Stories

Dear Civic Science Community, 

In this moment of polycrisis, compounded by sobering disruption, mistrust, and social division, our conventional strategies for advancing science are being tested. 

Across our network, we are responding with even greater urgency, but also discussing the need for a wider lens. Expanding our aperture on what it means to invest in science—who drives it, how it’s practiced, and where it lives—we begin to see the conditions under which the next generation of scientists might thrive, not only as researchers but  as bridge-builders and collaborative problem-solvers. And the need to seed and nurture these conditions is now.

Following the devastating wildfires in southern California earlier this year, like many, I was moved by the story of the Altadena Seed Library. As the Eaton Fire began to threaten her Altadena home the first thing Nina Raj packed was seeds. A UC Naturalist and Master Gardener, she had started the seed library as a way for people to share seeds of native plants at outposts in Altadena and then around the city. The libraries evolved to reflect the priorities of the communities that tended them—expanding, for example, to include non-native and naturalized plants that can help address challenges like shade inequity and food insecurity.

After the fire, the library was a crucial resource for free seeds to aid ecological restoration. But it quickly became something more: a significant way for residents to collectively shape the environment that will sustain them in the future.

We find more stories that show how science is entangled with civic life, not separate from it, highlighted in profiles of three of our Civic Science Fellows, Soobin Choi, Lia-Kelinsky Jones, and Kumba Sennaar, whose work bridges science and the public. And a new documentary created and funded by partners in our Civic Science network, and featured here, fosters connection to science by telling stories of science as an inherently human endeavor.

These stories show that expanding the power and promise of science can start with a shift in how and where we look. That shift might mean widening the aperture of support by investing not only in ideas, but in relationships; funding social infrastructures that enable responses through shared agency; and backing scientists who are trained to work across difference, who view complexity not as a barrier but as a call, and as a resource.

Broadening horizons in these ways doesn’t mean we lower the bar for science. It means we raise it—for relevance, for resilience, for reach. Expanding our strategies to include these efforts isn’t a divergence from progress. It’s a way to ensure that progress is possible.

In community, 
Elizabeth

Elizabeth Christopherson
President and Chief Executive Officer, Rita Allen Foundation

This letter is excerpted from the May 2025 Civic Science Series newsletter. Read the full Series here.