The Civic Science Fellows (CSF) program embeds early-career practitioners within leading institutions to design and execute civic science initiatives advancing the civic science practice and field across disciplines.
Active
Overview
The Civic Science Fellows (CSF) program embeds early-career practitioners within leading institutions to design and execute civic science initiatives advancing the civic science practice and field across disciplines. Fellows work at the intersection of research, policy, and public life, tackling the kind of institutional and ecosystem-level challenges that open scholarship work also seeks to address: building trust, expanding access, and reshaping how science is practiced in relationship with the communities it serves.
Working with the Civic Science Fellows Network, ORCA supports this program on two strategic fronts. We provide hands-on project support to the Fellows cohort, mentoring them through semi-structured project management, stakeholder navigation, and communication strategy as they execute their civic science initiatives within host institutions. This support is grounded in an iterative, phase-based approach that helps fellows map their stakeholder landscape, build institutional relationships and credibility, and translate project outcomes into lasting impact, recognizing that fellows often navigate friction not only within their host institutions but across the broader ecosystems they aim to influence, from disciplinary norms to funder priorities to public trust dynamics.
In parallel, we are building enduring infrastructure for the alumni network to connect fellows with aligned peers and experienced practitioners based on shared interests, career stage, or field expertise, and to instill organizational discipline through intentional engagement.
Together, these efforts with the Civic Science Fellows community aim to demonstrate how sustained community support can align open science with parallel movements that build public engagement and trust in science, while creating lasting professional networks among practitioners reshaping science-society relationships.
Target Communities
Active Civic Science Fellows
Civic Science Fellows Alumni
Goals
Support fellows in executing their civic science projects through hands-on mentorship in project management, stakeholder navigation, and communication strategy within their host institutions.
Build lasting infrastructure for the alumni network that keeps fellows connected beyond the fellowship.
Advance public trust and engagement in science by aligning open science practice with the broader civic science movement.
Funders
Civic Science Fellows Funder Collaborative