Science leaders assess future support

National Science Board debates the need for major changes

As the new century approaches, the country's top researchers and educators should be outlining a new vision for their efforts or face a substantial loss of public support. Those attending the National Science Board meeting here last week agreed that this was the challenge. What remained unclear was the direction to follow.

For a day and a half, the heads of universities, research laboratories, industries and educational programs debated what actions the research community should take to respond to tighter budgets, shifting social needs, new economic developments, evolving institutions, and criticism from the public. The climate for research, they all noted, is tougher than that which existed decades ago. Research universities and other federally funded institutions will have to adjust to thrive, according to board members.

Calls for dramatic change were issued repeatedly by invited speakers addressing the 24-member board as well as by board members themselves, seated around conference tables in the Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center.

Typically the board, which oversees the activities of the federal granting agency National Science Foundation and serves as an independent national science policy body, meets at its headquarters in Arlington, Va. Its unusual visit to the West Coast and to UC Davis emerged from the efforts of board member Charles Hess, director of international programs at UC Davis and former dean of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

The debate was well-placed in California, which receives more NSF dollars for research than any other state and which typifies the post-Cold War economy.

After a day and a half of taking stock and recalling the heyday of science in years past, board chair Frank Rhodes urged his colleagues to focus again on the prospects ahead in the 21st century. Hold on to what works well, what has produced a "triumph of creation" in human achievement, he said, while making "a change in our mindset."

In their words

"As creators of knowledge, we must also engage in explanation and application where appropriate....Most of us regard our scholarship as completed when it is published, exhibited or performed. But we need to move beyond mere publication to explanation and advocacy for research."
--Frank Rhodes, chair of the National Science Board and president emeritus of Cornell University

"We're going to have to learn to squeeze every bit of productivity out of science funding that we can....We have to show that every dollar spent is in the national interest."

--M.R.C. Greenwood, dean of graduate studies and vice provost for academic outreach at UC Davis

"I did not come here to tell you the sky is falling. It isn't....On the other hand, many things need fixing.... Now is the time for action."

--Erich Bloch, distinguished fellow with the Council on Competitiveness and former director of the National Science Foundation

"Somehow we've forgotten that the primary mission of universities iseducation, to which research is a splendid adjunct....We need to pay much more attention to the educational enterprise in the research institution or pay a big price in the future."

--Donald Kennedy, president emeritus of Stanford University

"What we need to do is have a continuing flow of examples of how research benefits society. However, that's not rewarded right now by universities."

--Charles Hess, director of international programs at UC Davis and member of the National Science Board

"This effort will require a much more involved and visiblescience and technology community. In short, it will require a new kindof civic leadership on the part of scientists."

--Neal Lane, director of the National Science Foundation