[Senate Hearing 107-527]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 107-527
REAUTHORIZATION OF THE NATIONAL
SCIENCE FOUNDATION: STRENGTHENING MATH
AND SCIENCE EDUCATION RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION,
LABOR, AND PENSIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
WASHINGTON, DC
__________
JUNE 19, 2002
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and
Pensions
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
80-421 WASHINGTON : 2003
___________________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON HEALTH, EDUCATION, LABOR, AND PENSIONS
EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire
TOM HARKIN, Iowa BILL FRIST, Tennessee
BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, Maryland MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming
JAMES M. JEFFORDS (I), Vermont TIM HUTCHINSON, Arkansas
JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico JOHN W. WARNER, Virginia
PAUL D. WELLSTONE, Minnesota CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, Missouri
PATTY MURRAY, Washington PAT ROBERTS, Kansas
JACK REED, Rhode Island SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
JOHN EDWARDS, North Carolina JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama
HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON, New York MIKE DeWINE, Ohio
J. Michael Myers, Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Townsend Lange McNitt, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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STATEMENTS
Page
Kennedy, Hon. Edward M., Chairman, Committee on Health,
Education, Labor, and Pensions, opening statement.............. 00
Prepared statement........................................... 00
Coldwell, Dr. Rita R., Director, National Science Foundation,
opening statement.............................................. 00
Prepared statement........................................... 00
Glenn, Hon. John, Chairman of the Board of Directors, The John
Glenn Institute for Public Service and Public Policy, opening
statement...................................................... 00
Prepared statement........................................... 00
Verner, Dr. Keith, Chief of Developmental Pediatrics and
Learning, Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine.... 00
Prepared statement........................................... 00
Additional Material
Lieberman, Senator Joe, prepared statement....................... 00
Rockefeller, Senator John D. IV, prepared statement.............. 00
Friedman, Jerome I, Ph.D., prepared statement.................... 00
Miaoulis, Ioannis, Ph.D., prepared statement..................... 00
Washington, Warren, Dr., prepared statement...................... 00
American Society of Mechanical Engineers, prepared statement..... 00
REAUTHORIZATION OF THE NATIONAL
SCIENCE FOUNDATION: STRENGTHENING
MATH AND SCIENCE EDUCATION RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
----------
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 19, 2002
United States Senate,
Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions,
Washington, D.C.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:45 p.m., in
Room SD-430, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Edward M.
Kennedy, [chairman of the committee], presiding.
Present: Senators Kennedy, Jeffords, Mikulski, Clinton, and
Bond.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR EDWARD M. KENNEDY, CHAIRMAN
The Chairman. We will come to order. We are expecting some
of our colleagues who will be joining us shortly, but I think
we will get started.
I want to thank Dr. Colwell, Dr. Verner and a very special
welcome to an old and dear and valued friend, John Glenn, who
is a national treasure and a leading authority on math and
science education, research and development.
The National Science Foundation has a distinguished history
of success and has made a difference in the lives of millions
of Americans. It has funded basic research leading to creation
of Doppler radar, speech recognition software, and even the
World Wide Web browsers many of us rely on today. Its education
initiatives in the late 1980s were the forerunner for the
standards-based school reform that is now embraced throughout
Federal, State, and local education programs.
Today, NSF has two key functions: first, supporting high-
end research and development in science, math, engineering and
technology; and second, promoting cutting-edge math and science
education reform and performance at the elementary, secondary,
post-secondary and post-graduate levels. We look forward to
hearing about each of those functions today.
Advancements in biological and physical science often
depend on each other. Federal research and development funding
has grown, especially in the health sciences, over the last
several years, which has been very valuable in many areas. The
National Institutes of Health's budget has doubled over the
last 5 years. But we should also work to grow support for
research and development in theoretical mathematics and the
physical sciences, not only because they are valuable in their
own right, but also because they support advancements in the
health sciences and other fields. In fact, we have an urgent
need to begin today to interest young minds in math and science
and to recruit tomorrow's mathematicians and engineers.
Over the next 10 years the number of jobs requiring
technical schools is projected to grow by 50 percent.
Unfortunately, the number of American students studying math
and science at the college level has been flat over the last
decade. High school student performance on international math
and science exams is distressingly low. And at a time that our
Nation is growing more diverse, women and minorities continue
to shy away from the sciences.
I look forward to hearing from the witnesses today,
reviewing the submitted testimony of others and moving forward
with this reauthorization. We are honored to have such
distinguished witnesses today and look forward to their
proposals to address these challenges as we reauthorize the
National Science Foundation.
Of our three witnesses today, I would first like to welcome
Dr. Rita Colwell, Director of the National Science Foundation.
Since she became the director in 1998, Dr. Colwell has
emphasized K-through-12 science and math education, graduate
science and engineering education and training, and has tried
to increase the participation of women and minorities in
science and engineering.
Before coming to the NSF, Dr. Colwell was president of the
University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute. She was also a
member of the National Science Board from 1984 to 1990. Dr.
Colwell has received numerous accolades and honorary degrees.
In addition, she was born in Beverly, MA. So, I am pleased to
have Dr. Colwell here today to update us on what NSF has been
doing and on the future plans for the agencies.
And we will have the presentation by our friend Senator
John Glenn, who is here with us today to discuss his views on
secondary education, the importance of math and science
education. Following Senator Glenn's retirement from the United
States Senate, he focussed a great deal of his time on math and
science education and spearheaded the Glenn Commission report,
``Before It's Too Late.'' I am grateful to have Senator Glenn
back in the Senate today to talk about the Commission's report
and priorities for math and science education and research. He
has already made available to all of us a videotape and report
on the Commission work, which I know our colleagues will value.
I will ask the staffs to make sure that they give those to the
Senators.
Then finally, Keith Verner we are pleased to welcome. Dr.
Verner is the chief of Developmental Pediatrics and Learning at
Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine. Besides his
extensive experience as a professor, he has authored several
publications related to health education and science research.
I am pleased to have Dr. Verner here today to discuss the
importance of both NSF's and the Department of Education's math
and science partnerships.
Dr. Colwell, we will start with you.
[The prepared statement of Sen. Kennedy follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Edward M. Kennedy
Thank You, Dr. Colwell and Dr. Verner, for joining us. We're
especially pleased to have with us also Senator Glenn, who is a
national treasure and leading authority on math and science education,
research, and development.
The National Science Foundation has a distinguished history of
success and has made a difference in the lives of millions of
Americans. It has funded basic research leading to the creation of
doppler radar, speech recognition software, and even the World Wide Web
browsers many of us rely on today. Its education initiatives of the
late 1980s were the forerunners for the standards-based school reform
that is now embraced throughout Federal, State, and local education
programs.
Today, NSF has two key functions: First, supporting high-end
research and development in science, math, engineering and technology.
And second, promoting cutting-edge math and science education reform
and performance at the elementary, secondary, post-secondary and post-
graduate levels. We look forward to hearing about each of those
functions today.
Advancements in biological and physical sciences often depend on
each other. Federal research and development funding has grown,
especially in the health sciences, over the last several years, which
has been very valuable in many areas. The National Institutes of
Health's budget has doubled over the last 5 years. But, we should also
work to grow support for research and development in theoretical
mathematics and the physical sciences--not only because they are
valuable in their own right, but also because they support advancements
in the health sciences and other fields.
In fact, we have an urgent need to begin today to interest young
minds in math and science, and to recruit tomorrow's mathematicians and
engineers. Over the next 10 years, the number of jobs requiring
technical skills is projected to grow by 50 percent.
Unfortunately, the number of American students studying math and
science at the college level has been flat over the last decade. High
school student performance on international math and science exams is
distressingly low. And at a time that our Nation is growing more
diverse, women and minorities continue to shy away from the sciences.
I look forward to hearing from the witnesses here today, reviewing
the submitted testimony of others, and moving forward with this
reauthorization.
We are honored to have such distinguished witnesses today, and look
forward to their proposals to address these challenges as we
reauthorize the National Science Foundation.
OPENING STATEMENT OF DR. RITA R. COLWELL, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL
SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Ms. Colwell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would like to thank
you and the Committee for the opportunity to discuss the
President's budget request for the National Science Foundation.
The National Science Foundation's budget request is $5.036
billion for fiscal year 2003, $240 million or 5 percent more
than the previous fiscal year. For the United States to stay on
the leading edge of discovery and innovation, we cannot do
less.
My written testimony contains the specific funding levels
for our various initiatives and programs, but the NSF is keenly
aware and deeply appreciative of this Committee's strong
interest in improving the quality of education in this country,
so I wanted to briefly discuss some of the steps that NSF is
taking to strengthen our math and science education.
Everyone agrees that we need to improve our preK-12
education system. America's knowledge-based society in the 21st
Century puts a premium on the importance of research,
innovation, and human capital as our principal strengths.
Still, at the dawn of the 21st Century we continue to see
depressingly familiar news stories about why Johnny knows
little about science and why he lags in math. Information
technology, for example, has revolutionized America's
businesses, but it also poses new demands. The Commerce
Department projects that 60 percent of the new jobs in the year
2020 will require skills possessed by only 22 percent of our
workers today. The Labor Department projects that new jobs
requiring science, engineering and technical training will
increase by 51 percent by 2008.
Only about 5 percent of the 24-year-olds in this country
have earned degrees in the natural sciences or engineering. By
that measure we now trail Japan, Korea and the United Kingdom.
A decade ago we were leading.
We are right to be concerned about a seeming mismatch
emerging between the skills that workers possess and the skills
that employers demand. How can it be that a Nation that spends
more than $300 billion on public K-12 education invests less
than .1 percent of that amount to determine which educational
technologies actually work and how they can be improved?
Well, NSF does not have a magic wand, but we do have an
impressive portfolio of research and education programs that
are designed to help address these and other challenging
problems. One of the most encouraging highlights of our fiscal
year 2003 budget request is a second installment of a $200
million program for President Bush's national 5-year, $1
billion math and science partnership program, the MSP, to
ensure that no child is left behind. The goal of the MSP
program is to link local schools with colleges and universities
to improve the preK-12 math and science education, to train
teachers, and create innovative ways to reach out to the
underserved students and schools.
The NSF and the Department of Education have formed a Tiger
Team which meets approximately twice a month to discuss
important programs and activities that support our common goals
in math and science education. Demonstrating the success of our
partnership approach, these Tiger Team discussions resulted in
the development of an approach to jointly manage the review and
award process for the first math and science partnership
competition. The review panels met very recently to examine the
appropriate 290 MSP proposals that had been submitted. The
Department of Education staff worked closely with NSF's staff
in the management of this process and we expect to announce the
first set of the MSP awards later this summer.
Now for MSP to succeed we have to first ensure that
genuinely productive partnerships are established between
schools and colleges. A second distinguishing feature of the
MSP is that it will not be an isolated set of local
partnerships, but will become part of a national science,
technology, engineering and mathematics education portfolio of
interconnected sites so that successful methods can be shared
to benefit all students.
Through the programs like MSP, our education portfolio is
evolving to meet the critical needs of our Nation's future
workforce. We must draw on our full talent pool if our work
force is to truly reflect the face of America. We must attract
more students, especially minorities and women, to pursue
careers in science, mathematics, technology and engineering.
In recent years the number of engineers graduating from our
universities has decreased by over 20 percent. Over half the
doctoral candidates in math and physical sciences in our
Nation's universities are from other countries, with an
increasing number returning home after completion of their
studies.
Competition from other nations continues to increase. U.S.
investment in broad-based fundamental research, which takes
place largely in our universities, must not be allowed to slip.
President Bush and his administration have recognized that we
need to invest more in scientific and technological research
across all of the scientific disciplines. The President's
science adviser recently testified that the balance in this
broad research portfolio recognizes that advances in one field,
such as medicine, are often dependent on gains in other
disciplines. Diversified investments across the full spectrum
maximize our returns, both financial and technical. And this
view was echoed by Harold Varmus, the former NIH director, when
he noted that ``Medical advances may seem like wizardry, but
you pull back the curtain and sitting at the lever is a high-
energy physicist, a combinational chemist or an engineer.''
The National Science Foundation is uniquely positioned to
help push forward one of the Nation's highest priorities--
improving education for all children. Educational research, the
science of education, is a key component. We still do not know
how we learn, how we remember, or how we think, yet I believe
there is no field in which major advances would have more
profound effects for human progress.
Mr. Chairman, I would be pleased to respond to any
questions that the Committee may have. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Colwell follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Rita R. Colwell
Chairman Kennedy, Senator Gregg, and Members of the Committee,
thank you for providing this opportunity to discuss the President's
budget request for the National Science Foundation.
America's present and future strength, prosperity and global pre-
eminence depend directly on fundamental research.
Every year, the Foundation's optimal use of limited public funds
has relied on two conditions: number one, ensuring that our research
and education investments are aimed--and continuously re-aimed--at the
frontiers of understanding.
Number two, certifying that virtually every dollar goes to
competitive merit-reviewed, and time-limited awards with clear criteria
for success.
Moreover, NSF puts the greatest share of its resources where they
will do the most good: in the Nation's colleges and universities where,
in addition to generating the truly new ideas that define the future,
every dollar invested contributes to developing and training the next
generation of researchers and educators.
Moreover, NSF has been proactive in implementing the President's
Management Agenda, and we welcome--and apply--input from many sources
to continuously improve the way we manage programs at NSF.
When these conditions are met, our Nation gets the most
intellectual and economic leverage from its research and education
investments.
The National Science Foundation is requesting $5.036 billion for
FY2003, $240 million, or 5 percent more than the previous fiscal year.
For the United States to stay on the leading edge of discovery and
innovation, we cannot do less.
Let me stress that the priority setting process at NSF results from
continual consultation with the research community. New programs are
added or enhanced only after seeking the combined expertise and
experience of the science and engineering community, the Director and
Deputy, and the National Science Board.
Programs are initiated or enlarged based on considerations of their
intellectual merit, broader impacts of the research, the importance to
science and engineering, balance across fields and disciplines, and
synergy with research in other agencies and nations. NSF coordinates
its research with our sister research agencies both informally--by
program officers being actively informed of other agencies' programs--
and formally, through interagency agreements that spell out the various
agency roles in research activities.
Partnerships among agencies are proliferating mainly because they
offer the best hope for finding answers to some of the most challenging
research problems. These partnerships are truly changing the face of
science. NSF is the lead agency for two multi-agency administration
initiatives in the most promising research fields, information
technology and nanotechnology. Knowledge breakthroughs in these two
areas alone will fundamentally change the face of research in research
areas across the board.
I am keenly aware and deeply appreciative of this Committee's
strong interest in improving the quality of education in this country,
so I wanted to take a few minutes to discuss some of the steps NSF is
taking to strengthen our math and science education.
Everyone agrees that we need to improve our preK-12 education
system. America's technology-driven economy demands innovative thinkers
to create new industries and fill the ever more demanding jobs these
new industries generate.
How can it be, at the dawn of the 21st Century, that we still see
news stories about ``why Johnny can't read'' or ``why Johnny can't
count?''
How can it be that a Nation that spends more than $300 billion on
public K-12 education invests less than one-tenth of 1 percent of that
amount to determine ``what actually works,'' and to find ways to
improve educational technologies? NSF does not have a magic wand, but
we do have an impressive portfolio of research and education programs
designed to help address these and other challenging problems.
One of the most encouraging highlights of our FY03 budget request
is a second installment of $200 million for President Bush's national
5-year, $1 billion Math and Science Partnership Program (MSP) to ensure
that ``no child is left behind.'' The strategic focus of MSP is to link
the Nation's higher education institutions with local, regional and
State school districts and other partners. MSP calls for a significant
commitment by colleges and universities to help improve the quality of
science and mathematics instruction in our schools. Additionally, the
program calls for greater investment in the recruitment and
professional development of highly competent science and math teachers.
I would like to note that NSF and the Department of Education are
working closely together to effectively manage this joint investment in
math and science education. Review panels are currently underway for
the first round of MSP proposals, and Department of Education staff is
fully involved in this process along with NSF staff.
For MSP to succeed we must first ensure that productive
partnerships are established between schools and colleges. A second
distinguishing feature of MSP is that it will not be an isolated set of
local partnerships, but will become part of a national science,
technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education portfolio of
interconnected sites that will share successful methods so that all
students benefit. MSP seeks to improve student achievement in
mathematics and science by all students, at all pre-college levels. NSF
doesn't have all the answers, but through programs like MSP, our
education portfolio is evolving to meet the critical needs of our
Nation's future workforce.
That S&T workforce should also reflect the face of America. We must
attract more of our youngsters, especially minorities and women, to
pursue careers in science, mathematics, technology, and engineering. We
must draw upon our full talent pool. One of the steps NSF is taking to
attract more of the Nation's most promising students to science and
engineering is an investment of approximately $37 million in FY03 to
increase annual stipends for graduate fellows to encourage them to
pursue technical careers. Other NSF programs geared toward helping this
underrepresented segment of our population can hopefully make a
difference in their recruitment, retention, and advancement in
technical fields.
The budget also includes funding for six priority areas, including
$221 million for nanotechnology research, $286 million for information
technology research, and $60 million as part of a new priority area in
mathematical and statistical sciences research that will ultimately
advance interdisciplinary science and engineering. $185 million is
directed toward NSF's Learning for the 21st Century Workforce priority
area--including $20 million to fund three to four new multi-
disciplinary, multi-institutional Science of Learning Centers to
enhance our understanding of how we learn, how the brain stores
information, and how we can best use new information technology to
promote learning.
We are also requesting $10 million to seed a new priority area in
the social, behavioral, and economic sciences to explore the complex
interactions between new technology and society so that we can better
anticipate and prepare for their consequences.
The budget requests $79 million for research on biocomplexity in
the environment. This builds upon past investments to study the
remarkable and dynamic web of interrelationships that arise when living
things at all levels interact with their environment. Research in two
new areas this year--microbial genome sequencing and ecology of
infectious diseases--will help develop strategies to assess and manage
the risks of infectious diseases, invasive species, and biological
weapons.
I should add that as part of the Administration's new multi-agency
Climate Change Research Initiative, we will implement a $15 million
research program to advance understanding in highly focused areas of
climate science, to reduce uncertainty and facilitate policy decisions.
Our budget also includes $76 million for programs slated to be
transferred to NSF from NOAA, EPA, and the USGS.
Although we did not seek these transfers, we take considerable
pride in the fact that of the 26 Federal agencies judged by OMB in five
key management areas, only the National Science Foundation received a
green light. NSF is noted for its expertise and success in funding
competitive research, and this was certainly a factor in this
recognition .
In large facilities, we will continue support for the next phase of
construction of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA). New
construction projects in the FY2003 budget include two prototype sites
of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) at a cost of $12
million to analyze data to detect abrupt changes or long-term trends in
the environment. The budget also requests $35 million for EarthScope to
detect and investigate earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and landslides
on the North American continent.
The events following September 11 demonstrated our capacity to
engage the research community in ways that are immediately responsive
to national needs--ranging from the analysis of a catastrophic
structural collapse to the use of robotics in victim location. We owe
this flexibility to a highly trained scientific and engineering
workforce capable of selecting the most interesting and challenging
problems for their research. It is this flexibility, enabled by the
merit review system that makes our science and technology enterprise
the envy of the world.
The Bush Administration has recognized that we need to invest more
in scientific and technological research--across the board. Other
nations are building up their R&D commitments. U.S. investment in
broad-based fundamental research--which takes place largely in our
universities--must not be allowed to slip. I think Harold Varmus said
it best when he said, ``The NIH does a magnificent job, but it does not
hold all the keys to success. The work of several science agencies is
required for advances in medical sciences, and the health of some of
those agencies is suffering.''
The National Science Foundation is the only Federal agency whose
primary mission is to advance science, engineering and mathematics
across all disciplines. By doing so we support national defense, help
our country remain internationally competitive, and provide a better
standard of living for our citizens. As we work to develop the finest
scientists and engineering for the 21st Century, our human resources
policy must move beyond simply the supply and demand of personnel and
address the composition of our science and engineering workforce. There
is much room for needed improvement and continued policy
considerations.
Mr. Chairman, for those who want to examine the NSF budget in
detail, it is fully laid out on our website. I would be pleased to
respond to any questions that the committee may have.
The Chairman. Before we move to Senator Glenn, I notice
Senator Kit Bond was here earlier and we have been joined by
Barbara Mikulski, who I know was looking forward to the
testimony of Dr. Colwell and I should have asked John Glenn to
lead off first on it, but I note her presence here. If there is
anything she wanted to add about Dr. Colwell at this time?
Senator Mikulski. Yes, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, Dr. Colwell comes as--we greet everyone, our
dear colleague Senator Glenn and, of course, Dr. Verner, but
Dr. Colwell comes to us from the State of Maryland where she
has been acknowledged in the University----
The Chairman. I do not correct Senator Mikulski on any
matters----
Senator Mikulski. Why? Do not tell me----
The Chairman. She was born in Massachusetts. But I have
learned, since she is an appropriator, it is much better to let
things go by. There are not many instances where I can----
Senator Mikulski. Mr. Chairman, you know as an authorizer,
it is not where you start out; it is where you end up.
The Chairman. That why I am going to keep quiet.
Senator Mikulski. Dr. Colwell arrived in Maryland, came to
the University of Maryland and to my colleagues, we know that
Dr. Colwell is really an outstanding scholar in her own right.
She is an award-winning scholar, acknowledged by her peers. She
is a talented administrator. Under her stewardship at the
National Science Foundation, she has been a leader, she has
been effective, and I think she brings to us today a framework
for the future on how we can take this great invention of the
old century and make it contemporary, fiscally responsible for
the new century. I know we will look forward to her testimony.
And I am so pleased that I was joined by my brother
appropriator, Senator Bond, because, you know, we are deeply
committed to doubling the National Science Foundation's budget
and we look forward to working with our authorizers for the
right policy framework.
The Chairman. Senator Bond, we would welcome any comment
that you might make.
Senator Bond. Mr. Chairman, if I may impose upon our
witnesses, I had a couple of thoughts I wanted to share about
the National Science Foundation and I have some other things
this afternoon which may preclude my returning, so I am very
pleased to join you and my Chairman on the Appropriations
Committee for NSF.
Ms. Colwell has been to Missouri many times, if that helps.
Ms. Colwell. My daughter graduated from Wash. U., sir.
Senator Bond. Wash. U.? Okay, so everybody has a claim.
Senator Mikulski and I do have a very special interest in
the NSF and I want to focus on something that Dr. Colwell was
talking about on math and science education. Since we have
raised these issues, we fought for these issues, I am on the
Budget Committee and on Appropriations and we have lots of
other things to talk about, but as Senator Mikulski has said,
we have been leading a bicameral, bipartisan effort to double
the NSF budget and we would like to see the reauthorization
bill support this doubling.
We strongly believe that doubling NSF's funding will not
only support the strong role that NSF plays in basic science
research, but also in the critically important area of
education that Dr. Colwell was discussing earlier.
Now when people think of Education they think of the
Department of Education, but not enough people understand the
critical role that NSF plays in supporting math and science
education and developing the Nation's supply of scientists and
engineers. As Dr. Colwell has said, they are in short supply.
We face a real crisis in this field if we do not improve our
production of educated scientists and engineers.
Despite our efforts on the Appropriations Committee, the
Federal Government just has not provided adequate support to
the NSF and the physical sciences in general. I believe this
lack of support for physical science puts our Nation's
capability for scientific innovation at risk and, equally
important, as also has been mentioned, at risk of falling
behind other nations. Therefore I would strongly urge my
colleagues on this Committee to join Senator Mikulski and me.
One other point that I think is vitally important when we
talk about doubling the NSF budget, many medical doctors in
Missouri and throughout the country tell me that despite the
tremendous support we have provided for life sciences in NIH,
their research in the biomedical field will stagnate without
adequate Government support of the physical sciences that NSF
supports. Many medical technologies, such as magnetic resonance
imaging, ultrasound, digital mammography, genomic mapping,
could not have occurred and cannot improve to the next level of
proficiency without NSF-supported work in biology, in physics,
chemistry, math, engineering, computer sciences. Simply put, if
we want to see medical advances we cannot just double the
funding of NIH. We must double the funding of NSF, and NSF is
far behind.
Now I think to go back to the education part of it, the
high-tech industry is also concerned about NSF funding because
they are struggling to find qualified home-grown engineers and
scientists and they have to rely more on foreign nationals.
Many notable researchers in the high-tech industry have told me
that the significant shortage of trained American engineers and
scientists have limited the growth potential of the electronics
and software industries and allowed foreign competitors to
catch up to U.S. industry capabilities.
To address the tech talent in this country, NSF provides a
wide array of support to preK-12, undergraduate and graduate
level schools. One new important tool is the Math and Science
Partnership program jointly administered with DOE. Under this
program, NSF is encouraging partnerships with local schools,
higher education, and other organizations to improve student
outcomes. I hope we can address this in this bill.
The last area I want to mention is math and science
education at the undergraduate level. As noted, we are falling
behind in the number of students receiving degrees despite the
growth in our population and the increase in undergraduate
enrollment. In other countries we see the numbers going up and
we are having to depend too much on foreign students for the
scientists and engineers we need. We love having the resources
coming in from other countries, but we cannot depend upon
others solely to educate our scientists and engineers.
Demand for engineers and computer scientists is expected to
grow by more than 50 percent by 2008 and the high-tech industry
is justifiably concerned that it will become increasingly
difficult to fill this demand and remain competitive.
In response to this problem my Senator colleagues, Senators
Lieberman, Frist, Mikulski and Domenici, and I introduced S.
1549, the Tech Talent Act, to improve undergraduate education
in math, science, engineering and technology. In our VA-HUD
Independent Agencies Act for this year we jump-started it with
$5 million. Sometimes when the authorizers fall behind, we kind
of give them a little help in the appropriations process. NSF
has already received 177 applications requesting some $60
million. We have many co-sponsors on the Tech Talent Act. I
hope my colleagues will support this in the reauthorization
bill.
I look forward to working with you, Mr. Chairman, and the
Commerce Committee in developing a strong bipartisan NSF
reauthorization. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Senator Bond, for a very important
statement. If you had listened to Eliza Sunni, who came here
for the leadership in terms of the National Institutes of
Health, he spoke very importantly about the same point that you
made about the importance of tying in the basic research that
is done in the life sciences with the other kinds of research
in the more technical fields.
Senator Bond. I told him my favorable vote on
confirmation----
The Chairman. Well, you have done it again. But in all
seriousness, I think all of us are impressed by both your
statement and the statement of Senator Mikulski about giving
additional resources and focus to what is a real national
challenge.
Senator Glenn, welcome. We missed you very much and we
admire your long-time career of public service in the interest
of the country, as one who is at the cutting edge of research
and exploration in the atmosphere, a distinguished record here
as a Member of the Senate and now awakening the country to the
importance of ensuring that the young people and our Nation is
going to be well equipped to deal with the challenges of this
century and beyond. So we are very grateful for your presence
and very grateful for your continued service to the Nation.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN GLENN, CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF
DIRECTORS, THE JOHN GLENN INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE AND
PUBLIC POLICY
Senator Glenn. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and
Members. It is an honor to be asked to come back and to
testify. I have a more lengthy statement that I would like to
submit for the record.
The Chairman. Fine.
Senator Glenn. It has a lot more detail in it.
I wanted to acknowledge, too, Linda Rosen, who came with me
today, who did a lot of work on this. She formerly was National
Council of Teachers of Mathematics as their executive director,
was in the Department of Education with Secretary Riley as his
principal adviser on math and science matters, and more
recently has been senior vice president for education in the
National Alliance of Business, and was a teacher of math before
that in the public school system.
So I would like to submit that statement from and make some
verbal remarks here and then answer any questions.
We all talk about education, but I would like to emphasize
today a particular aspect of it, not just education in general,
but a specific that I feel is critical that we must deal with,
and it has already been addressed here to some extent. Math and
science education and particularly in our K-12 system, I think
there is a major question, a big question about whether it is
adequate to provide U.S. leadership in the future world, and
that is not overstated. If we think about all the things that
we have--the products, automobiles, air conditioners,
communications, houses, microphones, lights, everything else--
they all have some basis in math and science.
Whether you are talking about manufacturing or agriculture,
food, transport, or our standard of living, they are all based
in what we do in math and science. We have been ahead of the
rest of the world because our math and science excellence and
the research that came from that in just a short time frame of
international history of only a little over 200 years--it has
been good enough in the past, yes, but it is not necessarily
good enough for the future.
A couple of things have happened. One, it hasn't been too
many years since globalization was just a big word, a theory
for the future perhaps, but now it is real. The second area is
that other nations are emphasizing math and science more than
we are in their school systems.
Now globalization, if you think about it in the morning,
you turn on your TV set and you see the Wall Street quotes on
stocks, closely followed by the Hang Seng Index, the Nikkei
Average, the Frankfurt quotes, quotes of the eurodollar, right
on around the world, indicating that tens upon tens of billions
of dollars are floating around the world all the time looking
for places to go where there is good research, where there is
entrepreneurship and where there are trained workers, and that
is what the other nations are now out-doing in preparing their
people for that kind of a world in math and science in
particular.
It is not that our kids are getting dumber; they are not
going down in their IQ. It is just that other nations are
beginning to recognize what the goose was that laid the golden
egg for the United States and they are emphasizing their
science, particularly math and science, and they are beginning
to out-do the United States of America, of all things.
Now this is what concerned Secretary Riley in the last
administration. He had seen the Third International Math and
Science Study and the National Assessment of Education
Progress, NAEP. The TIM Study, as the first was called, was a
study done of K-12 education with 41 nations around the world.
What it basically found was that our kids, up to about the
fourth grade, do fine. We are in the top few nations in the
world in math and science up through about the fourth grade.
Then things start deteriorating and by the time our kids get
out of high school, we are near last in comparison with these
41 nations around the world.
Now when we looked into this, Secretary Riley asked me to
chair the National Commission on Math and Science Teaching for
the 21st Century, which I did. We had a very notable group we
put together for that--educators, legislators, some Members of
this Committee; the Chairman was a Member of the Commission. We
had leading educators from all over the country come in,
particularly in this area of math and science.
Now what we found out was that about one-fourth of our math
teachers in this country never had any training in teaching
math. They are teaching out of field. They never had any
training as either a major or a minor when they were in
college. Twenty percent of our science teachers were the same.
Thirty percent of both math and science teachers, on the
average, leave the profession within 3 years, and 50 percent
are gone within 5 years. Now that is a boiling turnover that we
cannot tolerate for the long term.
There are also some differences in the ways of teaching
that we saw when Jim Stigler from San Diego, who had done
international studies of teaching methods, showed us some of
the different things that are used in Japan to teach and how
their methods of teaching vary from ours, and also in Germany.
Where our kids are taught more in rote and memorization, the
Japanese model for their kids is that they teach more problem-
solving, thinking about it, are given a problem and then are
asked to solve it. Then they get back to trying to determine
within the class how they got to their final solutions on this.
It is a different approach to education entirely.
Now if we doubt that this is an emergency, the emergency is
already here and the Congress itself here has witnessed that
because back a number of years when I was still in the Senate
here, as a matter of fact, we passed legislation which
permitted an immigration waiver of 115,000 people per year over
a 3-year period because industry and business was coming in
telling us we just cannot get our own people into these high-
tech jobs; we do not have the people to fill the jobs.
So we passed that legislation and that did not even solve
it. So about 2 years ago the Congress passed again an
immigration waiver of 195,000 per year for 3 years of highly
technically trained people. As I say, this was done mainly at
the request of business and industry and the computer people,
who could not get people to fill those good jobs.
Now how do we correct this? In our system, if we can say
that it is a system at all, it is very difficult. All of our
competitive nations around the world, the major ones, have a
national education system through K-12. In this country we do
not have an education system as such. What we have are a little
over 14,700 independent school boards all getting elected
independently and doing their own thing. So we do not have a
system and the Federal impact on this, I think, is somewhere
around 7 percent of the funding and a lot of that goes to
school food programs and lunch programs and things like that.
So it is very difficult. We cannot do like Britain did a
few years ago and say we have to upgrade our math and science,
so they call about five meetings around the country, they
change their curriculum, it goes into effect next fall. We
cannot do that here because we are operating with 14,700 school
boards, each one doing their own thing, and I might add too
many of them getting elected by promising not to raise your
taxes as a basis for why they are elected.
So we do not have an education system that we can just plug
in and say we are going to change the system and make it more
effective.
So what can we do? What our study showed, we approached
this in three different areas. We wanted to improve the present
teacher force, the ones that are out there right now. Second,
we wanted to have greater numbers of teachers in preparation.
We wanted to recruit teachers. Then number three, make that
work environment one in which we could make teaching attractive
and make it as financially rewarding as the competition is, the
competition being business and industry that hires away too
many of our best teachers. So that is something we tried to
address with this report.
The report, which we have given to each Member of the
Committee--I hope the staff, as you suggested, Mr. Chairman,
will take this to your Senator and make sure that they have a
chance to see it. Michael Eisner at Disney also volunteered
their efforts to put this on tape, videotape, so we gave each
one of you a copy of that, also.
To make sure this got to the people that we felt could make
the biggest change in the shortest time period, we mailed this
to every school board member and superintendent in America, and
that was a big job and that was our objective. We think that we
actually got about maybe 85 percent. So this report has gone
out, so the school board members across the country should have
seen this. We hope they take it to heart and do something about
it.
Under each one of these three titles, the three goals that
we had, we have a number of things that could be done under
each one of these and they are listed in that report. We will
not have time here today to go through all of these things
separately, but under the improvements that can be done right
now, in place, are such things as a needs assessment first,
having summer institutes, inquiry groups, leadership training,
Internet portal access, a coordinating council for math and
science teaching, and a rewards program.
Now under the others, we had, number two----
The Chairman. John, we have about 5 minutes left on this
vote. Senator Mikulski will be back in a couple of minutes. She
voted early. So she will continue and I will be back in about 6
or 7 minutes for the questions.
Senator Glenn. Good.
The Chairman. We will recess just for 2 or 3 minutes.
[Recess.]
Senator Mikulski [presiding]. The hearing will reconvene.
And while Senator Kennedy is voting, I am going to go to some
of my own questions. I also ask unanimous consent that my own
statement go into the record because we know that the hearing
has been interrupted, but we have read the testimony of both
Senator Glenn and, of course, Dr. Verner.
[The prepared statement of Senator Mikulski follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Mikulski
Thank you Mr. Chairman.
Doubling NSF's Budget: Two years ago, Senator Bond and I started
the call to double NSF funding over five years. Unfortunately, budget
constraints prevented us from reaching that goal.
But now we have an opportunity to take a major step forward. By
authorizing a doubling of NSF funding, we will be sending a powerful
message to OMB. If we can double NIH, we can double NSF.
The only way we can double NSF is through cooperation between the
Administration and Congress. It is unfortunate that OMB provided NSF
with a just a 3 percent increase for this year. 3 percent increases are
just not good enough.
Over the past 10 years, we have had essentially a flat Federal R&D
budget. We cannot continue on this path.
Why double NSF? Because of the double value we get for our
investment.
Double Value: First, we get cutting edge research in science,
unlocking the mysteries of our universe.
Second, we get new technologies that will create new jobs and new
markets for our economy.
The future of our economy in science and technology rests on three
pillars: Information technology, Biotechnology and, Nanotechnology.
It is critical that we increase funding for these interdisciplinary
programs as well as traditional basic scientific research.
Over the past several years, funding for the life sciences has far
outstripped funding for the physical sciences. Doubling NSF will help
correct this imbalance and increase funding for the core physical
sciences.
Over the past 10 years, research in the life sciences has grown
from 41 to 47 percent of total Federal research funding, while at the
same time, the combined share of physical sciences and engineering in
Federal research dropped from 37 to 29 percent.
Education: The only was we can reach our national goals in these
disciplines, is if we have a growing corps of math and science
students. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that during this
decade, hitech occupations will grow by 47 percent, compared to 15
percent for the labor force as a whole.
Improving the quality of math and science education is critical.
Each year, the VA/HUD Subcommittee increases funding for math and
science education. But we also need to look at new approaches.
That is why I co-sponsored the Tech Talent legislation last year,
along with Senator Lieberman, and included $5 million in the VA/HUD
bill.
The Tech Talent bill seeks to improve the quality of undergraduate
science education through innovative undergraduate programs. We need to
increase graduate student stipends to keep attracting more graduate
students to research.
Last year, I increased graduate stipends from $18,000 per year to
$21,500 per year. But, the real crisis is found at the middle school
and high school level, we need to attract more teachers in math and
science.
U.S. high school students taking physics lag behind students in
Norway, Sweden, Russia, Denmark, Slovenia, Germany, Australia and seven
other countries.
According to the Glenn Commission, the nation will need 240,000
middle and high school mathematics and science teachers in the next
decade.
A survey of urban school districts, by the Council of the Great
City Schools indicated that up to 95 percent of our urban school
districts had an immediate demand for high school science and
mathematics teachers.
The fact is that this country's future competitiveness rests on our
ability to develop a U.S. work force that has the skills necessary to
meet the increased competition coming from abroad.
Solving the problem of producing more high-quality, homegrown
scientists and engineers--and a well educated workforce--depends upon
solving the math and science education problems we have at the
elementary and secondary levels of our school system.
Conclusion: We have a big challenge ahead of us as we enter the new
millennium. The proposal we have on the table is one that would double
the National Science Foundation. That is a goal I have been working
towards for the past several years and together with Senator Bond, this
Committee and the rest of my colleagues in the Senate, I hope we can
make it a reality.
I would like to go right to my questions related to Dr.
Colwell.
Ms. Colwell, as you have heard Senator Bond and I say, we
would like to double the funding of the National Science
Foundation. This is not merely rhetoric but, as you know, we
have been working on a bipartisan basis to double the funding
of the National Institutes of Health. That national effort has
served the Nation well and we believe the NIH. Yet, at the same
time, we are deeply concerned that the focus on physics,
chemistry, the basic building blocks of science have been
underfunded and often overlooked. This also is true of very
important research that is needed, as well as developing the
next generation of scientists.
So having said that, could you share with us, as we do the
march to double the funding for the foundation, what would NSF
do that it cannot do now and what do you think should be the
most important priorities for doubling? I will just let you,
rather than me have a long question, let me have a short
question and you have a long answer.
Ms. Colwell. Thank you, Senator. Whether the NSF budget is
doubled or tripled or even stays the same, our priorities are
going to match the Federal Government's three overarching
priorities; namely, defeating global terrorism abroad,
protecting us at home, and strengthening our economy. Now this
goes across all the scientific disciplines. Let me just show
you how the NSF is making unique contributions to each of these
priorities and that is where we would like to see strength.
That is in basic research, from blue sky to blueprint, it's
always going to be the most important to protect our armed
forces. If you trace any useful item in our arsenal back to its
origins, you will discover that the basic research in physics,
chemistry and materials----
Senator Mikulski. Doctor, remember I have 5 minutes.
Ms. Colwell. Yes, I do, Senator. Physics, chemistry and
material science are very important. They are a crucial step.
We also have been supporting a dozen research areas that impact
on defense, like intelligence-gathering and secure systems.
This is----
Senator Mikulski. You do intelligence-gathering at the
National Science Foundation?
Ms. Colwell. Not intelligence-gathering, but the capacity
through information technology, cybersecurity, to enable
intelligence-gathering, Senator, I think is really critical.
Also, I think that we must invest in education K-12,
education in our undergraduate schools, education at the
graduate level, for the scientists and engineers that we need
for the workforce. We have to, I think, address the major
directions of nanotechnology, the social and behavioral
sciences. We have an initiative request in this budget which is
critical, and that is understanding risk, risk assessment,
understanding the capacity for the computer-human interface,
the directions that we----
Senator Mikulski. Doctor, I appreciate that, but I was
looking for a few more practical things. For example, right now
the average grant at NSF is $125,000. Is there a backlog of
really solid-sounding research to be funded?
Second, what we are concerned about in the area of
education is that foreign students comprise 40 percent of all
Ph.Ds in science and engineering. This is not a xenophobic
comment on my part. Nor do I have disdain about that. But in
1987 it was 35 percent. Is it that we are not recruiting? Is it
that also our grants are spartan and skimpy? You really leaned
on me last year to raise the stipend.
Could we have some practical things, in addition to those
national priorities that you, the president, and OMB agree
upon?
Ms. Colwell. Senator, thank you for focussing me. You are
absolutely right. In fact, I do have some charts of grants that
we have not been able to fund that are rated very good or
excellent and not able to fund because of insufficient
availability of funding.
We also have worked extremely hard to raise graduate
student stipends because we know from the studies that we have
done that especially minority students, it sometimes takes 7
years to get to a bachelor's degree because they have to work;
their families are unable to support them. They end up with a
very hefty debt, so they are not able to go into graduate
school. So we need to provide a graduate stipend that is
appropriate.
And we have just completed a very interesting study of
grant size and duration in which it shows quite clearly that we
need to have grants of approximately between $200,000 to
$300,000 per year, not $113,000 per year and up to 5 years and
not 3 years, as is the present case, for one major reason. We
did a survey of about 6,000 people and got a 92 percent return
and almost to a person they said that if they had the funds
they would invest them in people--in graduate students, in
post-docs, and that is exactly what we need in science and
engineering for today and for the future.
Senator Mikulski. I thought you competed for a grant to do
research; you did not compete for a grant to make an
investment. Have I missed something?
Ms. Colwell. No, you have not missed--what I am telling you
is that in order to better carry out the research, if the
additional funds were available they would hire graduate
students and post-docs to help them achieve their objectives
and they would get more results faster and they would have the
ability to explore ideas that they cannot explore now.
Senator Mikulski. I appreciate that.
I am going to turn to my colleague Senator Jeffords, one of
the really leading spokesmen here in terms of public education,
who I know will go to Senator Glenn and Dr. Verner.
But how many--last two practical questions--about how many
grant requests do you get a year and how many of those can you
fund at the spartan level of $125,000?
Ms. Colwell. We are now receiving 32,000. We got up until
last year about 30,000. It is up to about 32,000 per year and
we are able to fund 9,000. We have about $2.5 billion of grants
that are rated very good or excellent that we cannot fund.
Senator Mikulski. Even though you would like to double the
size of the grant because it actually gives us better research,
we also need to help the farm team for graduate students, which
gives us more value for the dollar. The people playing single-A
ball--I'm an Orioles fan, so bear with me--then go on to really
major league research. Am I correct?
Ms. Colwell. Yes, you are, Senator.
Senator Mikulski. Well, thank you. There are so many other
questions, but I am going to turn to my dear and esteemed
colleague who has really helped keep the focus on public
education in the Senate the way it needed to be.
Senator Jeffords.
Senator Jeffords. Thank you very much for those very kind
words.
Senator Glenn, you were not finished with your testimony, I
believe.
Senator Mikulski. Oh, I am sorry.
Senator Glenn. Well, I was very close to it.
Senator Mikulski. I thought you all had kept on talking. We
would. We would talk to an empty room. John, you are
disappointing me. I thought you had even talked to an empty
room. I apologize.
Senator Glenn. I was within a couple of minutes of winding
down. I was just going to give some examples to wind up with on
my remarks about--this will just take a couple of minutes
here--examples of the need for this. You know, we have depended
pretty much on our productivity going up and yet if we have a
productivity increase of about 2.6 percent per year, we would
double our standard of living every 25 years and that is a good
objective. We do not do that without math and science.
This is sort of a potpourri here, jumping around a little
bit. The Department of Labor says we will have 20 million new
high-tech jobs by 2008. And just in health sciences and
computers we have 5.6 million new jobs by 2008. They say that
in 1950, 80 percent of the jobs in the country were classified
as unskilled, and now in the year 2000, 85 percent of the jobs
are classified as skilled. You do not address that without math
and science.
Training Magazine estimates that business and industry
spent $62.5 billion to train the people they needed in 1999. A
member of our committee at the National Commission that I
headed, one of our commission members was Craig Barrett, who is
the head of Intel and I think everyone probably knows that
Intel is the biggest computer chip manufacturer in the world. I
think they make about 80 percent of them. They spend $160
million a year training their people on things that he said
about two-thirds of which is in areas that they should have had
coming out of high school. $160 million a year, one company. No
wonder they all wanted us to give waivers to let foreigners
come in here, immigration waivers so that they could be put
into these high-tech jobs.
One of the Midwest think-tanks says the skills required for
60 percent of all new jobs in the 21st Century are possessed
now by only 20 percent of the current workforce.
And some of the figures here, Department of Education
figures, 1995 to 1996, nonresident aliens in engineering, math
and info sciences, 35 percent of the bachelor's degrees, 44
percent of the master's degrees. They are out-competing
Americans and then going back home, going to be competitive
with us there.
Examples of what is happening are in Ireland. We do not
think of Ireland as being a hub of great scientific activity,
yet right now 60 percent of all the business application
software sold in Europe comes out of Ireland because they have
a good background in science and math.
So anyway, those are just some summary remarks here, but
just one thing that Dr. Colwell just mentioned in passing here
was the military aspect of this thing. If we are really serious
about the war that is going to be going on for the next 15 or
20 years and we need whatever we need--we need nuclear
deterrence, submarines, B-2 bombers, missiles, vaccinations,
night vision, GPS, satellite communications, encryption, you
name it right on down the lot--all based in math and science.
If we get behind in those areas to any nation in the world or
any group that wishes us ill in the world, we are just playing
dangerous games with our future.
So I am very much in favor of doubling, tripling, or
whatever you can get for NSF. I think it is needed. I hear that
one of the previous witnesses said they would triple NSF. If I
had my way I would say five times NSF. I will go him two
better.
I just think it is that important that we get this back on
track again and the difficulty is we do not have an education
system where you plug this in and say here is what is going to
happen. To repeat what I said a while ago, over 14,700
independent school boards in this country doing their own
thing, some of them excited about math, some of them thinking
it is a waste of time. If it was good enough for me, it is good
enough for my grandkids; that is their attitude and it is just
too bad because if we could excite the school boards of this
country to do something about it, maybe we would get a lot
faster action, but we do not have that kind of a thing.
I know when I was in the Senate if I had made a speech and
said we should go to a national education system, I would have
been run down the east steps of the Capitol before I could have
gotten the words out, but here we have all these school boards
that take great pride in their local ability, their local pride
in local control, but they are not measuring up in local
responsibility to see this danger for the future and do
something about it. So thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Senator Glenn follows:]
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Senator Jeffords. Thank you and you are right-on. I will be
back to you.
Dr. Verner, please proceed.
OPENING STATEMENT OF DR. KEITH VERNER, CHIEF OF
DEVELOPMENTAL PEDIATRICS AND LEARNING, PENNSYLVANIA STATE
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF MEDICINE
Dr. Verner. Thank you very much. I guess before I start I
would just like to say to Senator Glenn that I notice the same
problem with school boards so I actually ran and got elected to
be on one.
Senator Glenn. Good for you.
Dr. Verner. I am pleased to be here to discuss with you
really the crucial challenge of improving basic science
education. I do not need to cite how poorly our students have
done on international tests in math and science because that
has already come up here today, and I do not think I have to
accentuate how important it is for our students to be able to
think scientifically in an increasingly technological economy
and society. So basically I am not here to point out the
problem, but to suggest ways in which I believe that the
scientific community can help address this problem.
As a scientist who is dedicated to the mission of improving
basic science education what I will do is just begin by
describing a couple of our programs at the Penn State College
of Medicine as a means of showing you an example of how the
scientific community can address this problem.
Now both educational experience and cognitive science
suggest that science is best taught with a hands-on approach
that blends the cognitive appeal of experimental activity with
comprehensive, standards-based science instruction. But the
ability to deliver meaningful hands-on science while making
sure that there are no gaps in the conceptual basis of the
curriculum requires that the curriculum directors have a very
deep and comprehensive understanding of science and this is not
an easy task.
I therefore suggest that this challenge is best approached
through collaborations, direct collaborations between
practicing scientists and basic educators. What better way to
interweave deep content expertise with practical classroom
experience?
This was essentially the vision that guided us to employ
teams of scientists and public school educators at the College
of Medicine to create what we ended up calling the LabLion
Program for elementary school science. Its features include a
dual emphasis: first, on promoting interest in science and
conveying knowledge, and also in developing concise, complete
and grade-appropriate inquiry-based lesson plans. This program
is currently employed in many schools across Pennsylvania and,
in fact, there are over 25,000 Pennsylvania elementary school
children that are in this program at this time. This is just an
example of the types of programs that can be derived from these
interactions between scientists and educators.
For science teachers, thinking in terms of scientific
concepts and principles that, in the end, give meaning and
context to scientific facts and formula is essential. And
scientists can help in this regard by organizing content-rich
educational experiences for teachers.
To this end, as another example, we have designed and
implemented the Governor's Institute for Life Science Educators
in Pennsylvania over the past several summers. The Life Science
Institute is an intensive in-residence program at the College
of Medicine for 100 teachers per summer, and summer is a
wonderful time at a medical school to bring in teachers like
this, because we have the student housing available to us.
Mornings are spent in activity-based group lessons that begin
on Monday morning right after breakfast with the dissection of
a human cadaver and gradually become more molecular as the week
progresses, with strong integration of biochemistry and
biophysics. Afternoon and evening sessions are devoted to grade
level-specific scientific content and lesson plans, as well as
different approaches to teaching strategies.
Now such professional development programs, I believe, are
a direct and very important way that the scientific community
can help improve basic science education. Based on analysis of
student NAPE scores and teacher professional development
programs, Wenglinsky concluded, and I quote: ``In science,
students whose teachers have received professional development
in laboratory skills outperform their peers by more than 40
percent of a grade level.'' That is very important.
Now Title II, Part B of No Child Left Behind gives guidance
and funding for preparing science teachers to meet this
challenge of improving student performance. It is also, I must
say, entirely consistent with what we have learned over the
years in our K-12 science and health outreach efforts. Perhaps
the most important, No Child Left Behind is very results-based.
For the evaluation of professional development programs, for
example, it prescribes that States measure the effectiveness of
its professional development programs through increases in
teacher subject mastery and student academic gains, and this is
very important.
I believe that this new law provides great promise for
improving science and further, I believe that the National
Science Foundation can and must play a major role in
implementing these desperately needed changes.
The National Science Foundation is an ideal champion for K-
12 science education because of its broad scientific expertise,
and we have just talked about NIH. With all of the quality
research it does, it very much leans toward the life sciences
and yet we also know the very important contribution that
physical sciences and mathematics make to fields like medicine
itself.
So the NSF is in an ideal position to take a leadership
role in this. Over the years NSF supported important research
and it has very much helped in maintaining America's leadership
in the state that it is and it has demonstrated a growing
dedication to improving basic science education.
I believe that the recent involvement of the NSF in
collaboration with the Department of Education specifically on
the Math and Science Partnership Program offers, in my opinion,
one of the greatest steps forward in this area in a decade or
more. The NSF program directly addresses some of the best parts
of the Title II of the No Child Left Behind Act and provides
funding to make meaningful impacts. The program inspires
interactions between university science departments--and I
think that is important--science departments and basic science
educators. It mandates approaches to education that are based
on research and verifiable analysis of student performance.
Importantly, it values teacher professional development and it
puts the scientific community in a much more proactive
position.
Therefore, as a scientist and as a strong supporter for
basic science education reform, I emphatically recommend
doubling, tripling the program for the NSF.
In my written report I have some specific recommendations
that I would like to submit. I would be happy to answer any
questions. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Verner follows:]
Prepared Statement of Keith Verner, Ph.D.
Mr. Chairman, and Members of the Committee: I am pleased to be here
to discuss with you the crucial challenge of improving basic science
education. I will not cite references pointing out poor U.S. student
performance in international tests in math and science or the
importance of being able to think ``scientifically'' in an increasingly
technological economy and society. It is clear from recent legislation,
from the involvement of the Department of Education and the National
Science Foundation, and from this very hearing today, that we as a
Nation are adequately aware of the urgent need to improve science
education. Therefore, I am here today not to point out the problem, but
to suggest ways in which the scientific community must help to solve
it. I will begin by describing two of our science education outreach
programs as examples.
role of the scientific community in k-12 science education
Both educational experience and cognitive science tell us that
science is best taught with a ``hands-on'' approach that blends the
cognitive appeal of experiential activity with comprehensive,
standards-based science instruction. But the ability to enable
meaningful hands-on science while making sure there are no gaps in the
curriculum requires that the curriculum developers themselves have a
deep and comprehensive understanding of science (Verner, K., 2002). I
suggest that this challenge is best approached through collaborations
between practicing scientists and basic educators--What better way to
interweave deep content expertise and real-life classroom practice?
This was the vision that guided us to employ teams of scientists and
public school educators at the College of Medicine at Penn State
University, over the past several years, to create the LabLion
elementary school science program. Its features include a dual emphasis
on promoting interest in science and conveying knowledge; concise,
complete, and grade appropriate inquiry-based lesson plans (Ruiz-Primo,
M.A., et al, 2002; Wenglinsky, H., 2000); readily available supplies;
very low maintenance costs following installation (Levitt, K., 2001);
and a strong professional development component (van Driel, J. H., et
al, 2001; Haney, J. J., et al, 1996; Levitt, K., 2000; Monk, D. H.,
1994) among others. This program is currently employed in many schools
across Pennsylvania, reaching more than 25,000 elementary school
students, and we continually work with the educational community to
improve it. Such blends of theory and classroom activity are needed for
every level and sub-discipline of science education.
For science teachers, thinking in terms of scientific concepts and
principles that give meaning and context to scientific facts and
formulae, is essential. Helping students to build scientific concepts
requires an understanding of the relationships among their components.
Teachers must see these relationships and understand the logic and
organization of the relationships in order to teach the concepts to
their students (National Academy of Sciences, 1999). Scientists can
help by organizing content-rich educational experiences for teachers.
To this end, we designed and implemented the Governor's Institute for
Life Science Educators over the past several summers for K-12 teachers.
The Life Science Institute is an intensive in-residence program at the
College of Medicine for 100 teachers per summer. Mornings are spent in
activity-based, scientific content-rich group lessons that begin on
Monday morning with the dissection of a human cadaver and gradually
become more molecular as the week progresses, with strong integration
of biochemistry and biophysics (Appendix A). Afternoon and evening
sessions are devoted to grade-level specific scientific content and
lesson plans, as well as effective teaching strategies.
Such professional development programs are a direct and very
important way for the scientific community to help improve basic
science education. Based on an analysis of student NAEP (National
Assessment of Educational Progress) scores and teacher professional
development programs, Wenglinsky concluded, ``In science, students
whose teachers have received professional development in laboratory
skills outperform their peers by more than 40% of a grade level.''
(Wenglinsky, H., 2000).
no child left behind
Title II, Part B, Section 2002 of the No Child Left Behind Act
gives guidance (and funding) for preparing science teachers to meet the
challenge of improving student performance in science and is entirely
consistent with what we have learned over the years in our K-12 science
and health education outreach efforts. Perhaps most important, No Child
Left Behind is results-based. For the evaluation of professional
development programs, for example, it prescribes (section 2113 (c) (7))
that states measure the effectiveness of professional development
programs through increases in teacher subject mastery and student
academic gains.
I believe that this new law provides great promise for improving
science education. Further, I believe that the National Science
Foundation can and should play a major role in implementing this
desperately needed change.
the national science foundation
The NSF is an ideal champion for K-12 science education because of
its broad base of scientific expertise in a variety of disciplines,
from molecular biology to oceanography and space exploration. Over the
years NSF has supported important research that has been crucial to
maintaining America's scientific leadership and demonstrated its
growing dedication to improving basic science education.
The recent involvement of the NSF, in collaboration with the
Department of Education, in the Math and Science Partnership (MSP)
program, offers the single most encouraging development in a decade.
The MSP program directly addresses the best ideas put forth in Title II
of the No Child Left Behind Act and provides funding to begin making a
meaningful impact. The MSP program inspires interactions between
university science departments and basic science educators. It mandates
approaches to science education that are based on research and
verifiable analysis of student performance. It values teacher
professional development and puts the scientific community in a more
direct and proactive position. As a scientist and a strong supporter of
basic science education reform, I most emphatically recommend
developing the MSP program further.
summary recommendations
Schools should offer hands-on, inquiry-based science curricula at
all levels. These curricula should cover a range of ``concepts''
providing context for factual knowledge that is essential for the
scientific literacy American citizens need.
Teachers should train students, from elementary school on, to
develop a conceptual framework of scientific principles. Each new
concept should be linked to previous concepts within the framework so
that its inclusion is logical and relevant to preexisting student
knowledge.
Teacher preparation and professional development are key. Without
adequate scientific experience and a scientific factual knowledge base,
teachers are left to rely on science textbooks and have difficulty
facilitating the building of conceptual frameworks by their students.
The scientific community can and should have a significant impact
on improving K-12 science education. This involvement is now mandated
by the No Child Left Behind Act. The scientific community should be
proactive, and its contributions may include: Developing K-12 science
curricula with basic science educators; Providing ``scientific''
experiences for teachers at university laboratories so that they can
develop a feel for scientific thinking; Developing summer institutes on
university and medical school campuses to immerse basic science
educators in the latest trends in scientific thinking; Collaborating
with experienced, practicing educators to translate primary scientific
research results from disciplines such as cognitive neuroscience and
functional neuroimaging into innovative methodologies of classroom
practice (Verner, K., 2001); Directing the scientific training of pre-
service teachers in schools and colleges of education to ensure that
their training has a direct grounding in science; Integrating directly
into the system of basic science education, in both instructional and
administrative capacities, and supporting alternative teacher and
administrative certification programs that facilitate such career
transitions; and establishing deep intellectual collaborations with
basic educators built upon mutual respect and guided by a shared
commitment to improving student performance in, and enjoyment of,
science.
The Chairman. That is fine. Thank you and I thank all of
you very much.
I know that we had some response to Senator Mikulski on how
we deal with the future with an expanded NSF budget and I know
Senator Glenn talked a little bit about why this is important
in terms of national security and national defense. I might try
to come back to that, about how the role and importance of
education and our defense and national security, which I think
is enormously important. I do not know if you have said
everything, John, that you wanted to say on that, but I will
look forward to reading it in the record.
Information technology, Dr. Colwell. One of the areas that
I think we have a great need is using IT in terms of getting a
handle on the costs in terms of health care. Five years ago, it
cost $23 for a piece of paper to be filed in terms of the Mass
General Hospital and Fidelity, and today Fidelity is 3 cents
and going down to less than a third of a cent, and Mass General
has gone up to $25.
Health and defense are the two areas where IT has not
really been used and used effectively. I am wondering if you
could give us any sort of ideas about how we could follow up on
that, how it could be used more effectively in terms of the
control on health care.
First of all, I think you do a great deal more in terms of
quality of care because you would be able to monitor various
kinds of outcomes. You would do better in terms of dealing with
the problems of fraud in the health care area. In an industry
that is $1,400 billion and spends close to $400 billion on
administrative, I cannot believe you could not save a couple of
hundred billion dollars.
Ms. Colwell. There are a number of areas. One I would
emphasize is cybersecurity, the ability to protect patient
records and to be able to keep secure the information that is
put into the database. That is one aspect.
Another is manipulating very large databases. We are doing
a lot of research and investing in the capacity to handle
huge----
The Chairman. Just before, on cyber issues and
cybersecurity, of course, defense is spending a good deal of
funds on that.
Ms. Colwell. Yes.
The Chairman. And I am just trying to think as we look at
it say, for example, in health, you have the cybersecurity from
defense. How do we benefit from that research? How do we
benefit from your research? How do we sort of begin to bring
some of this into being attractive to the private sector to be
able to develop systems which would be able to do this?
Ms. Colwell. Actually, the National Science Foundation and
DARPA, the research projects agency, and the intelligence
agencies have been collaborating especially since September 11,
but we had already introduced a major program September 11 on
cybersecurity because it is very important for industry, as
well as the health care industry, so to speak.
It is a theme that goes through the entire information
technology world. I am told that we can expect next year a
hacker break or virus every 10 minutes in our systems. That
means that we have got to find ways now to be able to protect
our databases, our information transfer systems, and we have to
do it in a way that provides us with the security that we need
domestically, as well as for defense.
You asked about cost-cutting. Let me just give an example
of DNA sequencing. It used to cost about a dollar a base pair
and it is down to pennies and that is because we are able to do
the kind of analysis of the huge volumes of data in a very much
shorter period of time. What took us a month to calculate we
can now do in hours or a day. That alone is a major cost-
effective approach to take and this depends on our being able
to develop software and we are committed to investment in IT
software for the next 2 years of the 5-year initiative and
probably beyond because we have to sort of keep ahead
constantly.
That is one of the frustrating things about science. We
scientists always tell you that here is the answer, but we
still have to do more research, but that is the dynamics of
being human beings and thinking beings.
The Chairman. Could you talk a little bit about the
nanotechnology? I asked two or three people about it who did
not know and then I asked my son and he knew. At least he
started off with a description that he'd been learning about. I
would be very interested in what you are doing and how you see
the technology.
Ms. Colwell. Let me explain it as a microbiologist, if you
will. A bacterium is about 1/25, 400th of an inch and a typical
bacterium has a little whip-like appendage that propels it
through an aqueous medium and that is driven by a tiny motor
within the cell, which is probably a hundredth the size of the
cell. So you are beginning to get the dimension of where we are
working. We now have the capacity to make electromechanical
motors about the size of a red blood cell, which means that we
now can actually implant a motor on the wall of an artery or a
vessel that will allow us to monitor blood pressure, perhaps
even to monitor iron concentration if you tend to be anemic, on
a continuous basis.
And we are able to build materials from the atom on up so
we can custom develop materials now in a way we never could
before--stronger metals, stronger materials.
So we have an entirely exciting future ahead at the nano
scale. As Richard Fineman, a very famous scientist, physicist
once said, ``At the very, very small level you can do very
great things.'' I am paraphrasing him.
So I think that it portends even greater wealth accretion,
accumulation and development and job creation than information
technology, and we already know what that has done for us in
terms of being able to do the kinds of things we never could do
before. With making things smaller and more effective and
working from the atomic level up, we are able to, I think,
create in a fantastic way in the future.
So that is what we are working on and that is what we are
investing in and we have in the budget about $280 million, I
believe, of requests to keep us in the forefront, but I remind
you in a visit to Japan a month ago the Japanese are investing
$900 million for that country alone in nanotechnology because
they do understand that that is the future.
The Chairman. Getting a well-qualified teacher in every
classroom, having that teacher competent in terms of math and
science, giving teacher quality a priority in funding--you have
outlined these recommendations. What is really necessary? I
think you would find that the American people, of all the
issues on education, the one that is at the top--there are a
number that are very, very close to the top, but at the top is
having a well-qualified teacher in the classroom.
Now you list here the kinds of steps which are necessary to
get there, but what is your sense, knowing the institution that
you served nobly in and understanding what is happening out in
the grassroots and having heard and having a series of
hearings, what is the national will?
Senator Glenn. Part of it is resources, but I think we
addressed our report--we made sure the report got in the hands
of every school board member in America--we think we got about
85 percent of them--because we thought that is where the
changes could be made more rapidly than anywhere else. And we
have had some good responses back from some school board
members, too, that are taking the issue to heart.
The first thing we stressed, though, was improving the
present status of math and science teaching in the classrooms
right now. How do we take an existing bad situation where 25
percent of the people teaching math never took that as a major
or a minor, never were trained to teach math? I can see why up
to the fourth grade I could probably teach math up to the
fourth grade, but beyond that, when you get into algebra,
advanced algebra, and so on, then you need special training to
do that kind of teaching, and that is the reason why things
fall off. Twenty percent of our science teachers, the same way.
In the more lengthy report here this translates into
greater numbers. It is up in the 60 percentile of our students
that are not getting adequate training in math and science in
the schools, particularly in the urban schools and some of the
ones that have the least facilities, the least ability to get
good teachers into those particular areas.
To get good teachers right now and train the ones in place
right now, we think you have to do a needs assessment. We had
summer institutes, inquiry groups, leadership training,
Internet portal access, coordinating councils, reward programs.
They are all listed in the back of our report there as to what
we think need to be done to upgrade people where they are right
now.
Number two, how do we get more people in? How do we recruit
good people and improve their preparation? And we make some
suggestions in that area of exemplary models that can be
followed, some things to do on recruitment, math and science
teaching academics, not brick and mortar, but reorganizing some
of our teacher training areas, and improving the work
environment, not the least of which is pay. We just refuse
across the country to pay teachers what teachers are worth, so
it is no wonder that the good math and science people are hired
off by industry at probably double the salary that they are
able to make as teachers. Business district partnerships are
another area that we talk about, also.
Also, in high school quite a different area, Mr. Chairman,
has been mentioned here today, though I think we should be
challenging our kids to a more rigorous course in school. I
think that is a very important thing. You go to Japan or
Germany or some of these other places around the world. You
visit a classroom and the kids are generally about 2 years
ahead of our kids in math and science in what they are
studying. What our seniors in high school would be studying,
they are studying as freshmen or sophomores in high school
because they have a far more rigorous system that leads up to
it.
All that means that at the farther level down in the school
system we need teachers better trained at a lower level if we
are going to alter that, so that our kids come out of high
school with the same level of education and do not need
remedial education before they have to go on to even consider
entering college.
So it is a very tough one and particularly when we have our
main support for education still the local school board, the
local school district and what little equalizing funds that the
States may be able to provide to certain districts. But it is a
tough one and you have put your finger on the real part of the
problem.
The Chairman. My time has expired, but I was wondering if
we could ask Linda Rosen if she would visit with our staffs
some morning or afternoon and invite all of our Republican and
Democratic staffs and on this and have a working session, as
well. If she would be good enough to do that at some time that
would be convenient, I think it would be very valuable.
Ms. Rosen. I would be happy to.
The Chairman. And what recommendations they have for us.
Senator Jeffords.
Senator Jeffords. Thank you. I am so pleased to be here
with you today, because I think this is probably the most
important hearing we could have for the future of this Nation.
I am convinced that actually some of the problems are very
simple. Like if you do not pay your teachers enough to stay in
the job, you do not get the kids to learn too much.
I talked to Rick Mills, head of the New York school system,
and he says, ``Jim, you are absolutely right. Eighty-eight
percent of my math teachers that are still there are over 55
because they are locked into their pension program and I do not
know what I am going to do when they all get to be the age to
retire.''
When I look over at what the rest of the world does and see
how we handle our school systems relative to pay for teachers,
I am shameful, shameful.
Also, I would just point out that the H1B, we are now up to
1 million certificates of H1Bs for kids to come in from foreign
countries, young people coming from foreign countries to take
the jobs that our young people should have. That is shameful
that we are in that kind of a situation.
But to me, you also analyze how--I need some studies done
here and I hope you take note. How do we compare, for instance,
with European and Asian nations on just how we pay our
teachers? If you take a look at the amount of money that goes
from the Federal Government around the world as compared to
ours, about 30, 40, 50 percent of the money at the local school
district comes from the Government. In our country, it is 7
percent and you cannot compete with having to depend upon the
local resources and the local property tax to pay the teachers.
So unless we do something about getting the money to the
areas that it is needed to hire the teachers, we are not going
to attract the teachers or anything else. I hope maybe you can
do a study for me and really outline as to what every other
country does with respect to paying their teachers. Japan is
the best example. They make sure that their teaching level of
pay is within the top 10 percent of wage-earners in Japan, it
is my understanding. These come from some of the work that the
AFT did some years back. So I hope we can get some real
credible information so that we can get to the core of this.
Incidentally, the United States Government pays just 1
percent of our total Federal budget toward education,
elementary and secondary anyway, and I think post-secondary, as
well. So it is a small amount and it is shameful that we do not
put more into it.
The only time we really did take notice was back after
World War II when we had a similar situation. Right now we have
no adequate number of math teachers. Back in World War II we
had millions of GIs that came back that had nothing more than a
high school education and many of them did not even have that.
So what did we do? We passed the GI bill and that moved us from
1 percent of the Federal budget up to 7 percent of the Federal
budget and that brought about an incredible educational
opportunity for all of our GIs. They motivated themselves and
lobbied and got it done.
So what I want to end up with is hopefully I can get the
NSF to verify what I am saying because there is not anything
else that really puts it together in a form that we can go back
to Congress and say look, here is what everybody else in the
world does and here is what we do and guess what? These are the
results of us not doing that.
So I would like maybe a comment or something, but I get so
energized on this that I sometimes lose track of the time.
John, do you have any comments you might make?
Senator Glenn. Yes, I do. Out of our report on page 36, if
you happen to have it right in front of you there, down in the
lower left-hand corner, ``The National Center for Education
Statistics reports that on average, teachers earn 29 percent
less than other workers with a baccalaureate degree.'' That is
just general, across the board baccalaureate, whatever they are
going into. They earn 29 percent less--$35,048 per year
compared to $49,362 per year. That was in 1997, a differential
that has nearly quadrupled during the economic expansion of the
1990s. It is getting worse instead of better. You would think
that we would have learned enough that we are going to have to
pay teachers to keep them in the job. And the demands of the
economy and workplace are widening this gap. Given that the
national average starting salary for teachers is $25,735, the
teaching profession is nowhere near being a financially
competitive option for most young people who leave college with
backgrounds in math and science. And we have to change it; you
are absolutely right.
Senator Jeffords. Dr. Colwell, can you do some studies for
me?
Ms. Colwell. Yes, we can certainly provide the comparative
data. I would add that this is an interesting phenomenon of the
decline in performance of students that is beginning to appear
in other countries, as well, including Japan. At the moment the
Japanese students are performing better, but when I was talking
to my colleagues in Japan a few weeks ago the science minister
said yes, but once they get to university, they are not going
into math and science majors.
So it is a curious phenomenon. The performance in England
of students in the elementary, middle and high schools is
declining and the interest in science and mathematics is
declining. And there is the immigration of students who are the
scientists and engineers coming from countries like Turkey,
Pakistan and India.
So it is something that I think we have got to address in
an international arena, as well. It is certainly very, very
serious for us because we find that just as your own data
quoted, Senator, that the majority of the students who are, let
us say, doing a Ph.D. in electrical engineering will be--not
even a majority, but almost all of them will be from other
countries. We could depend on them to stay, but that is no
longer something we can be sure of because they are beginning
to return because of the opportunities back home.
So it is something that we can look into for you, sir, but
I do think that this is a kind of global phenomenon that we may
want to have some sort of a summit study on.
Senator Jeffords. Thank you. I just get so upset when I see
what we could be doing and what we should be doing, but what we
are not doing and we seem to think it is simple to get the
local school boards to get on the stick or to spend more money,
but I do not know how it is in--I know our State, the property
taxes are so high now, trying to take care of the educational
needs, if you want to get unelected, just try and raise the
property taxes. And the only answer is the Federal Government
has to do it and I am going to try to make sure they do, but we
will see how that goes, but I would like to increase the amount
that we pay each year, from 1 percent per year, increase the
amount of money we put into the local schools and after about
10 years we would be up to somewhere around where the Europeans
are.
I thank you very much.
Senator Glenn.
Senator Glenn. Just on the cost of this thing, in our study
with this, in the back of this thing we put what we thought was
necessary and broken down between the Federal, the State and
local and what business might contribute and public-private
back here. We came out with an estimate of a little over $5
billion a year that is needed right now to do the teacher
training and get it going now and do teacher training and
recruitment training, and so on. It is in the back, the blue
page, page 42 if you want to check out what our figures are.
Senator Jeffords. Thank you.
The Chairman. Senator Clinton.
Senator Clinton. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am
delighted that Senator Glenn is here with us testifying about
these really important matters. And thank you, Dr. Colwell and
Dr. Verner. I am just sitting here in great admiration
listening to Chairman Kennedy and Senator Jeffords and Senator
Glenn talk about this really important issue. I wish that more
people had heeded their warnings in the past years because the
three of them have certainly sounded the alarm and it is not
getting any better. In fact, it is much worse in our poorer
districts where we have concentrations of children of poverty
whose first language is not English, who for all we know have
tremendous math and science capability, but it is not being
given an opportunity to flourish. I mean, they are basically
off the track before they get started.
So it is a double disgrace, Senator Jeffords, overall it
is, because of our failure to make these investments, and then
in particular, because of the people that it falls most heavily
on.
So I certainly hope that we will heed the recommendations
of Senator Glenn's fine report and I hope that a lot of those
school board members watch the video and read the report and I
hope our colleagues will, as well, and perhaps we can, with
your guidance, come up with some suggestions about how to turn
this around.
I support very strongly the increased funding for NSF. I
think it is clear to all of us that we have to make these
investments. Then, though, we have to act on what we learn. All
too often, Washington--or at least this body--seems to be
existing in an evidence-free zone and we have to figure out how
to take the results of the work that NSF, the scientists whom
you fund, the kinds of reports that Senator Glenn has
championed, and actually use it as the basis for policy.
So I think the first step is to make sure we provide the
funding. The second step is actually to heed what you recommend
to us and not continue to just proceed merrily along while the
situation worsens.
I had a couple of very specific questions, because
certainly I am very proud of the fact that New York is a
recipient of quite a bit of National Science Foundation funding
and there were a couple of projects that I think hold great
promise for our Nation, and indeed, the world that I wanted to
inquire about, Dr. Colwell.
About 5 years ago, scientists at Brookhaven National Lab,
in collaboration with Stony Brook University, NYU, Syracuse and
about a dozen others, submitted a proposal for exploring rare
particle physics techniques called the rare violating processes
or the RSV project. I have been told--I am certainly not an
expert in this, but people whom I respect and trust have told
me that if funded and the work is undertaken, RVP could
potentially change our understanding of nuclear physics and
nature. I know that the project passed the rigor of NSF peer
review; it was placed on the to-do list. The scientists
involved were assured that if their project did not make it
into the fiscal year 2002 budget it would almost certainly be
in the fiscal year 2003 presidential request. However, it was
not included in either.
As a result, it is kind of languishing in--I guess you
could say ``the black hole of approved MRE proposals.'' There
is more than $15 million in foreign contributions waiting to be
expended, which is now on the verge of literally disappearing
since the collaborators' international partners are losing
faith in the selection process. And if I have one question and
slight criticism of the process, because I think overall the
NSF has done by far the best job of any federally-funded
agency, it is that when scientists work as hard as these have
to put into motion this kind of project, have literally global
interest, and then it does not come through, it sets it back
and it sets back the collaborative enterprise.
So first, could you give me an update on the status of the
RVP proposal and when you anticipate it would be funded? And
second, is there a lesson that we should learn from this
particular proposal, which is not unique, but is the one that I
know the most about, that even after MRE projects have been
approved in the competitive peer review process, we do not have
any prioritized list and it is hard to know whether somebody
should continue to wait, whether they should change direction
even if it is a very worthy undertaking.
So how would you help me understand where we are with that
specific project and then more generally, what we can do to
avoid these kinds of hang-ups in the future?
Ms. Colwell. Well, the status of the RSVP is that it is in
a small set of the National Science Board-approved projects
that are waiting for inclusion in an NSF budget request and it
is strictly a matter of at this point funds that are available.
We have a very careful prioritizing process whereby these
projects go through very intense screening and review within
the foundation. They are then presented to the Science Board
for additional evaluation and approval, but then, of course,
must negotiate which projects get funded and we have a priority
that those that are on-going will be funded because it would
not be cost-effective to stop and start. Then those that have
been approved and have gone through Science Board approval then
will be in line to be submitted for budget request.
A project becomes a candidate, is determined by a very
systematic planning and review process, which involves
scientific merit, feasibility and readiness. In the case of
RSVP, it will depend on funds being available and we would hope
that in the coming budget years we would be able to fund the
project.
I have to point out that quite rightly, and through no
one's fault, there were no new starts in the fiscal year 2001-
2002 budget process, which created even more of a bottleneck,
so now we do have several projects which we need to get through
the budget process.
Senator Clinton. And I guess the President's budget has a
decrease. Is that right?
Ms. Colwell. The decrease is----
Senator Clinton. In MRE funds.
Ms. Colwell. Yes.
Senator Clinton. That reduces it by about 9 percent, right?
Ms. Colwell. Part of that is due to one of the projects
nearing completion, so it is not necessarily a decrease in the
funding.
Senator Clinton. Well, do you think we should increase MRE
funding specifically in this reauthorization?
Ms. Colwell. I think that the answer to the question is
that scientists need tools and what we need to understand is
that we fund people who have very good ideas. We fund their
ideas, but they have to have tools to work with and tools mean
telescopes, investment in platforms for research, like the
earthquake engineering platform, the nanotech manufacturing
initiative, and so forth. So scientists do need tools.
Senator Clinton. Related to that is that, and this is, I
think, a very hard decision, but one of the very few criticisms
that I have heard is that the current NSF budget is rather
heavily tilted toward the life sciences at the present time and
that there are other sources for life science research, as
compared to research in physics, chemistry, et cetera, which
often lays the groundwork for future life science breakthroughs
or at least in conjunction with life science research create
the synergy that is needed for the kind of advances. Do you
think we should address that in the reauthorization?
Ms. Colwell. Let me answer that very directly. Actually, we
do not have an imbalance within the NSF budget toward the
biosciences and life sciences. In fact, the funding that we
provide is funding for projects that would not be funded by
NIH--fundamental ecology, fundamental developmental biology,
study of organisms other than the human or closely related
organisms.
We fund within the life sciences some very, very important
research. For example, the capacity for bioinfomatics really
comes from the NSF funding of mathematics and biology. The
genomics that we do, plant genomics, very critical. Senator
Bond has been very, very supportive of that area. NIH would not
be funding the Erabidopsis genome, for example. This is
critical and very important funding.
Indeed, the balance is important and we tried very hard to
address that. And I think it is critical to point out that we
also address very carefully the core disciplinary programs
because it is very important to address the opportunities in
interdisciplinary science, like nanotechnology, which involves
biology, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, and you cannot
have excellent nanotechnology if you do not have excellent
engineering, chemistry, mathematics and physics. So clearly we
have to continue investing in those core areas.
And another aspect of it is that we have to tie that more
and more to the social and behavioral sciences and we do have
in our budget request $10 million to get established an
initiative in the social behavioral sciences and the economic
sciences. Those are very critical because we need to look at
the computer-human interface. We must not make the mistake of
making huge advances without bringing along an understanding of
how humans interact with these new tools, with these new ideas.
So yes, a balanced portfolio is really important.
Senator Clinton. Well, certainly we hope that we can
increase your funding so that a lot of these hard choices do
not have to be made.
Ms. Colwell. Thank you.
Senator Clinton. I think we are at a point now where we
have a tremendous opportunity to make advances along a range of
scientific enterprises and endeavors that I hope that we will
make the investments in and we need the pipeline that Senator
Glenn has talked about so that we have scientists we can fund
in the future.
I just want to end with referring to the point that Senator
Jeffords made with the visa issue because I think that we have
to figure out a way to incentivize more of our own students and
citizens because I think that we are going to have some
continuing issues around the visas and we have to figure out a
way to--it is something I have talked to Senator Jeffords
about; he has a real passion about it and any ideas any of you
have.
I mean, it is not that we want to eliminate that process,
but the process needs to recognize that right now all we have
done is used it in many ways to fill positions that we should
be taking a long-term approach toward filling ourselves. It is
a short-cut way to try to provide some of the additional math-
science personnel that we need, but it is not a long-term
solution.
Ms. Colwell. May I offer a comment? I think both of you are
extremely strong on a very important point, and that is we are
now looking at the sources of the talent that we need in the
future and community colleges do represent one very important
one. Let me share my recent visit to Mercy College, which is in
Tarrytown, New York.
Senator Clinton. I know, right.
Ms. Colwell. I gave a commencement address there recently.
That is a very interesting institution because it has 10,000
students and 80 percent of those students are attending college
for the very first time in their lives. The average age is 29.
Forty percent are Hispanic, 40 percent are African-American and
20 percent are Asian and Caucasian. These students, the
valedictorian was a refugee from, I believe, Afghanistan who
arrived at Mercy College speaking no English at all and
graduated as the valedictorian and gave the speech in English
and has performed extremely well.
I think the talent in the community colleges is sort of
like Willy Sutton. Why did you rob banks? Because that is where
the money is. Well, we are finding that that is where students
are that we really need to bring into the workforce. So that is
an area where we are making greater investment.
Senator Clinton. I look forward to hearing about that
because I agree with that completely.
I have some additional questions that I will submit for the
record.
[The prepared statement of Senator Clinton follows:]
Prepared Statement of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton
I would like to thank Chairman Kennedy and Ranking Member Gregg for
holding this important hearing today on the reauthorization of the
National Science Foundation.
The National Science Foundation has a long-standing reputation as
one of the federal government's most efficient and smoothly-operating
independent agencies. In honor of those qualities, our Chair has
decided to hold just one single hearing on the entire authorization.
That is because while NSF faces crucial questions of the day related to
our nation's progress--which we could discuss for days--we believe the
agency does an excellent job and that this authorization will move
swiftly. I do a have a few questions that I will raise later in the
hearing.
I am delighted that our committee could hear from such an esteemed
panel of witnesses. It is a pleasure to see my friend, Senator John
Glenn back in the Senate, where he left an outstanding legacy of
promoting the education of the sciences from kindergarten to the
postdoctoral years. And he continues to be such a strong voice through
the John Glenn Institute for Public Service and Policy.
The National Science Foundation is a national treasure. Since its
establishment more than 50 years ago, it has fueled scientific
discovery and spurred technological progress that has transformed our
world into a place that is so vastly different from the nation we were
at the close of World War II.
Whether its life-saving technology such as magentic resonance
imaging, or the dawning of the Information Age, with the creation of
the internet, the National Science Foundation is the engine of
progress.
I am proud that New York has been on the forefront of that
innovation. My state brims over with an extraordinary level of
intellectual capital and promise. We have been blessed with hundreds
upon hundreds of opportunities, thanks to the NSF. In fact, New York
holds the distinct honor of having the second highest number of NSF-
funded projects, second to California.
From Ithaca to Buffalo, and from New York City and Long Island, the
NSF enables cutting edge research and state-of-the-art experimentation
to take place in every corner of my state. Whether it's the Science and
Technology Center for High Pressure Research at Stony Brook University
exploring the properties of earth materials or the Sciencenter at
Cornell where local elementary school children learn about things like
nanotechnology and experience the excitement of science, the NSF
delivers a bounty of gifts to all New Yorkers.
New York holds a unique and enviable position in the emerging field
of nanotechnology. Again, with the help of NSF, New York has become
what I like to call ``the Nanotech State of the 21st Century.''
New York is home to three of the nation's six nanocenters--located
Columbia, Cornell, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. These were
created as a result of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI)
which was established during my husband's administration.
Just this week, New York celebrated another exciting milestone in
its emergence as the ``capital of Nanotechnology,'' when the Department
of Energy announced its plans to create a seventh center at Brookhaven
National Laboratory on Long Island. We are proud that the Center for
Functional Nanomaterials at Brookhaven will be added to our amazing
arsenal of scientific innovation.
For all these reasons, New Yorkers have a lot at stake in the
reauthorization of NSF. We believe, as the House Science Committee
supports, that it is high time for us to double NSF budget over five
years. The President has proposed a 5 percent increase or $240 million
above the fiscal year 2002 level. But factor in inflation, and that
increase amounts to a mere 1.4 percent.
Second, while funding for NSF overall has increased from fiscal
year 2001 to the fiscal year 2003 budget request, the physical sciences
on the whole have not had their fair share of resources, particularly
for individual investigator research grants, which have traditionally
been at the core of the NSF mission. For example, support for physics
research grants has declined by 1.5 percent from FYO1 to the fiscal
year 2003 request; Chemistry research research grants support has grown
by only 4.2 percent. However, the biological sciences have recently
enjoyed a much more privileged provision with substantially higher
increases. What's important to remember is that advances in the
physical sciences are often the building blocks for advances in the
biological and medical sciences.
Finally, I would like to applaud the NSF for it's commitment to
funding math and science education in the K-12 level in addition to the
post-graduate and doctoral levels.
As President Eisenhower used to say during the Sputnik days, an
educated citizenry in the sciences is absolutely vital to our nation's
security. Now as our nation tackles the formidable challenge of how to
protect our Homeland Security, our investment in progress matters more
than ever before and our desire to support the sciences and technology
has become an imperative.
Thank you.
Senator Jeffords. I want to end with going to another area
of great concern for me and that is early education--that is
the preschool, especially the zero to five--as to where this
Nation is in that regard. Again we are lacking miserably
compared to the rest of the world.
Just to give you some information, I know in our own
office, for instance, one of my staff members has two children
under 5 years, and so he stayed out all night, sleeping
overnight, in order to get a slot to pay $1,000 per child to
get an education in the early years. To me, every other nation,
industrialized nation, anyway, except ours, provides that under
the normal school system and I would hope maybe I can get some
sort of study as to where we compare and what we are doing in
this country because that is just terrible. As I remember, the
studies in the late 1980s and early 1990s showed that if you do
not get the education in the 3- to 4-year-old area, that you
are bad off the rest of your life. I mean you are not going to
maximize the rest of your life. Yet we provide very, very
little for that.
I would appreciate it if you have any information on that.
Ms. Verner. I think you are absolutely right. As a matter
of fact, there are a number of studies out now that show that
there is a tremendously positive correlation between preschool
programs and outcomes later in that child's life.
Also, I think you could turn to neuroscience and cognitive
studies now that clearly show that there is a massive and
important amount of brain development that is occurring in
children of exactly that age and probably in the 3- or 4-year-
old group there may be some real potential for developing sort
of a continuum with the K-12 system, rather than individual
activities in different types of preschools, but actually
integrated into a system that the teachers can refer back to
some of that early education.
One of the things that comes out of cognitive science is
that there is nothing more effective in education, in being
able to get new information into the child's mind than
referring to previous information and we should use those years
of 3- and 4-years old to start putting information into their
minds as a part of early education.
Where we are right now, we have submitted a very small
local grant with the Harrisburg school district for this
LabLion program I talked about earlier, but part of that grant
would actually be to try to develop a preschool extension of
the elementary school science program and what does that look
like? We are not necessarily talking about 3-year-olds with
test tubes and graduated cylinders, but they can actually play
games where something like density and direction is important
for winning the game and maybe even use some of the tools that
they will later use in their elementary science education and
beyond.
I just think that from my discussion with educators and
from neuroscientists that we are certainly wasting a tremendous
educational opportunity by not addressing the preschool years
in a very serious way.
Senator Jeffords. Thank you. That is what I wanted to hear.
Now I feel a little more secure about calling an end to the
hearing. I would like to stay the rest of the day, but I know
you all have places to go and I feel like I am kind of
monopolizing here.
I tell you, we have a long way to go and I appreciate your
information, which will help us get on the way. Thank you very
much.
[Whereupon, at 3:28 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
APPENDIX
Prepared Statement of Senator Joe Lieberman
I am grateful for this opportunity to speak on behalf of the Tech
Talent program and the bipartisan legislation that I have introduced to
permanently authorize this innovative initiative and to urge the
Committee to include this provision in the upcoming reauthorization of
the National Science Foundation.
As the Committee well knows, America's technological prowess is
unequaled in the world today--which is why, despite our economic
slowdown and the financial burdens of prosecuting the war against
terror and ensuring our collective defense, we still have the
strongest, most vibrant economy on the planet.
However, our long-term competitive standing and economic security
could well be at risk if we do not address a troubling trendline in our
workforce--the mismatch between the demand and supply of workers with
science and engineering training.
Studies show that the number of jobs requiring significant
technical skills is projected to grow by more than 50 percent in the
United States over the next 10 years. But outside of the life sciences,
the number of degrees awarded in science and engineering has been flat
or declining. This has helped fuel a well-chronicled shortage of
qualified New Economy workers.
We have tried to temporarily plug this human capital hole with a
stopgap of foreign workers. Unfortunately, there is a broad consensus
among high-tech leaders and policymakers that it could be a serious
mistake to prolong this dependence and essentially render our GDP
contingent on the supply of H-IB visa holders.
That may sound like a bit of an overstatement to some. But the
reality is that technological innovation is now widely understood to be
the major driver of economic growth, not to mention a critical factor
in our military superiority. It is widely understood, moreover, that we
cannot expand our economy in the future if we don't take steps now to
expand our domestic pool of human intellectual capital, the next
generation of people who will incubate and implement the next
generation of ideas.
Now, most answers to serious economic challenges flow from the
private sector, which is where growth ultimately occurs. But there are
things that the Federal Government can do to help, particularly when it
comes to educating and training our workforce. We can provide
leadership focus, and not least of all, resources--and that is the
purpose of the Tech Talent program.
Specifically, the Tech Talent program aims to fix a critical link
in this ``tech talent'' gap--undergraduate education in science, math,
engineering, and technology. As established in our bill, it would
provide competitive grants to institutions of higher learning--from
universities to community colleges--to encourage them to find creative
methods for increasing the number of graduates in these disciplines.
This is not another scholarship program, but a targeted, results-
driven initiative that goes straight to the gatekeepers. We're not
asking them to change their admissions policies, but, in effect, to
design new ``e-missions'' policies. Come up with effective ideas, and
we will provide the dollars to make them work.
For example, institutions could propose to add or strengthen the
interdisciplinary components of undergraduate science education. Or
they could establish targeted support programs for women and
minorities--who are 54 percent of our total workforce, but only 22
percent of scientists and engineers--to increase enrollment in these
fields. Or they could partner with local technology companies to
provide summer industry internships for ongoing research experience.
This initiative was conceived with strong bipartisan, bicameral
support. Last year, Senators Mikulski, Bond, Frist, Domenici, and I
introduced S. 1549, the ``Technology Talent Act of 2001''; a House
companion bill, H.R. 3130, was introduced by House Science Committee
Chairman Boehlert and Representative Larson. By the end of the year,
Congress had agreed to appropriate $5 million for this fiscal year to
jumpstart the program, even though our authorizing legislation had not
yet been passed.
Today, the number of co-sponsors of our authorizing bill has risen
to 14 on the Senate side. The House bill, which now has 43 co-sponsors,
received unanimous support during the House Science Committee markup,
and is anticipated to reach the floor soon as the core of a larger
undergraduate education bill.
The program also has extremely broad support outside the Congress.
The Administration has embraced Tech Talent as a priority, including
funding for it in its budget request for FY 2003. And the response from
leaders in industry, academia, and educational communities has been
tremendous--we have received letters of support from TechNet,
Semiconductor Industry Association, National Alliance of Business, K-12
Science, Mathematics, Engineering & Technology Coalition, American
Association of State Colleges and Universities, Texas Instruments, and
the American Society for Engineering Education, to name but a few.
Even more encouraging are the preliminary data obtained from NSF's
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Talent Expansion
Program (STEP), which is the formal name of the Tech Talent program
that NSF established with its FY02 appropriated funds. With enough
money for between 10 to 15 grants, the NSF received 177 applications
requesting a total of $59.7 million in aid--clear evidence of the vast
interest in, and need for, the Tech Talent program among undergraduate
institutions seeking to implement reforms in science and math
education.
We all realize that solving the undergraduate problem is not going
to single-handedly close our talent gap. At the same time, we should
also realize that the talent gap cannot be closed without first solving
the problem at the undergraduate level. Therefore, I urge you to
consider incorporating the Tech Talent program into this year's NSF
reauthorization bill. In doing so, we will be helping to ensure that
the young minds of today will be capable of mastering and fueling the
high-tech economies of tomorrow.
______
Prepared Statement of Senator John D. Rockefeller IV
Chairman Kennedy and Members of the HELP Committee, I am proud to
submit testimony today on behalf of a special, bipartisan initiative
within the National Science Foundation (NSF) reauthorization bill that
would promote math and science education, known as the National
Mathematics and Science Partnership Act. I was proud to sponsor
separate legislation last year with Senators Roberts and Kennedy.
Chairman Kennedy, your longstanding commitment to quality education is
well known, so it is always an honor to work so closely with you and
others on education investments.
This legislation, which is incorporated into the National Science
Foundation authorization bill, is an important investment in elementary
and secondary education, as well as our economy. This legislation would
create the Mathematics and Science Partnerships at the NSF, it would
invest in the Noyce Scholarships to attract top college math and
science students to teach at disadvantaged schools, and it would
provide a range of incentives to bolster math and science education,
key subjects for our future. In addition to bipartisan support in the
Senate, President Bush has included $200 million in his pending budget
for the math and science partnerships.
Placing a keen focus on developing quality partnerships with
specific funding is targeted at improving teaching of technical
subjects to students in elementary and secondary schools. We know that
teaching of math and science in the early grades is pivotal to
continuing science education in high school and college. Such
partnerships will involve the broader community, including local
business and industry, in the educational process. They increase the
number of qualified teachers while providing for improved access to
support in the form of materials, research opportunities, and Centers
of Research on Learning.
Too many studies have indicated that as a country, we are seriously
failing to effectively convey to K-12 students scientific knowledge
that is needed for them to excel in major technical fields. Our
elementary and secondary students currently lack mastery of technical
subjects. While our 4th graders are on par with the rest of the world,
by the time they reach the 12th grade, they rank in the bottom half of
countries in these areas.
Students in this country arrive at college ill-equipped to study
mathematics, science, and engineering. Part of the problem can be
attributed to a serious shortage of qualified math and science teachers
to guide our children. As a consequence, we are losing our competitive
edge in the modern world. This is an intolerable situation for which
there is no excuse. This initiative provides concrete action to solve
the problem with a major long-term commitment to invest in our future
by increasing funds to improve math and science education.
Such partnerships can help prevent America from losing its
competitive edge in the modern technological world. These partnerships
will focus on a wide range of efforts, from professional development to
curriculum reform for grades K-12. The partnerships may include the
State educational agency and half must include businesses. The
partnerships are intended to develop and evaluate innovative approaches
to education in mathematics, science, engineering, and other technical
subjects.
In addition to the partnerships, I am particularly committed to
encouraging qualified people to enter the teaching profession. This
bill establishes a scholarship program for college students who commit
to becoming K-12 math or science teachers after graduation. To keep
educators at the top of their field, $15 million in grant money will be
awarded for math and science teachers to do research and improve their
own classroom performance. Twenty million dollars are set aside each
year to expand the National Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and
Technology Education Library, a digital library that disseminates
scientific resources through the Internet. Strengthening math and
science education within the National Science Foundation for elementary
and secondary education is a high priority for me.
The National Science Foundation has been a leader on quality
education. My State of West Virginia has been enormously helped by
several National Science Foundation education programs. The
implementation of the Coordinated and Thematic Science (CATS) grant
provided training to nearly 1,000 West Virginia teachers over a 5-year
period. I met with the science teachers involved in this project and
their enthusiasm and commitment was extraordinary. This statewide award
has developed teams of mentor teachers of grades 7-10 who have provided
outreach, support, and training to their colleagues. My State is also
undertaking a similar initiative in math, known as Project MERIT.
Another example of a successful education investment is the
National Science Foundation's Teacher Enhancement Grant, which enabled
my State to provide students with a solid foundation in science and
technology. This grant has made it possible for students in West
Virginia to become better equipped and more competitive in the
workplace and in post-secondary classrooms. These efforts made a major
difference in the quality of educational offerings available to
students, as these programs have provided a tremendous opportunity for
West Virginia to invest in our teachers and improve education in our
schools. Given the strong record of success for National Science
Foundation education initiatives, I believe that this new program is a
worthwhile project for my State and our country.
Strengthening the sciences is important not just for the sake of
knowledge, but also to ensure that America remains at the forefront of
major technological advances. Incorporating the National Mathematics
and Partnership Act into the National Science Reauthorization bill
should be a priority. These partnerships and investments in
scholarships and professional development are key steps to reclaiming
the lead in science and mathematics education. Throughout the process,
I look forward to working with Chairman Kennedy and others to achieve
our goals for math and science education.
______
Prepared Statement of Jerome I. Friedman, Ph.D.
Chairman Kennedy, Senator Gregg and Members of the Committee, I
would like to thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony for
this hearing to present my views about the National Science Foundation.
At the outset, let me express my appreciation for the sustained support
that you have provided for the NSF and for your commitment to improving
NSF's ability to serve our national interests. I believe that the House
of Representatives has shown great wisdom by supporting H.R. 4664,
which includes authorization for a 15 percent increase for the NSF
budget in each of the next 3 years. In preparing your own NSF
reauthorization bill, Mr. Chairman, I urge you to support such an
increase, and I hope that you will highlight the importance of the core
research programs, since they provide the basis for all of NSF's high-
priority areas.
My testimony today concerns two closely related issues: NSF's role
in the development and operation of scientific facilities and the NSF's
Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) program,
which was established to support the construction of such facilities.
To provide a context for my observations and recommendations, let me
begin by underscoring the extent to which science has changed since
NSF's founding a little more than 50 years ago.
During the first half of the 20th Century, industrial laboratories
accounted for most of the research in the United States, both applied
and basic. World War II changed the picture dramatically, and by the
early 1960s, the Federal Government was sponsoring two-thirds of all
American research activity. Excluding work performed under contract by
the defense industry, most of those Federal funds supported research
carried out by relatively small academic groups. Almost all the
researchers were American citizens, and for the most part they worked
in on-site university laboratories in self-contained scientific
disciplines.
The world of science in the 21st Century is remarkably different.
Industry now accounts for more than two-thirds of R&D spending. But
unlike the early post war period, when Bell Labs and other private-
sector facilities played starring roles in the basic research endeavor,
industry now focuses almost strictly on short-term applied research.
Today, corporations rely heavily on basic research carried out by
university scientists, who are funded almost exclusively by the Federal
Government. For that reason, agencies, such as the NSF, currently play
an even more critical role in the science and technology enterprise
than they did 50 years ago.
It is important to recognize that the way in which university
science is conducted has also changed significantly. Research groups
are larger. Equipment is far more complex, and many scientists carry
out their research at national facilities. The scientific disciplines
are also far less disjointed: they have become intertwined and highly
interdependent.
Federal funding of basic research has tried to keep pace with the
changing scientific landscape. Programs that cut across disciplines,
such as the Nano-Science/Nano-Technology Intiative, have become
integral to the Federal research portfolio. And large facilities, such
as X-ray light sources and high-resolution telescopes, have become
essential to the federally-supported research enterprise.
Although its focus remains the university individual investigator,
NSF today supports major facilities where many of these scientists
carry out their research. The Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR),
with its associated X-ray light source (CHESS), is one of the early
examples. It has been an extremely productive facility and currently
serves particle and condensed matter physicists, as well as structural
biologists.
But constructing and operating major facilities can have a
substantial impact on NSF's overall programming. To prevent such
projects from overwhelming the NSF budget and causing irreparable
damage to the individual investigator core programs, NSF established
the MREFC account a few years ago. It is a very worthwhile concept, but
I believe that it is still suffering from growing pains. While MREFC
projects undergo close scrutiny in a competitive peer-review process,
NSF currently does not provide the science community or Congress with a
prioritized list of approved projects. The lack of transparency has
prevented orderly planning by the research community. As a result,
science has suffered and international research partners have been left
dangling.
The Rare Symmetry Violating Processes (RSVP) project is a good
example. Conceived almost 5 years ago, it passed the rigor of peer
review and was placed on a ``to-do list'' by the National Science Board
(NSB). The scientists involved were assured that if their project
didn't make it into the FY 2002 budget, it would almost certainly be in
the FY 2003 presidential request. Neither happened, and $15-million in
foreign contributions is about to vaporize, since the collaboration's
international partners are understandably losing faith in the selection
process.
To remedy the MREFC difficulties, I suggest that the NSF be
required annually to submit to Congress the full list of approved
projects in a prioritized order that has been established with the
concurrence of the NSB. The NSF should provide an explanation of the
criteria used for setting these priorities and a statement of its
reasons for any deviations from the priorities it set the previous
year.
The NSF should also be requested to present a long-range strategic
budget that takes into account the operation of the facilities it plans
to construct. Otherwise core program budgets could be jeopardized when
operating funds are needed to bring a new facility on line. I would
also like to emphasize that core program and MREFC funds should not be
commingled, either in planning or in practice. Finally, for management
and oversight purposes, NSF's annual budget should have a separate line
for facilities operation; and all projected facilities operation costs
and MREFC construction costs should be presented each year as part of a
rolling 5-year plan.
In concluding my remarks, I would like to emphasize how important
the National Science Foundation has been in advancing both science and
education in our Nation. In addressing some of issues that I have
mentioned, legislation should also contain features to increase the
effectiveness with which the NSF can carry out its mission.
The NSF is a national treasure. It stands as a model of peer-
reviewed science and individual investigator research. Its financial
and programmatic health is essential to our Nation's future.
______
Prepared Statement of Ioannis Miaoulis, Ph.D.
The National Science Foundation--(NSF)--through its numerous
investments in research and education, has made this Nation stronger,
and better educated. At Tufts University, we are particularly proud of
NSF's contributions since the founder of NSF, Dr. Vannevar Bush, was
one of our own engineering students and graduates. His assistant in
starting the National Science Foundation, Prof. Lloyd Trefethen, was
actually my undergraduate advisor and mentor while I was an
undergraduate at Tufts.
The following constitutes my perspective concerning the
reauthorization of NSF and its mission to advance science and
engineering education. My comments center on three issues:
The impact of NSF on the Nation's overall research and development
portfolio and the benefits of NSF-funded basic research, including
research done at Tufts University.
The impact of NSF on science and engineering education and training
programs in universities such as Tufts.
The impact of NSF on improving K-12 science and engineering
education programs and encouraging partnerships between K-12 schools
and universities
The impact of NSF on the Nation's overall research and development
portfolio and the benefits of NSF-funded basic research, including
research done at Tufts University
During the past few years, there has been a significant shift of
the sources of basic research from industry research facilities to
university and national laboratories. Industries are focusing more and
more on applied research and development with near-term high return on
investment. A major contributor of the growth of the U.S. economy
during the second part of the last century was Federal investment in
basic scientific research. Investments in the areas of physical science
and engineering have resulted in the best science and technology
program in the world. Investments in these areas have also advanced
other areas of science and even human health. A significant component
of the research, which culminated with the development of the CAT scan,
was conducted in our Physics department at Tufts under the late Prof.
Cormack who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1980. Clearly, computer
science, mathematics, physics, and engineering are essential to the
advancement of human health and provide the foundation for new
discoveries in biomedical science. However, funding for the physical
sciences and engineering has remained level, while the increase being
proposed for the NIH for FY2003 alone is more than two-thirds of the
current total FY2002 NSF budget. Our Nation has an unbalanced R&D
portfolio, favoring the life sciences. Under-funding the physical and
engineering sciences will in the long run have a detrimental effect on
the life sciences.
Inventions and discoveries that help humanity, such as X-ray
machines and Penicillin, often occur serendipitously. From my personal
experience, the NSF has been critical in supporting basic and applied
research activities in my laboratory that has continued to lead from
one exciting discovery to another. Moreover, the winding sequence of
findings has been supported by a variety of NSF programs that defy
logic. I began my research in studying thermal processing to
recrystallize silicon films used for the microelectronics industry.
This research was supported by the Engineering Directorate at NSF and
has helped to improve the way we make computer chips. The research also
led to an interesting discovery whereby minute changes in film
thickness resulted in large changes in heat absorption and quality of
the crystal.
This fascinating phenomenon appeared to be a powerful means of
controlling the thermal process. As an aside, I wondered whether nature
had taken advantage of this phenomenon. Asking a graduate student to
take a leap of faith, we delved into an exploration to find examples of
biological thin films that utilize the phenomenon. We found that
butterflies do, in fact, have thin films optimized to serve multi-
functions as signaling as well as collecting solar energy. The NSF
Biology Division funded a project to develop an innovative tool to
examine these structures. Our results found an amazing array of complex
thin film structures, some that looked like spherical mirrors and
others like pine trees in a forest. Why and how these structures are
created is a subject of interest and debate among academic communities.
These complex structures inspired my research team to look into
emerging research areas in microelectromechanical systems and
nanotechnologies. How can we create these microscale structures in
innovative ways to serve interesting engineering functions? NSF's
Engineering Directorate again is supporting my team's research into
rapid manufacturing of microscale and mesoscale structures. This
research may lead to new means of developing sensors and actuators to
be used in Homeland Security as pathogen detectors or to create high
throughput scanners to discover life-saving drugs. Through NSF's
support of basic and applied research, we have been able to make a
number of key findings that have linked together progressively.
Other Tufts engineering faculty have obtained NSF support for
fundamental studies into fibrous protein structure assembly for the
past 6 years. These studies are supported through the Divisions of
Materials Research, Bioengineering and Biology. The scientific insights
gained from these studies have provided an improved understanding of
this important family of structural proteins (e.g., collagens, silks).
This information has led to the direct use of these proteins in new
biomaterials applications and in new tissue engineering studies. The
result of these efforts have included a variety of clinically relevant
studies supported through the NIH, new interdisciplinary studies and
opportunities for undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate students,
and new spin-off companies based on the findings. Other engineering
faculty at Tufts is working on NSF-funded projects that will
revolutionize mammography techniques by using optical spectroscopy for
imaging of human tissues.
Although we have had our successes in attracting NSF funds for
conducting basic research, we have had numerous disappointing moments.
Many good ideas that are submitted and are rated excellent by the
majority of the reviewers do not get funded. And the funding for the
fortunate ones is limited in duration and annual amount. In his March
12, 2002 testimony before your committee, Dr. Stephen Director from the
University of Michigan, presented detailed statistics of this problem.
Additional funds are needed to enable NSF to fund more great ideas at a
higher funding level and duration. The Nation's creative minds should
spend more time focusing on their research and less time trying to get
funding.
the impact of nsf on science and engineering education and training
programs in universities such as tufts
Two of the greatest challenges that our Nation's engineering
schools face today are attracting and retaining students in general,
and more specifically, women and students of color. Although the demand
for engineering graduates has increased dramatically, engineering
enrollments have decreased by approximately 15 percent during the last
8 years. In addition, the percentages of students of color and women
are quite small. Approximately 18 percent of the undergraduate
engineering population nationally is female. It is difficult to attract
engineering students, yet it is more challenging to retain them. It is
customary for an engineering school to lose 30-50 percent of its
undergraduate population during the undergraduate years. At Tufts, we
have reversed both of these trends, and I strongly believe that without
the support we received from NSF we would not have been able to
succeed.
Most students do not drop out of Engineering because they cannot
handle the work. In fact, the national average grade point average of
female students transferring out of Engineering is a B+. They transfer
out because they simply do not find the field interesting.
Unfortunately, most of them transfer out during their first year,
before they have taken any engineering courses. Through a grant we
received in the early 1990s from the Division of Undergraduate
Education of NSF we were able to change the engineering curriculum so
that in their first year, students take courses designed to introduce
engineering in an interesting and playful way. We now have a pool of
over 60 engineering courses that stem from personal research interests
and hobbies of our faculty. We have courses focusing on acoustics
(Design and Performance of Musical Instruments), Fluid Mechanics (Life
in Moving Fluids), Heat Transfer (Gourmet Engineering), Biotechnology,
and Digital Image Processing. They are taught by our best teachers with
passion, since they created them and focus on their personal interest.
We use to have a net loss of 15 percent of our undergraduates. With
this NSF-funded curriculum we managed to become the only engineering
school in the country where more students transfer into engineering
from liberal arts than from engineering to liberal arts. We actually
see an increase in our class size most years.
Funding from NSF has enabled us to reshape our curriculum and make
it attractive to both men and women. We were able to adjust our
pedagogies in laboratory activities to better deliver the content to
our students, and provide them with numerous opportunities to engage in
research through NSF's Research Experiences for Undergraduate program.
As a result, our program grew to be very desirable. During the last 8
years, our application pool doubled, the average SAT scores of our
incoming students increased by 70 points exceeding 1400, and the high
school graduation ranking of our students decreased from top 13 percent
of their class to top 5 percent of their class. Also the number of
women students increased by 26 percent. About a third of our
undergraduate students are women. The 4-year graduation rate of our
women students is over 95 percent.
Although we received a number of grants from NSF to be able to
accomplish this, we had many, many excellent proposals rejected simply
because of lack of funds. Just imagine the impact that NSF grants could
have nationally in attracting and retaining engineering students if the
Undergraduate Division had more funds to award. Many other engineering
schools can design and implement programs such as the one that
transformed our school.
the impact of nsf on improving k-12 science and engineering education
programs and encouraging partnerships between k-12 schools and
universities
NSF is the most significant supporter of technological and
scientific literacy in our Nation. For the last 15 years, the Tufts
School of Engineering has been a national leader in engineering and
science outreach in preK-12 schools. We have re-architected the entire
K-8 science curricula for the public school districts, written
textbooks that are currently used by millions of middle-school
children, created Robolab, a Lego-based educational product that is
used by more in more than 15,000 classrooms in twenty different
countries and won numerous international awards. Our goal is to
introduce engineering as a new discipline in all preK-12 public and
private schools in the U.S. and make engineering an equally appealing
and exciting discipline to both girls and boys. The National Science
Foundation has been the biggest supporter of these efforts.
Massachusetts is now the first State in the Nation to require, through
standards-based programs and testing, engineering as a discipline,
starting at the kindergarten level. Many other States have expressed
interest in following Massachusetts' innovative step.
Of course, not all children want to become, or should become
engineers and scientists. While our Nation desperately needs more
engineers and scientists who would clearly benefit from engineering
education beginning in grade school, why introduce engineering to all
young children?
Technological literacy has become basic literacy. Most of the
tangible products such as cars, telephones, and airplanes, and
processes, with which we spend most of our lives, are technologies that
resulted from engineering efforts. A literate citizen is one that
understands the world around her. Children need to understand the
engineering process and the results of these processes: the
technologies, in order to become fully literate in our complex, human-
made world.
Engineering offers an excellent platform for project/problem-based
learning. Children have opportunities to move from observing and
formulating ideas to constructing projects and communicating about
their work. This problem/project-based learning helps children
integrate knowledge from all disciplines, including math, science,
social studies, English, and art.
Engineering motivates students to pursue math and science studies.
Partnerships among math, science and technology/engineering educators
make for powerful teaching teams. Engineering brings math and science
alive and creates links to everyday life. This important relevance
factor encourages girls in particular, who typically chose profession
that ``make a difference,'' to pursue careers in these male-dominated
professions.
Engineering sharpens young people's ability to visualize and think
in three dimensions. Rather than exploring three-dimensional objects by
building with models or taking apart radios, most children watch
television, play computer games, and surf the Internet, building skills
that sharpen eye-hand coordination in two dimensions. We are raising
generations of people that cannot visualize things in three dimensions.
By nurturing both spatial visualization and communication skills,
engineering enhances children's ability to design and present ideas in
graphical form. These skills improve students' understanding of the
technological world, and enable them to become the problem-solvers and
designers of tomorrow.
NSF has been very supportive of our effort to introduce engineering
into the lives of younger people. We currently are working at the State
level with the Massachusetts Department of Education, with teachers
through the professional associations, with targeted school districts,
and with children. Our initial prototype program was a partnership
between our School of Engineering and the Stow Schools of the Nashoba
Regional School District in Massachusetts. This effort was funded by
two different grants, from the Engineering Division, and the Human
Resources division of NSF. Our success in changing the science
performance of the children within two years is evident through the
results of the statewide Science and Technology/Engineering tests at
the fourth grade level. In 1998, 6 percent of the 4th grade students
scored ``Advanced'', 66 percent ``Proficient'', 27 percent ``Needs
Improvement, and 1 percent ``Failed''. In 2000, 31 percent scored
``Advanced'', 62 percent ``Proficient, 7 percent ``Needs Improvement'',
and 0 percent failed. The State averages in these categories stayed
quite flat. The State averages for 2000 are 5 percent ``Advanced'', 37
percent ``Proficient'', 32 percent ``Needs Improvement'', and 26
percent Failed. Our partnership worked well. Enhanced NSF funding in
these areas, can help other university-school partnership achieve
similar results.
We need enhanced funding for the University-School Partnerships
program. We also need to include Engineering in the National
Mathematics and Science Education Partnerships. Engineering schools can
energize teachers at all levels and significantly enhance math,
science, and technology/engineering preK-12 literacy. As a member of
the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), I understand they
have endorsed partnerships as a method to improve K-12 Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education. I encourage the
committee to propose a change to the name and charge of the
Partnerships to ``National Science, Mathematics, and Engineering
Partnerships'' and to propose a significant increase of the funding of
this NSF program. In addition, I encourage the committee to also
support full funding for Science, Math, and Engineering education at
the Department of Education as well. We have a unique opportunity to
significantly enhance this important area of national interest. In
closing, I feel that NSF budget increases will move us in the right
direction in enhancing basic research, promoting diverse representation
in the field, and promoting technological literacy of the citizens of
tomorrow.
______
Prepared Statement of Dr. Warren Washington
Chairman Kennedy, Ranking Member Gregg, and Members of the
Committee, I appreciate having the opportunity to testify before you as
Chair of the National Science Board. I am Warren Washington, Senior
Scientist and Section Head of the Climate Change Research Section at
the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
On behalf of the National Science Board, I thank the Committee for
its sustained commitment to a broad portfolio of investments in
science, mathematics, engineering, and technology research and
education. These investments contribute to our Nation's long-term
security and economic vitality and to the well being of all Americans.
the national science foundation's budget request
The National Science Board has approved and supports the National
Science Foundation's budget request for fiscal year 2003. The 5 percent
increase in funding will allow NSF to continue to nurture the people,
ideas, and tools needed to generate new knowledge and new technologies.
Among the important initiatives that this budget includes are
priorities for the science and engineering workforce; mathematical and
statistical science research that will advance interdisciplinary
science and engineering; and research in the social, behavioral, and
economic sciences to explore the complex interactions between
technology and society. The budget continues support for the Math and
Science Partnership program; increases funding for the Foundation's six
priority areas, which have the potential of enormous payoff for the
Nation; and provides a much-needed increase in annual stipends for
graduate fellows--a critical investment the future U.S. science and
engineering workforce. The NSF Director, Dr. Rita Colwell, will discuss
these and other specifics of the budget request in her testimony.
As this Committee recognizes, NSF is a major contributor both to
scientific research and science education. Federal investments in the
basic sciences through NSF have produced new discoveries and new
technologies essential to our national security and economic
prosperity. In addition, NSF supports innovative education programs
from pre-kindergarten through graduate school, preparing the next
generation of scientists and engineers and contributing to a more
scientifically literate workforce and society.
Each year NSF evaluates, primarily through external peer review,
32,000 proposais from 2,000 colleges, universities, and institutions.
The value of the proposals is approximately $16 billion. NSF annually
makes 10,000 awards, totaling nearly $3 billion, in a highly
competitive merit review process. It is estimated that NSF proposals
representing an additional $5 billion are worthy of investment if the
funds were available.
the health of the science and engineering enterprise
The new knowledge and technologies emerging today are a tribute to
Federal research investments made years ago in a spirit of
bipartisanship. When those investments began, no one could foresee
their future impact. Revolutionary advances such as those in
information technology, nanotechnology, materials, and biotechnology
remind us that such breakthroughs with promising benefits to the
economy, the workforce, our educational systems, and national security
require long-term, high-risk investments.
Among Federal agencies, NSF has the unique mission of advancing the
Nation's health, prosperity, and welfare by supporting research and
education in all fields of science and engineering. NSF plays a
critical role in supporting new discoveries and knowledge as well as
innovative educational programs at all levels. NSF-funded research and
education are critical to sustaining U.S. strength in science and
technology, a key element of national security.
Despite widespread recognition of the benefits that result from
federally-supported scientific research, as a Nation, we are seriously
under-investing in basic research. In our $10 trillion Gross Domestic
Product, the Federal Government budgets $24 billion to basic research,
which represents one-fourth of 1 percent of the Nation's Gross Domestic
Product. Of the $24 billion, NSF receives $3 billion to support
cutting-edge science and the search for new knowledge.
Achieving a balanced portfolio in the basic sciences is as
important as the quality and quantity of research funded. For example,
as Congressional leaders and others have pointed out, the success of
the National Institutes of Health's efforts to find cures for deadly
diseases depends heavily on the underpinning of basic research
supported by the National Science Foundation.
national science board policy studies
In addition to providing oversight to NSF, the Board provides
advice to the President and the Congress on matters of science and
engineering policy. I would like to mention some of our current
activities related to major issues affecting the health of the science
and engineering enterprise.
federal investment in science and engineering
The level of Federal investment is crucial to the health of the
science and engineering enterprise. Equally crucial is how effectively
that investment is made. The growing opportunities for discovery and
the inevitable limits on Federal spending mean that hard choices must
be made and priorities set.
In its recent report, Federal Research Resources: A Process for
Setting Priorities, the Board offers its recommendations for a more
effective budget process, including an improved information base and a
decision-making process for allocating Federal funding to research. The
Board's conclusions are based on reviews of the literature on budget
coordination and priority setting for public research and invited
presentations from and discussions with representatives of the Office
of Management and Budget, the Office of Science and Technology Policy,
the Federal research and development agencies, congressional staff,
high-level science officials from foreign governments, experts on data
and methodologies, and spokespersons from industry, the National
Academies, research communities, science policy community, and academe.
u.s. government role in international science and engineering
In the 21St Century, advances in science and engineering will to a
large measure determine economic growth, quality of life, and the
health and security of our planet. The conduct, communication, and use
of science are intrinsically global. New ideas and discoveries are
emerging all over the world and the balance of expertise is shifting
among countries. Collaborations and international partnerships
contribute to addressing a broad range of international problems. They
also contribute to building more stable relations among nations by
creating a universal language and culture based on commonly accepted
values of objectivity, sharing, integrity, and free inquiry. The
Federal Government plays a significant role in promoting international
science and engineering activities and supporting research with
international dimensions.
In its recent report entitled Toward a More Effective Role for the
U.S. Government in Intemational Science and Engineering, the Board
concludes that new approaches to the management and coordination of
U.S. international science and engineering activities are needed if the
United States is to maintain the long-term vitality of its science and
engineering enterprise and the vitality of its economy. The Board
recommends that the Federal Government: (1) increase the effectiveness
of its coordination of international science and engineering
activities; (2) increase international cooperation in fundamental
research and education, particularly with developing countries and by
younger scientists and engineers; and (3) improve the use of science
and engineering information in foreign policy deliberations and in
dealing with global issues and problems.
u.s. science and engineering infrastructure
An area of constant concern for NSF and the Board is the quality
and adequacy of infrastructure to enable scientific discoveries in the
future. The rapidly changing environment of new knowledge, new tools,
and new information capabilities has created a demand for more complex
and more costly facilities for scientific research.
A Board task force is assessing the current status, changing needs,
and strategies needed to ensure that the Nation will have the
infrastructure to sustain cutting-edge science and engineering
research. We expect to receive the task force's preliminary findings
this summer.
national workforce policies for science and engineering
For U.S. leadership in science and engineering, there is no more
important issue than the development of a skilled technical workforce.
As a Nation, we are not attracting the numbers of science and
engineering students our Nation needs to sustain its leadership. Nor
are we successfully tapping all our domestic resources, especially
under-represented minorities and women. The pool of potential science
and engineering students will increasingly reflect the growing
diversity in the American workforce and society.
A Board task force on workforce policies for science and
engineering is reviewing U.S. workforce needs, the role of foreign
students and workers, and policy options for ensuring an adequate
science and engineering workforce for the future. We anticipate
receiving the task force's report by the end of this year.
Mr. Chairman, at this point I would like to close my formal
remarks. I thank the Committee for its long-time support of the science
community, especially the National Science Foundation, and for allowing
me to comment on significant national policy concerns, as well as on
the Foundation's budget request.
______
Prepared Statement of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers
introduction
ASME International is a 125,000-member organization focused on
technical, educational and research issues. ASME conducts one of the
world's largest technical publishing operations, holds numerous
technical conferences worldwide, and offers hundreds of professional
development courses each year. ASME sets internationally recognized
industrial and manufacturing codes and standards that enhance public
welfare and safety.
In a survey this year, ASME members ranked pre-college science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education as our number
one public policy priority. Another issue of importance to our members
is the desire to increase the Federal investment in research and
development, particularly in the physical sciences. The National
Science Foundation (NSF) plays a critical role in both of those
priorities.
pre-college education
The engineering community has long been concerned with the state of
pre-college science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)
education. To increase student learning in these areas, and enable the
United States to compete globally with a strong, technologically
literate workforce, we need to commit a significant amount of resources
for STEM education now.
The U.S. Commission on National Security for the 21st Century
warns, ``The harsh fact is that the U.S. need for the highest quality
human capital in science, mathematics, and engineering is not being
met. We not only lack the homegrown science, technology, and
engineering professionals necessary to ensure national prosperity and
security, but also the next generation of teachers of science and math
at the K-12 level. The Nation is on the verge of a downward spiral in
which current shortages will beget even more acute future shortages of
high-quality professionals and competent teachers.''
According to the 2000 National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP), student science scores for grades 4 and 8 are flat and there
has been a slight decline in scores for grade 12 since the assessment
was last administered in 1996. Furthermore, 84 percent of science
teachers and 86 percent of mathematics teachers in grades 5-8 did not
major in science or mathematics. This report further underscores the
need for reform and investment in math and science education,
particularly at a time when our economy, national security and
technological advances are heavily dependent on the quality of our
future workforce.
The National Science Foundation has funded a number of programs,
which are consistent with ASME's pre-college science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education policy. Specifically, we
support programs that: increase federally-funded research focused on
STEM teaching and learning to cultivate the most effective teaching
methods; recruit, train, and retain qualified STEM teachers to meet
demand; foster partnerships among educational institutions, industry,
and non-profit organizations; encourage the adoption of curriculum
standards that cultivate high student performance; the development of
curricula that foster creativity, experiential problem-solving and
critical thinking, and, the development of assessments aligned with
these standards and curricula; and, encourage women and minorities to
pursue STEM coursework and careers.
The ASME Council on Education supports S.1262, by Senator
Rockefeller, et al. In particular, we support: (1) the inclusion of
engineering departments as eligible partners and technology teachers
within the definition of math and science teachers; (2) the Robert
Noyce Scholarship Program to attract science, math and engineering
majors and professionals to teaching; (3) the Teacher Research
Scholarship Program to provide STEM related research experiences for
teachers; and (4) efforts to attract greater participation of women and
minorities in STEM pre-college, undergraduate and graduate coursework
and eventually STEM careers.
undergraduate and graduate education
During the next decade, the U.S. demand for scientists and
engineers is expected to increase at more than double the rate for all
other occupations, according to the National Science Board. The need
for a scientifically literate population is essential for our economy
and our national security. Moreover, technology and the innovations it
has spawned drive productivity gains and economic growth.
But today's high school students are not performing well in math
and science overall, and a decreasing number of American students are
pursuing degrees in technical fields. America's K-12 students score far
below the best in the world on domestic and international tests.
Senators Lieberman, Bond, Frist, Mikulski and Domenici introduced
S.1549, ``The Technology Talent Act,'' designed to increase the United
States' technically trained workforce. It is imperative to develop a
highly skilled workforce to maintain our national security and foster
future economic growth.
This legislation encourages universities to partner with community
colleges, industry organizations, professional societies and local
schools to pave the way for students of all ages and backgrounds to
further their interests in science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics (STEM) coursework and career paths.
In October 2001, the deans of engineering and the deans of
education from 50 universities met in concert to develop strategic
collaborations to enhance K-12 teacher preparation in STEM and to
invigorate engineering education. Collaborations of this type can and
should be replicated by more universities and across all science,
mathematics, engineering, and technological disciplines.
This bill will assist in the development and implementation of
innovative approaches to increasing enrollments and graduates in key
STEM degrees. Providing incentives and rewards to educational
institutions for increasing STEM enrollments and graduates is an
excellent approach to jumpstart that process, therefore the Council
supports enactment of S.1549.
research & development funding
The Council acknowledges the visionary leadership role that NSF has
played in guiding the Nation's basic research and development
activities. NSF has greatly contributed to the technological
superiority that the United States enjoys today. As such, the Council
strongly endorses the Foundation and its efforts to improve and expand
the innovative ideas, outstanding people, and cutting-edge tools that
comprise the Nation's technological and scientific infrastructure.
However, the decline in Federal R&D funding remains a major
concern. ASME members are particularly concerned over the widening gap
between Federal funding of life sciences and the physical sciences and
engineering, and therefore support efforts to dramatically increase NSF
funding. The Council strongly encourages members of the Committee to
consider the following points during its deliberations: the critical
need for the Nation to increase its support for the R&D portfolio
including a viable component of pure science and engineering research;
enhancing the integrity of the core research mission of the NSF in
light of its new responsibilities; the need for balance within NSF
between its initiative-driven research and developing and maintaining a
healthy core effort; and, that the integrity and strength of NSF must
remain rooted in strict adherence to a rigorous peer-review process
free from earmarking.
The Council supports: (1) increasing the size and duration of NSF
grants, which will allow scientists and researchers to produce more
results and spend less time writing grants; (2) increasing graduate
stipends, which will attract more undergraduates to pursue graduate
degrees in science and engineering; and (3) increasing funding for the
NSF by 15 percent for fiscal years 2003-2005, (like H.R. 4664) thereby
placing the NSF budget on a doubling track.
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