-on experience in the public policy arena while leveraging their expertise to help confront societal issues in the U.S. government.”
“Both of us are on the ‘programmatic side,’” Andrea said. “So we’re helping government agencies determine where to put grant funding – which research and science should be funded. And that helps drive the state of science forward.”
Andrea, who began her fellowship on Sept. 1, is serving as an artificial intelligence and communities fellow at the National Science Foundation (NSF). “I’m working on three different grant programs that use technology to help communities be resilient against natural disasters,” said Andrea. “Congress allocates money to the NSF and we have to determine how to distribute that to researchers. Scientists submit grant proposals and go through a rigorous review process, and we help decide which proposals are funded, based on the reviewers’ scores.”
Steve who began his fellowship about two weeks before Andrea, is spending a year as a program officer at the National Eye Institute at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). “Specifically, I work on grants related to glaucoma,” Steve said. “It’s a lot of trying to decide where there are gaps in our knowledge that we want to drive researchers to try and fill, so we can better understand the disease.”
The 2024-25 STPF class is sponsored by organizations like the AAAS, the Moore Foundation and partner societies. Of the 291 fellows chosen, 40 are serving in Congress, one is serving at the Federal Judicial Center and 250 are serving in the executive branch. The program was founded in 1973.
Fellows like the Henles are learning first-hand about federal policymaking and implementation. They’re also gaining skills in communication, diplomacy, collaboration and consensus-building. Beyond that, the experience is equipping them with skills that will be helpful in their future work. (Both are currently on the faculty at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin.)
“I’ve had to write grants before,” Steve said. “But I certainly will be a lot better at that now, seeing how they’re actually evaluated.”
“It’s helped me understand how the federal government operates,” Andrea said. “It’s also given me a lot of new ideas and has reinvigorated my research agenda.”
All of this is a long way from their undergraduate origins at CSB and SJU, but both Henles agree they were well prepared by their college choices.
“I only really went to two campuses,” Steve recalled of his college search, “the University of Minnesota and Saint John’s. I didn’t know if I could afford a private school, but I had family members who went to Saint John’s, and I was sort of outdoorsy – so I ended up applying. And it actually ended up being cheaper for me to go to Saint John’s because of some of the scholarships I ended up getting … which surprised me and my parents.
“I remember thinking that the U of M obviously has a lot more (science) facilities and there’s a lot of research going on. But then I realized the odds of actually getting to work in one of those big labs (as an undergraduate student) were pretty low. Whereas the odds of getting to work in a lab at Saint John’s were reasonably high. And I’ve always thought there’s a lot of value to having a liberal arts background – how to write and communicate.”
Andrea’s college search was more extensive, but she arrived at the same decision. “I did a college tour throughout the Midwest and West with my family. We drove all the way out to Colorado and Montana looking at schools. And then we stopped in St. Joseph on the way home (to Northfield, Minnesota). And, even after this whole big tour, Saint Ben’s just felt like the right campus for me. As soon as I got there, I thought ‘Oh, this is the place for me.’ The people were friendly. They had the courses and coursework I wanted to do. They had the majors I was interested in. And I liked the Benedictine values that were very evident on campus.”