Glenn College Remembers Professor Caroline Wagner

John Glenn College of Public Affairs Faculty Emeritus Caroline Wagner passed away June 24 after a short and intense battle with pancreatic cancer.

Wagner spent her career helping policymakers better understand how science and technology systems operate so they can govern them and influence them in a positive way. At the same time, she infused in her students the idea that they should be passionate about and confident in their contributions to the world.

An elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a former elected member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Wagner joined Ohio State in 2011 after serving as a policy analyst working with and for government in a career that spanned more than 30 years and three continents.

She retired from Ohio State in spring of 2025, became a Faculty Emeritus of the Glenn College and was selected as a member of The Ohio State University’s Emeritus Academy, founded in 2014 to recognize and promote the ongoing engagement of emeriti faculty in both scholarly and creative activities.

“Caroline has been a core part of the Glenn College faculty and family for more than 15 years,” said Glenn College Acting Dean Stephanie Moulton. “Through her research as a science policy network scholar, her teaching and professional activities and her approach to life, Caroline had an incredible gift for bringing people together and building connections.”

Funeral services for Wagner will be held at St. Patrick Episcopal Church in Dublin, Ohio, with visitation from 4-6 p.m. Thursday, July 2, and the funeral at 11 a.m. Friday, July 3.

“I am so sad to say goodbye to Caroline Wagner,” said Trevor Brown, Ohio State interim executive vice president and provost and former Glenn College dean. “The field lost a powerhouse scholar, and we lost a friend far too soon.”

“Caroline Wagner brought global expertise in science policy to the Battelle Center in her time as the director,” said Daniel Kelley, current Battelle Center director. “In the years since, she continued to leverage her reputation and collaborative spirit in service to the center’s mission. Her leadership will have a lasting legacy in bringing a focus on rigorous science policy analysis to our work in conducting research and education to serve the public interest.”

Travis Whetsell, one of Wagner’s former students, earned his PhD in public policy and management in 2017. He is now an assistant professor in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech.

He and Wagner produced several peer-reviewed academic journal articles together, examining research collaboration networks of Nobel laureates, the policy effects on semiconductor alliance formation, the advancement of national openness as a relevant variable in scientific advancement, the effects of democracy on scientific impact, and the development of metrics for measuring national research capacity.

“Caroline taught me how to see networks: that what matters is not just the nodes, but the connections between them, and the broader patterns that emerge from the whole. The network itself is more than the sum of its parts,” Whetsell wrote in a remembrance about Wagner. “Her death removes a node and a complex of ties no one can replace or reconstruct. But the rest of us can still carry forward the ideas that flowed through them, making new connections from the living artifacts left behind in the scientific record.”
 

Wagner also was an affiliated faculty member of Ohio State’s Sustainability Institute.

“Caroline was a dynamic member of the original group of faculty that developed the university’s interdisciplinary hiring plan for sustainability in 2015, resulting in over 30 new core faculty of the Sustainability Institute with faculty appointments across 18 academic units and six colleges, including the Glenn College,” said Distinguished University Professor Elena Irwin, Sustainability Institute director. “She pushed the group to be ambitious, think big and recruit leaders in sustainability science with international reputations.”

Wagner’s expertise in science and technology and its relationship to policy, society and innovation, along with the related international aspects, earned her global respect. She was selected for the Expert Panel on International Science, Technology, Innovation and Knowledge Partnerships for the Council of Canadian Academies and served as a consultant to the United Nations for the Millennium Development Goals and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. For the Royal Society of London, Wagner advised and co-wrote the 2011 report “Knowledge, Networks and Nations.” She served for 10 years as the editor of the journal Science and Public Policy.

Even after her retirement, she followed her passions in international science and technology policy, serving on the Societal Impacts of Science and Engineering committee of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and leading the evaluation team for the new NSF-backed center, Safeguarding the Entire Community of the U.S. Research Ecosystem (SECURE). She also served on the International Working Group for the National Science Foundation’s Research on Research Security program and, with the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, the Subcommittee on U.S.-China Scientific Engagement.

“Caroline was a valued colleague and dear friend to many of us in the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Section on the Societal Impacts of Science and Engineering,” said Mike Holland, section chair and vice chancellor for science policy and research strategies at the University of Pittsburgh. “The Section was proud to have nominated her to be an AAAS Fellow. Not only was her scholarship well respected by her academic colleagues, but for someone like me who spent the first half of his career as a staffer in White House agencies and Congressional committees, she cast a clear spotlight on the growing research capacity of other countries and highlighted the need for clear-eyed strategies for international scientific cooperation — or competition when necessary.”

Prior to joining Ohio State’s faculty, Wagner worked at the RAND Corp., where she was deputy to the director of the Science & Technology Policy Institute, a research center serving the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

She also worked twice as staff member for the U.S. Congress — as a professional staff member for the House Committee for Science, Space and Technology, and as an analyst for the then-Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. With the U.S. State Department, Wagner was stationed for two years at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea, as an economic officer reporting on technological change in Asia. She previously served as an elected member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Wagner received a doctorate in science and technology dynamics from Amsterdam School of Communications Research, University of Amsterdam, a Master of Arts in Science, Technology and Public Policy from George Washington University, and a Bachelor of Arts from Trinity College.