Greater impacts through actionable science

At Wisconsin Sea Grant, we passionately believe in the role of science in society, and we support multidisciplinary research, education and outreach for the protection and sustainable use of Wisconsin’s water resources. Providing good, unbiased science to our public and our policy makers of the state and Great Lakes region is our primary responsibility. We also recognize that all of our work is accomplished within a tapestry of various social values, economic resources and through political debate.

Ideally, as a society we are most productive when people of different perspectives are debating what to do with the facts and seeking common ground based in reality, rather than debating the facts themselves. Toward this goal, we must first do solid research on the most important issues – funding the most relevant, highest quality research projects is one of our key functions. Second, we must communicate this research to a variety of audiences – outreach and communications are our other key functions. The combination of these two goals (good science valued by stakeholders coupled with effective outreach and communication built on solid relationships with the right network and resulting conversations), if done well, results in Actionable Science – basically relevant information or a decision-support framework that can inform the likely outcomes of different options for water resource management.

Note, it is not our intent to encourage scientists to advocate for a position (i.e., what people should do), but rather to be more effective in sharing information that is relevant and in a form that is understandable (i.e., describe better how the world is or could be based on different potential actions). Sea Grant’s mission relies on scientists as “neutral brokers” of information to inform debate and decisions.