Virtual Congressional Visits Day 2022 recap

The Material Advantage Student Program’s Virtual Congressional Visits Day (CVD) was held this year from May 17-19, 2022. The CVD is an annual event that gives students an opportunity to visit Washington to educate Congressional decision makers about the importance of funding for basic science, engineering, and technology. We were again not able to physically be in D.C. this year, although put together a virtual CVD program for Material Advantage students.

The CVD experience began with a virtual welcome event on May 17, featuring talks by:

Sean Gallagher	Meg Thompson
Senior Government Relations Officer	Co-Founder and Partner
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)	Federal Science Partners

After the talks concluded, the students were provided with a chance to go into break-out rooms to further organize their teams and to do some role-play in advance of their appointments in the following days.

Students and faculty from the following universities registered for this year’s Material Advantage Virtual CVD event:

Colorado School of Mines

Drexel University

Iowa State University

Michigan Technological University

Missouri University of Science and Technology

Penn State

San Jose State University

The Ohio State University

University of Arizona

University of Maryland, College Park

University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Washington State University

Continued thanks to Dr. David Bahr, head and professor of materials engineering at Purdue University, and Dr. Iver Anderson, senior metallurgist at Ames Laboratory and adjunct professor in the Materials Science and Engineering department at Iowa State University, for conducting the training on how to visit with legislators and for their assistance over the years in helping to coordinate CVD. Dr. Bahr and Dr. Anderson both serve on the Material Advantage Committee, an advisory committee that provides recommendations and feedback about the program to the four partnering organization’s leadership.

If you are a student and did not get a chance to participate this year, make sure that you plan to register for the 2023 event, which we hope to hold in-person in Washington D.C.! Or if you are a professor/faculty advisor, make sure to plan on gathering a group together from your university. Visit the Material Advantage website for future updates: www.materialadvantage.org. It is an opportunity that you won’t want to miss!