[Senate Hearing 109-358]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 109-358
PACE-ENERGY ACT
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON
ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
ON
S. 2197
TO IMPROVE THE GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS OF THE UNITED STATES IN SCIENCE
AND ENERGY TECHNOLOGY, TO STRENGTHEN BASIC RESEARCH PROGRAMS AT THE
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY, AND TO PROVIDE SUPPORT FOR MATHEMATICS AND
SCIENCE EDUCATION AT ALL LEVELS THROUGH THE RESOURCES AVAILABLE THROUGH
THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY, INCLUDING AT THE NATIONAL LABORATORIES
__________
FEBRUARY 15, 2006
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
______
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26-985 WASHINGTON : 2006
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COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico, Chairman
LARRY E. CRAIG, Idaho JEFF BINGAMAN, New Mexico
CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee BYRON L. DORGAN, North Dakota
LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska RON WYDEN, Oregon
RICHARD M. BURR, North Carolina, TIM JOHNSON, South Dakota
MEL MARTINEZ, Florida MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana
JAMES M. TALENT, Missouri DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
CONRAD BURNS, Montana MARIA CANTWELL, Washington
GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia KEN SALAZAR, Colorado
GORDON SMITH, Oregon ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
JIM BUNNING, Kentucky
Alex Flint, Staff Director
Judith K. Pensabene, Chief Counsel
Bob Simon, Democratic Staff Director
Sam Fowler, Democratic Chief Counsel
Kathryn Clay, Professional Staff Member
Jonathan Epstein, Legislative Fellow
C O N T E N T S
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STATEMENTS
Page
Akaka, Hon. Daniel K., U.S. Senator from Hawaii.................. 14
Alexander, Hon. Lamar, U.S. Senator from Tennessee............... 7
Allen, Hon. George, U.S. Senator from Virginia................... 3
Bingaman, Hon. Jeff, U.S. Senator from New Mexico................ 2
Craig, Hon. Larry E., U.S. Senator from Idaho.................... 12
Domenici, Hon. Pete V., U.S. Senator from New Mexico............. 1
Menendez, Hon. Robert, U.S. Senator from New Jersey.............. 34
Orbach, Raymond L., Director, Office of Science, Department of
Energy......................................................... 5
Proenza, Luis M., President, University of Akron................. 26
Salazar, Hon. Ken, U.S. Senator from Colorado.................... 11
Talent, Hon. James M., U.S. Senator from Missouri................ 38
Thomas, Hon. Craig, U.S. Senator from Wyoming.................... 9
Vest, Charles M., President Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology..................................................... 20
APPENDIXES
Appendix I
Responses to additional questions................................ 43
Appendix II
Additional material submitted for the record..................... 53
PACE-ENERGY ACT
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WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2006
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:38 a.m. in
room SD-366, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Pete V.
Domenici, chairman, presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. PETE V. DOMENICI,
U.S. SENATOR FROM NEW MEXICO
The Chairman. The hearing will please come to order.
Senators, I did not get a chance to do much other than to see
this front page here, but I look forward to reading it and see
how it compares with the Augustine Report. I do not know if you
noticed. It says ``Is America Flunking Science?'' It apparently
is an in-depth analysis of that question.
With that, let me say this is our first committee hearing
on the PACE-Energy legislation. I am hopeful that February 15
at 22 minutes of 11 will be a date we can mark and look forward
and say, starting on this day, this PACE legislation,
Protecting America's Competitive Edge through Energy Act, also
known hereafter as the ``PACE-Energy Act,'' that it will be a
formidable American effort to rise above the gathering storm,
as the great group of Americans labeled the current state of
affairs regarding math, science, engineering, research and
technology innovation.
So in the report that I just alluded to, prepared at the
request of Senators Bingaman and Alexander, that request
concurred in by me and then put together by Norm Augustine on
short notice, which now we are going to implement--we are
hoping that the start of that this day and the end of it when
we finish the bill and then when we fund it, that we can look
back and say that, much like--and I borrow this from Senator
Bingaman--much like Sputnik, it stirred an American awareness
that we can do a lot better developing the brain power of
American men and women in these fields that are so important to
maintaining our material wealth and our national security and
our lifestyles.
The report enumerates all of the items that make up the
gathering storm. Anybody who wants to read them, they are there
and they are innumerable. It focuses on some areas that people
might have thought just were not really part of this, but that
was basic education way down through the grade school and
junior high and high school, wherein they have concluded that,
while many young people are getting great, great starts, many,
many are faltering terribly at the basic skills and brain power
development during those days.
So they are even recommending--all of this is not coming to
this committee, but some of it is--that we try to have a
dramatic effect on how math and science is taught at the high
school and grade school level. That is a rather terrific
conclusion for a body of national science, of engineers and
National Academy of Science people to say. They want us to go
way down there and they want to be helpful.
We are going to try to do that. Part of our bill provides
for harnessing this brain power by retooling our teachers using
our national laboratories for that, and other items of interest
are in this part of the bill. It does contemplate a large
number of new math and science teachers being given
scholarships and then given fellowships to supplement the pay
so they will be excited enough to stay on the job. Those are
interesting suggestions. They are in this bill, this part of
the bill.
Present today are Senators who have had a terrific
influence on this and pledge to continue.
Senator Bingaman, I will yield to you and thank you again
for all you have done.
STATEMENT OF HON. JEFF BINGAMAN, U.S. SENATOR
FROM NEW MEXICO
Senator Bingaman. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for
your leadership on this issue and for having this hearing so
early in the legislative session. I think is very important.
Thanks also particularly to Senator Alexander for all his
leadership in getting us to this point.
This is a very useful hearing, I hope, in trying to allow
us to better understand how we implement the recommendations of
the National Commission. We put out some legislation, as you
indicated, that tries to put in place a set of some structures
and assigns to the Department of Energy, Office of Science, a
lot of responsibility to do what is contemplated here. I look
forward to hearing from Dr. Orbach as to his thoughts on the
appropriate role of the Department of Energy and his office in
this endeavor.
I also look forward to hearing from Dr. Vest and Dr.
Proenza about their thoughts on this. Dr. Vest is particularly
qualified because of having been part of this National
Commission and part of the group that put the recommendations
together.
The other issue that I hope we get a better understanding
of is this recommendation to establish a DARPA-like entity
within the Department of Energy, and whether that makes good
sense. I know there has been some discussion that maybe
something different should be established instead of that. We
need to hear from the witnesses on that subject.
But again, thanks for having the hearing.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator.
Before I move to the next witness, I do want to make sure
the record reflects that--and I should have said it--the
President of the United States in his State of the Union did
address the issue. We are very thankful and grateful to him.
Some of us went and talked to him and urged him. We were not
the only ones. So you will hear throughout these various
hearings some of the notions expressed by the President
regarding our competitiveness shortcomings and some of the
ideas to do them, to accomplish them.
Some of the things we are going to do were not recommended,
and I do not think it is that he would not agree. One of them
is how many scholarships, new scholarships in math and science,
should there be in this proposal. He left that to another
approach. He is going to use other ways to fund it, Senator
Allen, putting it in other current programs that are
scholarships for college. But most of the thinking here, which
will go to another committee for finalization, is this ought to
be over and above that, ought to be a special kind of emphasis,
much like Sputnik scholarships, so that you get momentum, but
some of those things are not in.
But again, when you speak with the President, like I had
the chance yesterday, he ties this very much into energy
because the science and breakthroughs are also the technology
of science and breakthroughs that are going to help energy.
That is the emphasis on science.
So we need to find ways to pay for more than the President
found in his budget and we are going to have to work hard on
that together, and we are pledged to try to do that.
Now, according to my notes, the next Senator would be on
our side. That would be Senators Allen, Alexander, Thomas, and
Salazar.
Senator Allen.
STATEMENT OF HON. GEORGE ALLEN, U.S. SENATOR
FROM VIRGINIA
Senator Allen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank our
witnesses for being here. But I particularly want to applaud
your leadership in holding this hearing on an issue that I
think is so important for the future of this country.
We care about the security of our country. We care about
its competitiveness and we care about preserving our values.
When one thinks of some of the key issues and goals we need for
our country, one is energy independence and the other is
education. This fits into security. This fits into the issue of
competitiveness. Particularly in our energy needs, I think
there is a very good convergence here on why, for our energy
security, we need to be the world capital of innovation.
The President and of course everyone on this committee, as
we went through the energy policy measures last year, talked
not only about development of more resources here in this
country of oil and natural gas, but also ideas such as clean
coal technology, advanced nuclear, biofuels, and other
approaches. We need to understand that we are in competition
with the rest of the world insofar as a lot of issues, but if
we are going to be the world capital of innovation we need to
do more.
One thing that Senator Wyden and I have worked on over the
years is the National Nanotechnology Initiative. Nanotechnology
is a multifaceted field that is going to affect everything from
materials engineering to life sciences, health sciences,
microelectronics, and energy. I was talking with Dr. Orbach
before our hearing on how in the area, for example, of solar
photovoltaics or solar power that shingles can be made using
nanotechnology, not having people look like they have got
sliding glass doors on their roof, but architecturally pleasant
shingles that, with nanotechnology, make solar photovoltaics
much more effective, efficient and practical, as we try to
diversify our energy policies.
I will note, Mr. Chairman, that the President's funding of
the National Nanotechnology Initiative in this upcoming budget
proposal, where this initiative is to have the Federal agencies
work with colleges, universities, States and the private sector
with Federal agencies. The Department of Energy is getting a
big increase in that and I think that is going to pay off.
As far as the competition is concerned, we are in
competition with India and China and other countries. China
insofar as nanotechnology, particularly in the materials
engineering, not only do they graduate eight times as many
engineers and India graduates three or four times as many
engineers, they are like the George Steinbrenner in
nanotechnology and materials engineering. They will pay to get
the best scientists in the world, particularly in these carbon
nanotubes, which are the key ingredient, so to speak, in
materials engineering and these lighter, stronger materials.
So we need to make sure that in this country we are
enticing, incenting, and encouraging more young people to get
interested in science and engineering and in technology. The
others are graduating multiples more.
Then when you look at our engineers who are going to be the
ones designing the inventions, the innovations, the
intellectual property of the future, one-third to 40 percent of
our engineering graduates are from another country, which is
fine, I want America to be the magnet for the best minds in the
world. But for places like India, those young kids talking to
the India Institutes of Technology leaders, those young kids,
by the time they are in middle school, they are focused on
passing their end of high school exams, and they look at that
as their ticket out of poverty.
Now, I grew up in sports, and that is fine. And people may
want to get scholarships in baseball and football and
basketball, and that is a one out of a million. But I guarantee
you that you will have a much better paying job, make this
country more competitive and more secure if you actually are in
the fields of engineering or science or technology.
So what we need to do--and this is why I like this PACE Act
and this hearing that we are having, is it is a step in the
right direction. We need more investment. We need clearly more
talent in this country, in that out of our engineers only about
15 percent are women, 6 percent are Latino, 6 percent are
African American. So we need to entice all people in this
country regardless of gender or race or ethnicity to get
interested in these areas. Some of us have all worked together
in those regards.
But in addition, we need to have the investment in that
talent. I also believe that we need leadership. Working with
Senator Alexander and you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Bingaman, and
others, I aim to provide that leadership, because I think this
is clearly one of the most vital areas for the future success,
competitiveness, and ultimately our standard of life and our
security in this country.
So thank you for this hearing. I look forward to the
testimony of all these witnesses, who I think will help propel
this issue into the future and not just talk, but we need
action, and that action needs to be taken now. We need to be
doubling the number of engineers in this country in the next 10
years. It is that urgent.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank our witnesses.
The Chairman. I have just been thinking about the time here
and I regret that I made a calculating mistake here. I will not
be able to get these witnesses if Senators give opening remarks
and then questions. So, Senator, you have been fortunate.
Senator Allen. Before you figured it out.
The Chairman. Once I figured it out, I did not want to stop
you. So we are going to go now. Everybody will get their turn,
Senators, but I am going to go to the witness. Your statements
are now a part of the record. You will talk to us. We gave you
an allotted time, if you would please try to use it. Tell us,
in your capacity representing the administration, what you
think about the bill and what you recommend. Please proceed.
STATEMENT OF RAYMOND L. ORBACH, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF SCIENCE,
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Mr. Orbach. Senator Domenici, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
Bingaman, members of the committee, thank you for the
opportunity to appear before you to discuss the Pace-Energy
Act. As you noted, the President's American Competitiveness
Initiative, unveiled in his State of the Union message,
demonstrates his commitment to strong and continued U.S.
competitiveness through a national effort in basic science
research and education.
He said: ``Our greatest advantage in the world has always
been our educated, hard-working, ambitious people, and we are
going to keep that edge.''
The State of the Union message and the subsequent release
of the President's fiscal year 2007 budget contained
substantial increases for basic research in the physical
sciences and that is part of that strategy. America's
competitiveness, as you have already noted, is a result of the
ingenuity of the American people and this native ingenuity can
be nurtured and brought to fruition through the application of
the President's American Competitiveness Initiative.
That the Office of Science has been entrusted with this
responsibility is a wonderful statement of confidence in our
ability to support the President's initiative. We are fully
aware that the substantial increases in the Office of Science
budget request for fiscal year 2007 makes us indebted to the
President for his foresight in recognizing the vital importance
of America's continued leadership in the physical sciences.
We are committed to holding up our end of the bargain by
delivering truly transformational science and technologies,
breakthrough advances that will provide new pathways to energy
security and ensure America's continued global economic
leadership in the years ahead.
If I can take Senator Allen's reference to sports, in
tennis the dictum is you never change a winning game. For 50
years our country has benefited from the investment in science
and technology and given us the greatest economy in the world.
We do not want to change that. We want to continue.
The Office of Science trains our next generation of
scientists and engineers. Roughly half of the researchers at
our facilities are university faculty or graduate or
postdoctoral students. The Office of Science is the steward of
government funding for the physical sciences in this country.
The administration welcomes the opportunity to discuss with
you methods to accelerate progress in promising energy
technologies, some of which may well require breakthroughs in
basic science research. These important concerns were
articulated clearly in the Augustine Report.
I wish to thank you again and the committee for the
opportunity to be here and to testify, and I look forward to
answering any questions you may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Orbach follows:]
Prepared Statement of Raymond L. Orbach, Director of the Office of
Science, Department of Energy
Good morning, Chairman Domenici, Ranking Member Bingaman, and
members of the Committee. I am pleased to appear before you to discuss
S. 2197, the Protecting America's Competitive Edge through Energy Act
of 2006--also known as the PACE-Energy Act--which you introduced on
January 26th.
The President's American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI), unveiled
in his State of the Union message, demonstrates the President's strong
commitment to continued U.S. competitiveness through a renewed national
effort in basic scientific research and math education. To repeat the
President's own words: ``We must continue to lead the world in human
talent and creativity. Our greatest advantage in the world has always
been our educated, hardworking, ambitious people--and we're going to
keep that edge. Tonight I announce an American Competitiveness
Initiative, to encourage innovation throughout our economy, and to give
our nation's children a firm grounding in math and science.''
The State of the Union message, and the subsequent release of the
President's FY 2007 budget that contains substantial increases for
basic research in the physical sciences, are all part of the strategy.
America's competitiveness is truly a result of the ingenuity of the
American people. This native ingenuity can be nurtured and brought to
fruition through the precise application of the President's ACI.
The FY 2007 budget includes a $505 million increase in DOE's
Science programs, which is part of a commitment to double funding for
certain high-leverage science agencies over the next ten years. The ACI
recognizes that scientific discovery and understanding help drive
economic strength and security. Developing revolutionary, science-
driven technology is at the heart of the Department of Energy's
mission. The increase proposed for the Department's Science programs
reflects the significant contribution DOE and its world-class research
facilities make to the Nation.
The President's ACI will encourage American innovation and bolster
our ability to compete in the global economy through increased federal
investment in critical areas of research, especially in the physical
sciences and engineering, in large part through DOE's Office of
Science. This initiative will generate scientific and technological
advances for decades to come and will help ensure that future
generations have an even brighter future. The Office of Science is
educating and training our next generation of scientists and engineers.
Roughly half of the researchers at Office of Science-run facilities are
university faculty or graduate or postdoctoral students (who work side
by side with scientists and researchers employed directly by the labs),
and about a third of Office of Science research funds go to
institutions of higher learning.
Finally, the Administration welcomes the opportunity to discuss
with Congress methods to accelerate progress in promising energy
technologies, some of which may well require breakthroughs in basic
science research. These important concerns were articulated very
clearly in the Augustine Report. The specific proposal for the creation
of an ARPA-E is not in the President's budget, and we have concerns
about the creation of this additional mechanism, the resources that
would be required to fund it, and whether there might be alternative
and better ways to accomplish its goals. However, we are ready to work
with you to explore these questions.
The DOE's Office of Science is the steward of government funding
for the physical sciences in this country. We operate 10 national
laboratories, and a number of scientific facilities, that provide
superb facilities for the Nation's scientists, allowing them to perform
multi-disciplinary scientific research at the frontiers of discovery.
Yet, it falls to us to inspire our young people with the possibilities
of science, mathematics, and engineering at DOE facilities, if we are
to maintain our edge.
I thank the Chair and the committee for this opportunity to testify
and look forward to answering any questions you may have.
The Chairman. You had written testimony in addition to
that, did you not?
Mr. Orbach. Yes, sir.
The Chairman. We will ask you some questions about that.
Now we are going to go to the Senators in order. Senator
Allen, you have finished.
Senator Alexander.
STATEMENT OF HON. LAMAR ALEXANDER, U.S. SENATOR
FROM TENNESSEE
Senator Alexander. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for being here, Mr. Orbach. We have all been
looking forward to your appearance and I have several questions
about the PACE Act and I will submit them to you so that you
can answer them in writing, if you would do that, please. But
first let me thank Chairman Domenici and Ranking Member
Bingaman and the members of the committee for their leadership
in this. The PACE Act that we are talking about now has 34
Republican sponsors and 31 Democratic sponsors--that is nearly
two-thirds of the Senate--and 20 of the 22 members of this
committee are co-sponsors of the act. So the ownership of this
idea is all over the Senate and has been for several years.
But we owe a great debt of gratitude to Dr. Vest and the
other members of the National Academy's panel for giving us
what has turned out to be a consensus document, a document that
comes from the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute
of Medicine and the National Academy of Engineering, that
answers the question, what does America need to do over the
next 10 years to keep our advantage in science and technology.
We know that that is the foundation for keeping our--our
effort to keep good jobs from going to China and India, to be
able to fight the war on terror, to be able to innovate our way
so that we can reduce the cost of health care. It is the
foundation for our preeminence in the world and our high
standard of living. So we are grateful to you for that.
We are grateful to the President and the administration for
working with us since early last fall. Most people did not see
the homework sessions that you attended and Senator Domenici
presided over and others attended, which involved many members
of the administration as we worked through the 20
recommendations of the Augustine Commission. So while only a
few of the recommendations are in this committee, many of the
others are in the HELP Committee, which I am a member of, and
we will begin hearings later this month on the parts of the
Augustine Commission report that are in K-12.
My hope is that through this committee and the HELP
Committee and the Commerce Committee and the Finance Committee
that we will find a way to take all 20 of the recommendations
to the floor of the Senate. Senator Domenici and other
committee chairmen and the leadership are going to have to
figure out how to do that. It is a little bit above my pay
grade, but I think we are on a track to do that.
I would like to make one other preliminary comment and then
ask you questions. We talk a lot about having a pro-growth
agenda in the Senate. We especially talk about that on the
Republican side of the aisle. It is not our term exclusively.
And then we go directly to low taxes. In my experience as a
Governor, low taxes are a part of a pro-growth agenda, but not
the only part.
I believe an indispensable foundation for a pro-growth
agenda for the United States of America is to maintain our
advantage in science and technology and that the Augustine
Report provides a specific answer to the question on how to do
that. So we need to do it as a whole, all 20 parts, and that is
why it is so significant that we have 65 Senators of both
parties supporting it.
Now, let me begin with this question and then when my time
expires I will submit the rest of the questions in writing. In
this, in the PACE Act, although it was not in the Augustine
Report, is a provision that Senators Domenici and Bingaman and
I put in which would create up to 100 distinguished scientists
with joint appointments at national laboratories, of which
there are 17 in our country, I believe, and our major research
universities.
It is based on a model that the Department of Energy began
20 years ago at the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge
National Laboratory, which in my opinion has proved very
successful. Our idea is that the Federal Government will put up
$1 million each year for an academy-level distinguished
scientist and that the State and the university would then
apply to you, to your Department, and they would compete for
these, and set up these little centers of extraordinary
excellence headed by a distinguished scientist. We might do 10
or 15 a year as long as it continued to attract outstanding
people.
Now, that was not in the PACE report, but what would be
your attitude about that proposal and its effectiveness as you
have looked at the last 20-year model at the University of
Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory? I might add, this
is for the whole country; this is not just for the University
of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Lab?
Mr. Orbach. I have to say that that model has worked
extraordinarily well. Another feature of it was the
introduction of specific fields both at the university and at
Oak Ridge by picking individuals of exceptional caliber in
areas of need. That led the way to major advances.
The administration has not yet taken a formal position, but
I can say personally that bringing the very best people to our
laboratories, giving them the opportunity to have the freedom
to work on projects that are essential to our country, has been
a proven vehicle for innovation and discovery.
Senator Alexander. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman,
may I submit questions in writing to Mr. Orbach and then ask
him to provide answers? Senator Domenici is on a pretty fast
track here and we would like to have your comments on our
legislation so that we can incorporate your ideas in addition
to the suggestions you have already given us.
Thank you for your time.
The Chairman. I thank you for that, and I think that is
correct and we would like you to do that.
Mr. Orbach. I would be pleased.
The Chairman. I do not know whether you can right now
figure out how long that would take, but could you advise us
when you get back to your office with your staff how long
before you could do what we are asking you?
Mr. Orbach. Yes, we will work as quickly as possible.
The Chairman. I understand, but then could you give us a 2
weeks or 10 days, just for our own work? Just tell us what you
think it is?
Mr. Orbach. Yes, we will.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Now we are going to proceed. We are going to stay on this
side a little bit longer because they were here for a long
time, if you do not mind.
Senator Thomas.
STATEMENT OF HON. CRAIG THOMAS, U.S. SENATOR
FROM WYOMING
Senator Thomas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Then we will go to you, Senator Salazar.
Senator Thomas. I guess it is fairly apparent that we are
all very much oriented and supportive of moving forward in this
area. It is part, of course, with respect to energy what we did
in our energy policy last year, and that is to say we have to
be looking forward to what happens, and I certainly support
that.
I must confess, however, that as we look at research, why,
I get a little concerned about how are we going to make sure we
orient this toward the needs that we have here? Research sort
of becomes just sort of an academic function from time to time
and goes on and on, as opposed to being oriented. So how would
you suggest that we at least put priorities in some of this to
actually accomplishing some of the things we need to do for our
energy independence?
Mr. Orbach. The PACE Acts actually are helpful in that
regard in that they are focused on the energy needs of our
country. There has been a groundswell of enthusiasm and
interest on the part of both our researchers and our students
in energy, exactly as you said, and I believe that we can
attract the very best of our young people into this field by
providing support, research support and opportunities for
innovation and development leading toward energy security.
I think a targeted program of that sort will produce
hopefully the breakthroughs that we need. We call them
transformational opportunities for energy.
Senator Thomas. What will be the basis for your targets?
Mr. Orbach. We have chosen two primary areas in the Office
of Science. One is biological, interestingly enough, what we
call systems biology, to mimic what nature does, but do it
synthetically in order to arrive at new energy sources, for
example taking solar energy and producing fuels, mimicking in a
way what happens in photosynthesis.
We also have a focus on solar energy. Solar is a huge
resource which we use relatively inefficiently and the idea of
not only electricity, but, as I just said, fuels, which brings
together the physical and the biological sciences in an
integrated fashion, to me and to our Secretary I believe are
some of the most exciting opportunities.
Senator Thomas. I am going to run out of time here shortly.
I hope that we can have some direction because research can go
on forever, and we have some needs here that has to be
resolved. So how do you, or do you, intend to involve the
industry, for example?
We have at least two areas here. One of them is out 50
years and that is one thing. Another is 5 years from now as to
how we do some things differently than we are doing now. So I
guess my question is how do we bring in specifically the needs
of the industry to supply our needs into what you are doing.
Mr. Orbach. It needs to be a staged operation. For example,
I would say in the near term nuclear energy would be a great
opportunity for the production of electricity, for example. The
cellulose to ethanol that the President addressed specifically,
we think we can do proof of principle, but it is going to
take--it is a tough business--5 to 10 years before it is truly
competitive. But if we do not start now, we will not arrive at
that point.
Senator Thomas. I understand. I just am urging that we have
some sort of diversity in research so that we deal with more
than one problem out there and that we bring the industry in a
little bit and other people in to what the needs are, so that
research just does not go on forever without pointing at some
fairly specific objective.
Mr. Orbach. My understanding is that industry is very keen
to work with us and is looking for opportunities that come from
research.
Senator Thomas. The other thing, when you continue to talk
about getting people into the industry, that is part of the
function of the marketplace, is when there is more demand for
those kinds of people there ought to be more movement in that
direction. You do not have to go down to the third grade
necessarily as much as you do to provide good opportunities for
people to be able to see those opportunities in order to make
things happen.
So I am a little reluctant to be totally into the academic
here. We have some purposes that we have to really resolve. So
thank you.
The Chairman. Are you finished?
Senator Thomas. Yes, sir.
The Chairman. All right, we are going to go now to the
other side. Senator Salazar. First might I say that we all are
very pleased that you are such a participant. You do come to
all our meetings and work on this and I am very proud to have
you on the committee and I thank you for your effort. In
particular yesterday when we met with the President, I thought
your comments about your ideas were excellent and I wanted to
share that with you.
STATEMENT OF HON. KEN SALAZAR, U.S. SENATOR
FROM COLORADO
Senator Salazar. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Let me first say, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Bingaman
and members of the committee, I think that the bipartisan
approach that this committee took last year on the National
Energy Policy Act is again reflected here in our support of the
PACE Act. It is my fervent hope that we continue to work on a
new chapter of national energy policy, and I think, with the
President's leadership and the bipartisan leadership of this
committee, that we can see a whole new chapter of energy policy
for our country.
Let me also say that as we look at part of that energy
policy I think all of us recognize that renewables are going to
be a part of that and, with the President's visit to the
National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden next week, it may be
possible for some of you to participate in that event since we
will be on recess.
Now to the PACE Act, let me just say I think the outpouring
of support that we have seen for this legislation in the Senate
I think speaks to the unity that we have with respect to the
importance of this program and this legislation that we are
considering.
My question to you, Dr. Orbach, has to do with the national
labs and how the program would work with respect to the
training of teachers in the math and sciences. That is a key
component of the act. We have a shortage obviously of the
training of teachers in math and science, and I am wondering
whether you could respond to the opportunity of how we hook up
our DOE labs to the training of teachers in our K-12 system.
Mr. Orbach. This is something that we are committed to. Our
national laboratories already do have summer institutes to
bring K-12 teachers to the laboratories and their students, and
we have pretty firm evidence that it has worked well on a
modest scale. I think the opportunity to enhance the number of
teachers that we bring--indeed, the fiscal year 2007 budget
would triple the number of teachers that we bring to our
laboratories, but it is still small. It is about 300.
The laboratories themselves have expressed significant
interest. NREL for example that you made reference to is an
example of a laboratory that works with K-12. We see that
across the spectrum, and I think this is a resource really for
our country to take advantage of. So I would support that part
very strongly.
Senator Salazar. If you were to describe the funding that
is being proposed in the President's budget for that component
of the program, is it sufficient, insufficient? Do we have to
do a lot more? At some point it seems to me that the 17 labs
reach a capacity limitation in terms of what they can do
relative to training, or maybe I am wrong on that assumption.
But what do you--if money was not a barrier, what is the
capacity, if you will, of the DOE labs to provide this kind of
training to math and science teachers across the country? Three
hundred teachers is not very much, I will tell you, because if
you look at the number of teachers that we have just in my
little old State of Colorado, we have about 30,000 teachers. So
we are not training very many teachers.
So I guess the question is what is the capacity?
Mr. Orbach. I do not know if we know the answer to your
question. I should say that these teachers who go through our
programs have become the mentors of their colleagues in their
districts. We follow up on the ones who went through the
program and they stand out in their district. So there is a
multiplier effect that occurs.
The budget that we submitted will, as I say, triple the
number. I cannot answer your question in terms of how many we
could in fact absorb. We are learning how to do it, but I think
the opportunities in the laboratories are significant and I am
very pleased to pursue that, just given the success that we
have had.
We have had some quantitative estimates of the impact. At
Thomas Jefferson Laboratory, for example, there is a program
called BEAMS and this is primarily for schools with a very
diverse student body and relatively low income students. We
followed the students through the Virginia examinations in both
science and mathematics for those who went through the program
and then measured that performance against students who had
not. They do better by almost a factor of two in mathematics.
So we think that these are proven programs and we have
quantitative evidence of how well they have worked. So we are
very supportive and, as I said, the President's budget will
triple the number that we currently have.
Senator Salazar. I appreciate your leadership and we very
much look forward to working with you, Dr. Orbach.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator.
All right. We will go to you, Senator Craig. I think you
were first.
STATEMENT OF HON. LARRY E. CRAIG, U.S. SENATOR
FROM IDAHO
Senator Craig. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be very
brief.
We are pleased to have you before us, doctor. I guess I
will only make a brief statement. You can respond to it if you
wish, but I am here to listen to, obviously, the other
witnesses, and have been a bit of a student of the Augustine
Report, find its value, and am extremely pleased that we are
moving as aggressively as we are to shape this legislation. I
want to thank the chairman, Senator Alexander, and others who
have been up front on this.
My question to you is this. I look around the room today,
there are a variety, a fair number of young people sitting in
the back audience listening. What do we do to turn them on? We
are a wealthy, comfortable society today. We bask in our
wealth. We have phenomenal free time. We luxuriate in it. What
turns on a young person to achieve as aggressively as we will
need them to achieve in the future to be what we want to
continue to be?
I say that for this simple fact. If a student graduating
from any high school today entering a State university and
becoming a freshman student in engineering cannot deal with
university calculus upon entry but has to take a refresher
course, only 15 percent of them will make it through and
graduate as an engineer. But if they can start at university
level and go on and not take the refresher course in calculus,
80 percent of them will graduate as engineers.
I know what we are attempting to do with PACE. I will
support it and applaud it. But I as a very young person
remember the beep, beep, beep of Sputnik and the panic our
country went into because someone was in front of us, ahead of
us, and beating us. In the early 60's we established the
National Defense Education Act and we challenged young people
to get with it, and boy, did they ever, and the rest is
history.
I do not sense that emergency today. I sense an urgency. I
believe we are in a national energy crisis that is sapping our
economy and ultimately destroying the luxury and the wealth
that these young people bask in today.
How do we turn our country on? Just by spending money or by
a national movement, a cause, a deadline? You see, I do not
think we ought to be just energy sufficient. I think it really
ought to be a national goal that we are independent. Now, I am
a wonk on energy and I will sit here and say, well, gee,
Senator, you really cannot get there, you cannot do that. I
mean, we can do this and we can do that, and we have got all
these new technologies, but we really can never be independent.
Why not? Well, how do you define it? Less than or a lack of
dependency, that is what independence is.
Well, that is a frustration I have, and I know we strive
and we will spend billions of dollars getting there somehow. We
are going to try. But I want to know what is going to make a
young person study harder. I want to know what is going to
challenge them to be better than they are today, what is going
to make them prepare and be university-ready. Is it our
educational system? Is it that we have not funded it well
enough? Or is there a need for a national driver, a belief, an
idea, a goal, a challenge, that somehow we just cannot quite
get to yet because of our wealth and our sense of comfort
today? I do not know and I am not sure that we get it here.
Mr. Orbach. I am a child of the Sputnik generation.
Senator Craig. Likewise.
Mr. Orbach. And I can tell you that the verve, the
commitment of this country to catch up and surpass was what
drove me and I suspect yourself as well. I believe that the
energy crisis that we are in the middle of----
Senator Craig. Well, you just used the right word,
``crisis.'' How many others are using that?
Mr. Orbach. I think it is generally accepted it is a
serious moment, and I think you outlined very beautifully the
reasons why it is a crisis.
I believe that our young people are motivated and that if
we can give them the opportunity to contribute they will. My
own belief is that young people are excited by discovery and I
want to make the discoveries here in the United States. So it
is critical to me that our science is the best in the world and
that we make the discoveries here with our graduate students
and our undergraduate students and that kids in K-12 see it,
sense the excitement, and join the movement.
It has happened before and I believe it will happen again.
Senator Craig. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Larry.
Senator Akaka.
STATEMENT OF HON. DANIEL K. AKAKA, U.S. SENATOR
FROM HAWAII
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to
thank you and the ranking member for your leadership in energy
across our country. I also want to thank my dear friend Senator
Craig for his remarks because I feel that it is so important to
our country, and also the remarks of my friend from Colorado.
I would like to put it in--what has happened since 2001. In
2001 the Hart-Rudman Commission did come out to say that there
was a deep need for a workforce skilled in science, math,
computer science, and engineering. That was in 2001, and what
Larry Craig is talking about is what has happened since then. I
would say that their note of the need in 2001 is the same need
we have in 2006. What happened in 5 years?
So what is being expressed here is a deep concern that we
have to move on this and, as Larry Craig was mentioning, we
have to get to our young people, to inspire them to want to
make a difference. That difference is being a global leader in
energy in the world. The big question is can we do that? Do we
have the skilled people that can do that? That is the question
that we have to deal with today.
[The prepared statement of Senator Akaka follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Daniel K. Akaka, U.S. Senator From Hawaii
Mr. Chairman, thank you for calling this hearing on S. 2197, the
PACE-Energy Act. I am pleased that we are joined today by such a
distinguished panel of experts to testify on this important initiative.
In 2001, the Hart-Rudman Commission said that America needs a
workforce skilled in science, math, computer science, and engineering.
They said that the failure to foster these skills was jeopardizing
America's position as a global leader. The Commission also found that
the maintenance of American power in the world depends upon the quality
of U.S. government personnel. It requires employees with more expertise
in more countries, regions, and issues. This includes a commitment to
language education.
What has changed in five years? Very little. The Commission was
right in 2001. The same Commission could reach the same conclusion in
2006. It pains me to say this because some of us in Congress have been
trying to get action for years.
Four years ago, Senator Durbin and I joined forces with a
bipartisan group of Senators to introduce legislation to strengthen
national security by encouraging the development and expansion of
programs to meet critical needs in science, math, and foreign languages
at the elementary, secondary, and higher education levels. I also
introduced legislation to strengthen education opportunities for
federal employees in these critical areas, and improve the government's
recruitment and retention of individuals possessing these skills. Last
year, Senators Cochran, Dodd, and I introduced legislation to develop a
national foreign language strategy. Right now, I am working with
Senator Durbin to strengthen the Homeland Security Education Act from
the 108th Congress, which we look forward to introducing shortly.
Some of these proposals have become law. Others were passed by the
Senate, but the House refused to consider them. The Intelligence Reform
Act of 2004 established two things promoted in our legislation. First,
a rotation program to help mid-level federal employees in the
Intelligence Community improve their skills. And second, a scholarship
program for individuals who possess critical skills, especially those
in science, math, and foreign language, in exchange for service with
the federal government.
Still, America should rightly ask: why has it been so hard to make
even these modest improvements? Especially when there have been
numerous national studies and commissions that conclude we need to do
better at educating Americans.
As many of my colleagues on this Committee know, I began my
professional career as an educator. Fighting to ensure a prosperous
future for our country and for Hawaii's children is why I am in
Congress today. That is one of many reasons that I signed on as a
cosponsor to S. 2197. I believe that this bill is a timely proposal
that can make a real difference, for both the short-and long-term, in
the United States's global competitiveness in science and energy
technology. By providing support for mathematics and science education
at all levels through the resources available through the Department of
Energy, including at the National Laboratories, I believe that this
bill takes the important step of giving the next generation the tools
they need to be successful in tomorrow's global economy.
Thank you Mr. Chairman. I have some concerns and questions that I
will ask during the question and answer period.
Senator Akaka. So Dr. Orbach, I want to tell you I am so
happy to see you here this morning. You can in your position
make a big difference in all of this, being Director of the
Office of Science, and as you promote hydrogen, fusion, and
other cutting edge energy initiatives. These are all important
to our young people and our skilled workers in our country.
This is, as you mentioned, critical for America's
competitiveness. I support the goals of the PACE bill.
I want to follow up on financing for these proposed
education initiatives since I noted concerns in your testimony.
If I understand correctly, three-tenths percent of the total
Department of Energy appropriations would be set aside for a
math, science, and engineering education fund. Second, there
would be a revolving fund established in the Treasury
Department that would help fund the Advanced Research Projects
Authority for the Department of Energy, if I understand that.
I am interested in any comments you may have or additional
thoughts you may have on these two provisions in particular
about financing promising energy technologies and encouraging
scientific education and teaching. I am asking for your
comments and your thoughts. Thank you.
Mr. Orbach. The administration has not yet thoroughly
analyzed those parts of the bill and I will be pleased to
respond for the record on the details of the questions you
asked. With regard to the .3 percent, we also are looking
within the Department of Energy at that particular issue. I
should say that if you take the current expenditures on
education directly from my office and the national
laboratories, it actually exceeds that particular percentage.
But we will get the details to you explicitly.
[The information referred to follows:]
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 already amended the Science
Education Enhancement Act to include a provision for a
``Science Education Enhancement Fund'', composed of ``not less
than 0.3 percent of the amount made available to the Department
for research, development, demonstration, and commercial
application''. The PACE-Energy Act would further amend the same
section of the Science Education Enhancement Act to change the
title of the fund to the ``Mathematics, Science, and
Engineering Fund'', in the same amount as the Energy Policy Act
provision.
The 0.3 percent set aside for the ``Math, Science, and
Engineering Education Fund'' would amount to roughly $40
million dollars a year when applied against all research,
development, demonstration, and commercial application funding
within the Department. If you include all sources of funding
for education, including direct funding by DOE as well as
education programs funded by the national laboratories you will
find that DOE funding exceeds the figure called for in the
PACE-Energy and Energy Policy Acts.
Senator Akaka. May I pose another question? I have
previously spoken about the need to rely less on oil and
natural resources--even the President has mentioned this--and
look more toward the use of advanced technology to facilitate
renewable energy resources. The PACE-Energy bill includes a
provision to establish the Advanced Research Projects
Authority-Energy. This organization will be headed by a newly
appointed director who will have authority to award competitive
merit-based grants, cooperative agreements and contracts to
public or private entities.
Given that this office will be charged with rapidly
developing critical energy technologies, do you anticipate that
the director would have any special acquisition authorities to
expedite the research and development? And if so, will you
ensure that the efforts of the ARPA-E office will not result in
loosely managed resource projects that do not yield the desired
results?
Mr. Orbach. It would be premature for me to comment on that
specific recommendation. Again, the administration is looking
at it and would be pleased to respond for the record. The
Energy Policy Act gives the Department additional tools for
acquisition beyond the FAR in the Federal Government and
therefore we have tools that I believe can address the issues
that you raise. Certainly we would have every desire that that
money be extraordinarily well spent.
[The information referred to follows:]
The Administration and the Department of Energy are in the
process of evaluating the provisions of S. 2197, the Protecting
America's Competitive Edge through Energy Act of 2006--
including the ARPA-E provisions. As our assessment proceeds,
however we would be happy to discuss our views on ARPA-E or
possible alternatives with you or your staff.
Senator Akaka. Thank you very much for your response.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My time has expired.
The Chairman. Thank you.
Mr. Orbach, could I ask a couple of questions, please. I
understand from your testimony that the Department has not yet
formed an opinion on the proposal for an Advanced Research
Program Authority.
Mr. Orbach. Yes, sir, that is correct.
The Chairman. Is that correct? But I am pleased that you
are open to discussing it, right?
Mr. Orbach. Yes, we would be delighted to work with you on
the definition of that and the primary reason for it, namely
the rapid transmittal of true transformational technologies
into the market, which I believe to be the driving force.
The Chairman. Yes. This year's budget represents an
increase in the DOE Office of Science and that would be about a
14 percent increase over 2006. That would allow you to do what
you can to increase your activities. From what you know, do you
have a program capacity to handle that and spend it on valuable
activities?
Mr. Orbach. Mr. Chairman, first of all, we are blessed by
the President's confidence in us. We believe we can spend those
funds well for the purposes that you have so clearly
articulated in your opening remarks. About half of that, that
increase, would be used to operate our current facilities, to
bring them up to as close to optimum as we can, and the other
half is for research, to go into our universities and
laboratories to fund research.
There is also in the core of the budget, we call it order
of magnitude dominance, if I can use that phrase. We need to
build the facilities for our scientists and students that are
world leadership, and we will be rolling out, as a consequence
of the President's confidence in us and this budget increase,
facilities that will dominate research for a decade at least
and will give our scientists opportunities that no one else
will have on a competitive basis, but it will be done here.
So we view this wonderful increase as an opportunity to,
frankly, to show our stuff and show what we can deliver.
The Chairman. What is the acronym for the inflexible money
that the Department of Energy uses through its laboratories?
Mr. Orbach. It is called the alternate financing. I have
forgotten the name.
The Chairman. LDRD.
Mr. Orbach. Well, LDRD is a vehicle that all of our
laboratories use to do very high-risk development and to, as
you well know, move us into new areas of opportunity. I was
actually referring to the acquisition----
The Chairman. I understand, but I am on another point. Now,
you concur in the office you hold with the assessment by those
who now are vested with that flexible money that that is a very
exciting way to make--to apply resources so that you get real
breakthroughs?
Mr. Orbach. Absolutely, and it is quick and it is targeted.
We review it as well. It has proven to be a major nourishment
for innovation at our laboratories.
The Chairman. Now, I wonder--and I will ask the other two
witnesses later. The report says we should continue that, but
it also says that--and we are going to try in this
legislation--that we should tell ever other major institution
that funds science that they ought to have something like this
LDRD. Call it something else, but 8 percent or 10 percent that
is flexible, to be directed by the institution, as we are doing
now.
I wonder what you would think if, in addition to that, we
said that for the foreseeable future you have to direct as much
of that as possible at energy technology, energy science and
technology development. What would your thoughts be?
Mr. Orbach. Well, I believe we are doing just that.
The Chairman. Well, you are, but what if we had everybody
do it?
Mr. Orbach. I can only speak, sir, for----
The Chairman. But you are a scientist and you know what is
happening in the country. I am wondering, since we are kind of
dancing around here wondering how much of this bill is for
energy independence and how much of it is to develop our
science base, and can there be a commonality, I am just
wondering would you think it would be a good idea to apply it
more broadly?
Mr. Orbach. In answer to Senator Craig's question, I
indicated that the young people of this country are really
excited by opportunities, and the answer to your question, Mr.
Chairman, I believe is yes. I think that you would find a
resonance with young people and with senior researchers who
would take advantage of these opportunities and really do some
exciting things.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Senator Bingaman.
Senator Bingaman. Thank you very much.
Let me just understand. I believe I understood you
correctly to say that in the budget proposal you are proposing
to triple the number of teachers that you are able to train in
summer institutes at the labs and you will be able to train
under this new proposal 300, which means you are currently
training 100?
Mr. Orbach. That is correct, 108 to be precise.
Senator Bingaman. 108 nationwide?
Mr. Orbach. Yes, sir.
Senator Bingaman. That hardly registers on the Richter
scale compared to the size of the problem that we have to deal
with here. I mean, I think it is a good thing to do. Obviously,
I think it is a great opportunity for those 108 teachers and it
will be for the 300 as well. But it is not a real solution to
our problems of training science and math teachers for our
public schools. Would you agree with that?
Mr. Orbach. Well, I believe that it is a realistic estimate
that we can make work in the President's fiscal year 2007
budget.
Senator Bingaman. I do not disagree with that and I
compliment the President for asking for enough money to train
300. But I am just saying it is not a realistic solution to the
magnitude of the problem. The magnitude of the problem requires
a much, much greater effort than anything that we are
discussing here, would you agree with that, or that is in your
budget, I guess I should say?
Mr. Orbach. The budget is a carefully crafted document. As
the chairman indicated, it represents a 14 percent increase. It
is our view that the balance that we have in the document is
appropriate. The needs are indeed significant across our
country, but I think that we know we can deliver on this.
Senator Bingaman. Let me tell you a sort of a gnawing
concern I have got about us putting the additional
responsibility that is called for in this act for math and
science education in the Department of Energy. I have been
here, most of my colleagues have been here, over a couple of
decades now and we have watched the issue of science education,
math education, in the Department of Energy sort of ebb and
flow. I can remember when Admiral Watkins was our Secretary of
Energy. He was committed to doing more through the Department
of Energy to improve math and science education in the country
and he spoke about it and he advocated for it and he was a
great champion.
Some of the others who followed him have not had that same
perspective. Not that they were anti-math and science, but just
they did not see it as their primary job. It was someone else's
job. We have a Department of Education and their view was that
is their job, it is not our job.
Are we trying to put a square peg in a round hole here by
saying, no, no, we are going to make this a significant mission
of the Department of Energy? I mean, are we not running the
risk that future secretaries, not Secretary Bodman but future
secretaries, may or may not embrace this as a significant
responsibility and may or may not have any real desire to do
something here?
When you get into a period of constrained budgets, you have
got to cut somewhere. This is a pretty good place to cut if you
have got a lot of other responsibilities for the nuclear
weapons program, for all sorts of other things. So how do you
respond to that? Are we trying to force-feed the Department of
Energy to do stuff that the Department is not naturally
designed to pursue?
Mr. Orbach. Senator, I believe our Department is not only
capable and eager to pursue it, but I think you have a
constellation of stars that gives us in the next 3 years
opportunities to really do something significant along the
lines of Admiral Watkins. The President has made a personal
commitment in the State of the Union. Secretary Bodman is a
product of one of our finest universities and a faculty member
at that university. He is committed to education. I believe
that what we can do in the next 3 years is to lay such a
successful initiative, using the resources of the Department to
which you referred, that it will be self-sustaining. It is
impossible to predict what will happen many years from now, but
the need is here and I think the resources of the Department
that you and your colleagues have correctly identified are
opportunities for our country.
With the President's initiative and Secretary Bodman's
support, I believe you will have a significant force for the
future.
Senator Bingaman. Thank you very much.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator Bingaman.
Senator Craig.
Senator Craig. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.
I have no further questions, Doctor. We will look forward
to working with you.
The Chairman. Doctor, we look forward to working with you
and certainly we hope that personnel-wise that you are looking
around to make sure that you have the capacity to get on with
some of these things. I know you are going to change hats, but
you are still going to be in the same area.
We note that in some of the projects that we put into the
Energy Policy Act we said let us have loan guarantees for these
projects and it turns out it takes an awful lot of time to go
from the legislation to getting something. We are not on a slow
path here. We cannot have you tell us in 8 months we will have
three people hired to do this. You know what we are going to
do. The President is going to get close to his and more. So we
are urging that you push.
Thank you very much and we look forward to working with
you.
Next panel, please.
Mr. Orbach. Thank you.
The Chairman. Dr. Vest, president emeritus of MIT, you are
a member of the commission that wrote the report, we thank you
for your generous time. And Dr. Luis Proenza----
Mr. Proenza. Yes, sir.
The Chairman [continuing]. President of the University of
Akron, chairman of the Committee on Science and Math Education
of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board. We are very pleased
to have you and we understand you have a special expertise
related to what we are talking about as it pertains to the
national laboratories, and that has been one of your areas of
study. We found you and we are glad we did.
I want to just real quickly state five items. This bill
doubles over 10 years the funding for the Office of Science in
the Department. It improves the skills of 50,000 math and
science teachers each year through summer institutes managed by
the national laboratories. It creates opportunities for 50,000
math and science teachers to pursue master's degrees in
teaching through programs hosted by the laboratories. It brings
national scientists into the classrooms as teachers and mentors
for tens of thousands of classroom hours and it creates an
innovative new agency called ARPA-E, modeled after ARPA-E, and
that is still in a state of development.
With that, each of you have testimony. It will be made a
part of the record and then we will ask you, starting with you,
Dr. Vest, to give us your oral testimony and then we will
inquire.
STATEMENT OF CHARLES M. VEST, PRESIDENT EMERITUS, MASSACHUSETTS
INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Mr. Vest. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for the
opportunity to be here today to discuss S. 2197, part of a
comprehensive legislation package to help ensure America's
future leadership and prosperity. Above all, our committee, the
Augustine Committee, thanks all of you for your leadership in
this regard.
The National Academies committee outlined a bold,
comprehensive and strategic program for our Nation. We are
pleased that so many of our recommendations are reflected in
the PACE legislation and that the President's American
Competitiveness Initiative is so consistent with them. America
today leads the world in science and technology and is the most
innovative nation on our planet. Our strong economy builds on
two national assets: a firm base of science and technology; and
a free market economy.
So why should we be worried about the future? Our committee
believes we should be deeply worried because we have come to
take our leadership and lifestyle for granted, and that can
lead in only one direction, down. Our Nation must compete
globally and simultaneously maintain our standard of living.
This is a herculean task. It can only be achieved through
concerted effort, the kind of concerted effort that can be
driven by the PACE legislation.
What does competing in a knowledge-based economy require?
Two things. First, that we educate a workforce and leadership
that can create and perform the well-paying jobs of the future;
and second, that knowledge from basic research move quickly and
efficiently to markets with products, services, and jobs. That
is indeed what we mean by the word ``innovation.'' Our future
economy, security, health, and quality of life require
aggressive investment now in education and research and also
improvement of the policy and tax environment that enable
innovation and entrepreneurial activity to flourish.
I believe we must see globalization as an opportunity as
well as a challenge. But leadership and economic strength are
not birth rights. They must be earned every day. The
recommendations of the Augustine Committee, the National
Innovation Initiative, and other recent reports all point in
the same direction.
The PACE Acts and the American Competitiveness Initiative
address the urgent task of building a sound base for our future
and that of our children and grandchildren. PACE is broadly
consistent with the Augustine Committee's recommendations.
I also would like to state that I believe that it is
fitting that much of this legislation has been spearheaded in
the Energy and Natural Resources Committee because energy,
innovation, U.S. competitiveness are all intimately
intertwined. I would cite four brief reasons for this.
First, supplying our Nation and indeed the world with safe,
clean, affordable, secure, and sustainable energy is a
prerequisite to prosperity.
Second, the Department of Energy is currently responsible
for 40 percent of Federal investment in physical science, as
well as about 14 percent of the Federal basic research
investments in mathematics and computing, environmental
sciences, and engineering.
Third, producing and distributing electricity, heat, and
transportation while protecting our environment arguably is our
most urgent challenge and it certainly is one, getting back to
some of the things Senator Craig remarked upon, it certainly is
one that can inspire, create, and draw upon a new generation of
scientists, engineers, and innovators.
Fourth, if America grasps commanding leadership in clean
and economical energy technologies there will be vast
international markets for them. I am always astounded that that
rarely makes it into the discussions of why we are so keen on
these areas.
Permit me to make a blunt observation. In recent decades,
many of our best minds were not attracted into energy science
and technology. We in the universities allowed energy to slip
into the academic backwaters. Neither our energy companies nor
our national laboratories nor the entrepreneurial community
applied enough intellectual and financial muscle to energy. We
have grown complacent in the face of a monumental challenge.
I apologize for trampling on the toes of those few who have
been dedicated to these issues, but on the whole I believe my
observation is accurate. Today, however, the larger scientific
and engineering communities are awakening to the challenge of
our looming energy crisis. But concerted action and investment
are necessary to enlist our most talented researchers and
innovators.
One such investment, I believe and our committee believes,
could be ARPA-E, and in discussion I would be happy to discuss
my perspective with this on the committee.
Finally, I would like to briefly address the two arguments
that have been directed by some against the recommendations of
the Augustine Committee. First, some have stated that America's
lead in science and engineering innovation is so great that
there is no urgency for change. Our committee believes this
proposition is both incorrect and dangerous. In my view there
is a commanding urgency to these problems. Complacency is our
enemy, not our refuge. I would refer you and your staffs to my
written testimony, where I have fleshed this point out a little
bit further.
Second, some critics have stated that there is no current
shortage of engineers and scientists and therefore no reason to
worry about increasing their numbers. Our committee believes
that in a knowledge age we need more, not fewer, people who can
generate and use new knowledge. We need more future engineers,
scientists, mathematicians, and computer scientists because
they will create new products, services, and new jobs. Jobs
follow the investment in science, not the other way around.
Thank you very much for the opportunity to address PACE-
Energy from the perspective of the National Academy's report,
``Rising Above the Gathering Storm.'' I have further comments
in my written testimony. It is a real privilege--and I
sincerely mean that--a real privilege to work together to
enable our Nation to prosper in the 21st century. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Vest follows:]
Prepared Statement of Charles M. Vest, President Emeritus,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Member, Committee on
Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century Committee on
Science, Engineering, and Public Policy Division on Policy and Global
Affairs, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering,
Institute of Medicine
Chairman Domenici, Ranking Member Bingaman, Members of the
Committee.
I am Charles Vest, former president of MIT. I was privileged to
serve under Norman Augustine as a member of the National Academy of
Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine's
committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century that
produced the report Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and
Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future. I also am the past
vice chair of the Council on Competitiveness that developed the
National Innovation Initiative, and am a member of the President's
Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. In 2003, I chaired the
Secretary of Energy Advisory Board's Task Force on the Future of
Science Programs at the Department of Energy.
INTRODUCTION
It is an honor to contribute to your discussion today of S. 2197,
the Protecting America's Competitive Edge through Energy Act of 2006,
(the PACE-Energy Act) part of a comprehensive package of legislation
you have introduced to help ensure continued American leadership and
prosperity in the rapidly evolving global, knowledge-based economy of
this new century.
Above all, on behalf of our committee, thank you for your
leadership.
America today leads the world in science and technology, and I
believe that we are the most innovative nation on the planet. Our
economy, which is strong, builds on two great national assets--a strong
base of science and technology and a free-market economy.
So why should we be worried about the future?
We must be deeply worried about the future, because we have come to
take our leadership and lifestyle for granted, and continuing to do so
will lead in only one direction--down. Our nation must not only
innovate and compete globally, but we must do it in such a manner that
we can maintain our American standard of living. This is a Herculean
task that will not be achieved without a concerted effort--the kind of
concerted effort that can be driven by the PACE legislation.
What does competing in a knowledge-based economy require? It
requires that we educate a workforce and leadership that can create and
perform the well-paying jobs of the future. It requires that new
knowledge be continually generated and moved into the marketplace fast
and effectively. This is what we mean by innovation. The knowledge that
is required to produce new products, services, and jobs will in large
measure be technical, spawned by basic research in science, mathematics
and engineering.
Our future economy, security, health, and quality of life depend
upon our aggressiveness in investing now in American education and
research, and in maintaining and enhancing a policy and tax environment
that will allow innovation and entrepreneurial activity to flourish in
American and in our industries' operations throughout the world. We
must see globalization as an opportunity as well as a challenge. But
our leadership and economic strength are not a birthright. We must earn
them day in and day out. The recommendations of the Augustine
Committee, the National Innovation Initiative, and indeed several other
recent reports, including those by the President's Council of Advisors
on Science and Technology and the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board,
all point in the same direction. The PACE bills and the American
Competitiveness Initiative begin the urgent task of building a sound
base for our future and that of our children and grandchildren.
The National Academies' recommendations outlined a bold,
comprehensive and strategic program for the nation. Our committee is
pleased that so many of our recommendations are reflected in the PACE
legislation and that the President's American Competitiveness
Initiative is so consistent with them. We further hope that our
analysis of the issues facing the country, which draws upon and
consolidates the work of many other dedicated groups, is helpful to you
and you colleagues.
The PACE legislation package is harmonious with our recommendations
for educating a new workforce and leadership in science and
engineering. This critical challenge spans from K-12 through doctoral
and post-doctoral education. We are particularly pleased that the PACE
Acts include major programs across agencies to provide scholarships for
students who study science, engineering, or mathematics and
concurrently earn certification and commit to teaching. We believe that
the bills' programs to strengthen skills of teachers through masters
programs, workshops, and training for effective Advance Placement and
International Baccalaureate instruction are excellent. I will not dwell
on the bulk of these programs, because they are contained in
S. 2198 the PACE-Education Act, which will be the object of a
subsequent hearing. However, I will note that our committee's primary
hope is that such programs will be put in place quickly and
effectively.
In my view it is especially appropriate that the legislative effort
to protect America's competitive edge be spearheaded in the Energy and
Natural Resources Committee because energy, innovation, and U.S.
competitiveness are intimately intertwined. The following are among the
reasons this is true:
1. Supplying this nation, and indeed the world, with safe,
clean, affordable, secure, and sustainable energy is a
prerequisite for prosperity, and is in large measure a
technological challenge.
2. The Department of Energy currently is responsible for 40
percent of the federal investment in physical science as well
as 14 percent of the federal basic research investments in
mathematics and computing, environmental sciences, and
engineering.
3. Producing and distributing electricity, heat, and
transportation while protecting our environment is arguably our
most urgent challenge, and it certainly is the one to inspire,
create, and draw upon a new generation of scientists,
engineers, and innovators.
4. If America grasps commanding leadership in new, clean and
economical energy technologies, there will be vast new markets
for our energy technology industries in the rapidly developing
areas of the world such as China and India.
EDUCATION AND TEACHER ENHANCEMENT
PACE-Energy (S. 2197) authorizes three specific roles for the
department of Energy associated with improving STEM education in
primary and secondary schools, and with inspiring and assisting young
men and women to pursue college education in science and engineering.
The first is the establishment of Summer Institutes at the DOE
national laboratories to provide teacher training. They would emphasize
K-8 education and would be of at least two weeks duration. This is
certainly the type of program that we recommended in Rising Above the
Gathering Storm. The DOE lab facilities and their scientists and
engineers certainly could create inspirational and useful programs for
K-8 teachers.
The second authorizes DOE National Labs to provide assistance and
support to STEM specialty schools and that each Lab establish a Center
of Excellence at one public school in its geographic vicinity. This is
precisely the kind of action that our committee encouraged.
Third, PACE-Energy provides for the establishment of an internship
program at the National Labs, with a $50 million annual budget
beginning in FY2007. Our committee believes that such inquiry-based
learning can be very effective in inspiring and educating middle school
and high-school students. The Labs are a natural venue for such
programs.
I personally believe that through these three activities, the DOE
can and should play an effective role in improving aspects of STEM
education in our nation. I would recommend that as such programs are
implemented, as I hope they will be, the Department will establish
coherence of purpose and execution across the participating
laboratories, and identify and promulgate best practices.
RESEARCH
Federal support for basic research in the physical sciences and
engineering has been essentially flat in real dollars for more than
thirty years. During that time, the budgets for biomedical research
have appropriately grown approximately four-fold. That four-fold
investment will pay immense benefits to improved health as well as
basic understanding of living systems. It has already done so, and also
has stimulated an entire new industry of biotechnology. The levels of
discovery and innovation in life science and medicine are astounding.
Today there are nearly 100 biotech companies in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, where I live. They are a direct result of the farsighted
federal investment in biomedical research and education, as are the
many pharmaceutical research facilities that have located there.
But the nation faces other challenges including, first and
foremost, energy and environment, but also the creation of new
services, technologies, and manufacturing techniques that will enable
us to be secure and economically vibrant in a world of knowledge-based
economies and globalized production and markets. The Augustine
Committee has concluded that meeting these challenges requires a
substantially increased and sustained federal investment in long-term,
basic research in the physical sciences, engineering, mathematics, and
computer science. Specifically, we recommended that these budgets be
doubled over a period of seven years.
We therefore are very pleased that S. 2197 authorizes such a
doubling of the budget of the DOE Office of Science by increasing it by
10 percent annually through 2013. We are confident that such an
investment can pay dividends of extraordinary importance to the nation.
In our deliberations, we concluded that it would be wise to create
200 early career research grants of $500,000 each annually, payable
over five years. It frequently takes far too long for our bright young
men and women to establish appropriately independent research programs.
This is very inefficient, because it drains their time and attention
away from the actual conduct of research and teaching during what often
are their most creative years. S. 2197 authorizes 65 such early career
grants per year for five years to be administered by DOE, and S. 2198
directs similar programs in several other agencies. We applaud this.
ARPA-E
S. 2197 establishes the Advanced Research Projects Authority--
Energy (ARPA-E). This is a direct reflection of a recommendation made
by the Augustine Committee. ARPA-E is the only major new organization
recommended by our committee, so I would like to explain our intent.
We intend ARPA-E to provide a new field of opportunity to the
Department of Energy as it works in new and reinvigorated ways to
develop new technologies to supply this nation, and indeed the world,
with safe, clean, affordable, secure, and sustainable energy. We simply
must supply and utilize energy and transportation in new ways that will
not degrade our environment. If we do not do this, there will be no
future prosperity. We must derive new knowledge and technology from
basic science and engineering research and reduce them to practice, and
we must start now.
I wish to make a blunt statement that is based on my experience as
an educator and an observer of the science and engineering communities.
On the whole, in recent decades, many of our best minds were not
attracted into the science and technology of energy. We in universities
allowed energy to slip into academic backwaters, and neither our energy
companies, nor our national laboratories, nor the entrepreneurial
community have applied enough intellectual and financial muscle to it.
We have grown complacent in the face of a monumental challenge. Of
course there are counter examples, and I apologize if I am trampling on
the toes of those few who have indeed dedicated their careers to these
issues, but on the whole, I believe my characterization is accurate.
Today, however, the larger scientific and engineering communities
are awakening to challenge of our looming energy crisis. But we must
take concerted action and make the investments necessary to enlist our
most talented researchers and innovators to address it. Our committee,
therefore, conceived ARPA-E as an organization reporting to the DOE
Under Secretary for Science that can achieve four objectives:
1. Bring a freshness, excitement, and sense of mission to
energy research that will attract many of our best and
brightest minds--those of experienced scientists and engineers,
and, especially, those of students and young researchers,
including those in the entrepreneurial world.
2. Focus on creative, out-of-the-box, potentially
transformational research that industry cannot or will not
support.
3. Utilize an ARPA-like organization that is flat, nimble,
and sparse, yet capable of setting goals and making decisions
that will allow it to sustain for long periods of time those
projects whose promise is real, and to phase out programs that
do not prove to be productive or as promising as anticipated.
4. Create a new tool to bridge the troubling gaps between
basic energy research, development, and industrial innovation.
It can serve as a model for how to improve science and
technology transfer in other areas that are essential to our
future prosperity.
Our committee did not believe it appropriate for us to specify the
organization and mission of ARPA-E in great detail. We believe that
must be worked out by the Secretary of Energy and the Under Secretary
for Science in rapid, but intense, consultation with experts from the
scientific and engineering communities. Defense visionaries who
realized that the military had to reach out to new communities for the
technologies that would be required to counter the rapidly changing
threats of the post Sputnik era established the original ARPA in the
DOD. It was enormously successful. We believe that ARPA will provide
the right general framework on which to design ARPA-E. It is a proven
model.
CLOSING COMMENTS
I would like to briefly address two arguments that have been
directed by some against the recommendations of the Augustine
Committee.
First, some have stated that America's current lead in science,
engineering, and innovation is so great that there is no urgency to
addressing these matters. Our committee believes that this proposition
is both incorrect and dangerous.
We are indeed on the pinnacle of science and technology R&D, but
almost every trend is moving in the wrong direction. In just the last
few years the U.S. has become a net importer of high-technology
products, has invested more new money in foreign stock funds than in
domestic portfolios, has seen its share of leading-edge semiconductor
manufacturing cut in half, has dropped to 12th in the world in the
number of broadband connections per 100 inhabitants, has dropped from
number 1 to number 5 in Internet use and infrastructure, has had
basically flat investment in physical science and engineering research,
has less than one third of its 4th and 8th grade students performing
proficiently in mathematics, has its 15-year olds ranking 24th out of
40 countries in assessments of applying mathematical principles to
practical problems, has two thirds of its children learning science and
mathematics from teachers who neither majored nor were certified in the
subjects, and has only 15 percent of its university students studying
natural science or engineering versus 38 percent in South Korea and 50
percent in China.
In my view there is a commanding urgency to these problems.
Complacency is our enemy, not our refuge.
Second, some critics have stated that there is no current shortage
of engineers and scientists, so there no reason to increase their
numbers. Our committee believes that in a knowledge age we need more,
not fewer, people who can generate and use new knowledge.
The need for more future engineers, scientists, mathematicians, and
computer scientists is because these men and women will be the
innovators who create new products, services, and jobs. Innovation is
the key to productivity, which in turn is the key to a strong economy.
Supplying and distributing energy, feeding the planet, building new
industries around bio-based materials, continuing trends toward
sophisticated service-based economies, keeping us secure, advancing
medicine, developing new ways of learning, and responding to pandemics
all require a technically competent workforce and scientifically astute
leaders in business and government. Even today, over half of the CEOs
of Fortune 500 companies have engineering backgrounds, and engineers
and scientists dominantly create the newer entrepreneurial companies.
The financial services industry is based on mathematics and information
technology. Shipping companies and even retail businesses find the
profit margins necessary for survival only through application of
complex logistical science.
The argument that we have plenty of engineers and scientists is
based on looking in the rearview mirror. The more people with sound
engineering and scientific knowledge, the more connections among them,
and the stronger the knowledge generation of long-term basic research
to nourish them, the better will be our chances of prospering in the
21st century.
Chairman Domenici, Ranking Member Bingaman, and Members of the
Committee, thank you for the opportunity to address PACE-Energy from
the perspective of the National Academies report Rising Above the
Gathering Storm. It is a privilege to work together to enable our
nation to prosper in the 21st century.
I would be glad to respond to any questions.
The Chairman. Thank you very much.
Doctor.
STATEMENT OF LUIS M. PROENZA, PRESIDENT,
UNIVERSITY OF AKRON
Mr. Proenza. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Bingaman, members
of the committee, thank you for your invitation and I echo Dr.
Vest's thank-you to the committee for your leadership in
considering the vitally important matters embodied in this
legislation. I am here today indeed in my role as chairman of
the Science and Mathematics Education Task Force, a
subcommittee of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, because
the work of our task force is not yet complete. I hope you will
consider my remarks as my own, but I assure you that my
comments reflect the discussions that we have had, and we will
certainly be sharing the full report of the committee as soon
as it is completed.
Much of what we have learned about competitiveness and
innovation in recent years certainly speaks to the value of
leveraging resources and to ensuring that the various
components of our national innovation ecosystem are optimally
linked, coordinated, and enhanced, a theme that runs through
the PACE legislation. I am pleased that you have asked me to
address specifically how we might leverage Department of Energy
resources. That is precisely what our task force has been
addressing.
The national laboratories, as you have indicated, represent
exceptional scientific and engineering facilities and talent,
17 geographically distributed laboratories of unparalleled
strength and importance, particularly in the physical sciences.
Such major resources are assets that can and should be
leveraged to help strengthen STEM education and leveraging is
imperative because the labs must balance between their obvious
and synergistic capacity to support STEM education and their
need to maintain a mission focus. This means we cannot leverage
simply by increasing access. We must create leverage by
multiplying the impact of those who come to the labs,
particularly teachers.
As a geographically distributed network of resources, the
labs already have demonstrated the capacity to provide teachers
with authentic experiences in the scientific enterprise,
thereby transforming science teachers into teaching scientists.
The challenge is to leverage these unique resources, the
laboratories, as forcefully as possible through an intensive
set of research experiences that yield teaching scientists
capable of engaging students in STEM disciplines.
We have found programs throughout the laboratory systems
that do this, programs that lead to genuine transformations in
teachers' knowledge and enthusiasm for science. Moreover, our
findings suggest that it will be during the adolescent years
when students present the most significant needs as well as
opportunities, and that is where we would focus the leveraging
opportunity.
Leverage is not only essential in this context of the labs'
mission, but also provides a useful metaphor. The leveraging
force is that of our national laboratories. The fulcrum point
at which this leverage is exerted is the professional
development of teaching scientists through intensive
transformative laboratory research experience, and in turn the
effect is multiplied upon the millions of students in our
Nation's middle schools, that critical stage during which
students develop and sustain interest in science and
mathematics and when teaching scientists thus can have the
greatest impact--precisely the same idea behind the ``Gathering
Storm'' report, but adding to it the power of the national
laboratories.
We also looked in some detail at the considerable variety
of STEM education programs across most of the 13 Federal
agencies that support science and engineering research, and we
are pleased to note in your legislation that you have certainly
recognized the important coordinating role that is necessary to
be accomplished.
Finally, the leveraging opportunities associated with the
national laboratories do extend beyond their ability to
transform teachers. The labs also are home to some of our
Nation's most advanced computational resources, which are
capable of creating powerful simulation environments.
Computational tools have become essential to research, made it
easier to bring concepts to the marketplace quickly, and
greatly increased productivity in both manufacturing and
service industries throughout the economy. In short, these
tools are key ingredients in American competitiveness.
But it is important to note that the emphasis of these
tools also could be to increase the productivity of the process
of education itself by making concepts in science and
mathematics more compelling and more accessible for a wide
range of students. These powerful simulation capabilities thus
hold another leveraging opportunity for the Department of
Energy, namely that of creating the sort of exciting and
captivating interactive features that make possible the
delivery of exploration and discovery-based learning tools.
Now STEM stimulation tools can be created at a price that
becomes affordable to the large number of students and teachers
who cannot otherwise participate directly in experiences of the
laboratories and, moreover, engaging simulations can connect
what would otherwise be abstract concepts in the physical
sciences, engineering, and mathematics to simulations of real
world applications.
Capturing this potential is the subject of another piece of
legislation that I hope you will pay some attention to, S.
1023, the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust, and more is
noted in my written testimony. But in short, it is the
opportunity, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, to
support research to create innovation in the process of
education itself and a careful assessment of what works and
what does not work by leveraging the resources of the
Department of Energy. Quite simply, we must enhance the
effectiveness and productivity of our systems of education and
training.
In summary, Mr. Chairman, the work of our task force
undoubtedly supports the PACE legislation and we look forward
to sharing a copy of our final report. Thank you for your
attention and thank you for the able leadership that you are
providing in this vitally important area. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Proenza follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dr. Luis M. Proenza, President, University of
Akron
Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, thank you for your
invitation to provide testimony in support of this vitally important
legislation.
I am Luis Proenza, President of The University of Akron. I also am
privileged to serve on the President's Council of Advisors on Science
and Technology (PCAST) and on the executive committee of the Council on
Competitiveness--bodies that have made recommendations that are
directly relevant to the matters under your consideration. Many of you
already are familiar with these recommendations, which are reflected in
the President's American Competitiveness Initiative and incorporated in
other pending legislation, such as the Ensign--Lieberman National
Innovation Act of 2005.
I expect you have asked me here today because of my role as
chairman of the Science and Mathematics Education Task Force (SMETF),
which is a subcommittee of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board
(SEAB). However, in the spirit of full disclosure, I must tell you
that, because the work of our task force is still in progress, the
remarks I will make today must be treated strictly as my own. My
comments will naturally reflect much of the work we have done to date
and, of course, we will be pleased to share the final report with this
committee as soon as it is completed. From my review of the PACE
language, I might add that the work of SMETF appears to be most closely
related to sections 3171, 3175, 3181 and 3195 of PACE-Energy and
sections 161, 211 and 231 of PACE-Education.
Although the national laboratories conduct a substantial proportion
of the nation's basic research in the physical sciences and
engineering, as well as a healthy mix of other basic and applied
sciences (e.g., biological and environmental sciences), the Department
of Energy's role in the scientific leadership of the nation is
generally underappreciated. To carry out its mission, DOE requires
substantial manpower resources, which is one reason why the
Department's involvement in the education pipeline must be understood
better, supported adequately and leveraged. I am pleased that DOE's
vital role in STEM education was given a clear legislative mandate in
section 1102 of the recently passed Energy Policy Act of 2005 and that
the Department's Office of Science, under Assistant Secretary Ray
Orbach, was tasked to begin implementation of this section. I also note
that former Secretary Abrams, who appointed SMETF, and Secretary
Bodman, have expressed strong interest in ensuring the Department's
participation in enhancing our nation's STEM education.
Much of what we have learned about competitiveness and innovation
in recent years certainly speaks to the value of leveraging resources
and to ensuring that the various components of our national innovation
ecosystem are optimally linked, coordinated and enhanced. Thus, I am
pleased that you have asked me to specifically focus on how we ``would
leverage Department of Energy resources, including personnel and
equipment at the National Laboratories, to improve mathematics,
science, and engineering education at all levels''. That is precisely
the task that SMETF has had under review during the last 14 months.
The National Laboratories represent exceptional scientific and
engineering facilities and talent--17 geographically distributed
laboratories of unparalleled strength and importance, particularly for
the physical sciences and engineering, but also for a substantial mix
of other basic and applied sciences (e.g., biological and environmental
sciences). Such major resources are assets that can and should be
accessed in support of strengthening STEM education. Leveraging is
imperative because the labs must balance between their obvious and
synergistic capacity to support STEM education and their need to
maintain their mission focus. And this means we cannot leverage by
simply increasing access. Rather, we must create leverage by
multiplying the impact of those who come to the labs--by enhancing the
capacity of STEM teachers to impact thousands upon thousands of
students. By supporting the professional development of teachers, the
labs can, as they have for many years, substantially enhance the
educational competencies of teachers in science, mathematics,
engineering, and technology. These professional development experiences
enable teachers. to become conveyors of STEM expertise. And, having
selected teachers as the means for exerting leverage, we also should
determine where such teachers can have the most impact. Ample evidence
suggests that the greatest impact that teachers can have is on middle
school students, because that is the time when student performance and
interest begins to drop and when students become especially vulnerable
to the lack of strong educational experiences.
The DOE laboratories are a geographically distributed network of
resources with great potential to provide teachers with authentic
experiences in the scientific enterprise--thereby transforming science
teachers into teaching scientists. The challenge is to leverage these
unique resources--the national laboratories--as forcefully as possible
through an intensive set of research experiences that yield teaching
scientists capable of engaging students in STEM disciplines. We have
found excellent STEM educational programs throughout the laboratory
system, programs that lead to genuine transformations in teachers'
knowledge and enthusiasm for science. Moreover, our findings suggest
that it is during adolescence when students present the most
significant needs as well as opportunities. Thus, we will likely
suggest the creation of a Teaching Scientist Professional Development
Program that reaches cohorts of middle school teachers drawn from the
geographical areas served by each laboratory--a hub-and-spoke strategy.
The basic design elements build on DOE's current Laboratory Science
Teacher Professional Development Program (LSTPD) and entail intensive
four- to eight-week summer internships spanning three years for each
cohort. The plan also would call for Department-wide coordination of
essential program features already in use, while also making
appropriate allowances for local adaptations suitable to each
laboratory. Continuous formative assessments and formal evaluations,
drawn from the LSTPD experience, would guide further refinement of the
program and provide ongoing evidence of effectiveness.
Leverage is not only essential in the context of the labs' mission,
but also provides a useful metaphor. The leveraging force is that of
our national laboratories. The fulcrum point at which this leverage is
exerted is the professional development of ``teaching scientists''
through intensive, transformative laboratory research experience. In
turn, the effect is multiplied upon the millions of students in our
nation's middle schools, the critical stage during which students
develop and sustain interest in science and mathematics, and when
``teaching scientists'' thus can have the greatest impact.
Across many, if not all, of our federal agencies there are other
important STEM education initiatives. During the work of the task
force, we requested and received several presentations, which revealed
considerable variety of STEM educational programs across agencies.
Among them, we saw spectacular examples of curriculum development, but
not every agency or organization is well placed to take on the task of
curriculum development. Nor are many school systems or individual
teachers prepared to optimally integrate these materials into the
classroom. We also saw opportunities for new endeavors that would be
useful in their own right, while also supporting coordination. For
example, the National Science Education Resources Center at the
Smithsonian is in the early stages of developing a Web site of
resources for STEM education, which might be the basis for more
substantive interagency efforts. Finally, while many STEM education
resources are readily accessible through the Internet, it is less clear
that these are having measurable impact on the condition of STEM
education in America.
My colleagues and I have discussed the leadership role that is
needed among federal agencies in leveraging major scientific and
engineering resources, such as the national laboratories, for STEM
education and we believe that DOE is well poised in this regard. The
Department of Energy can and should take on a leadership role in the
development of educational efforts in cooperation with other agencies.
In addition, DOE should encourage STEM education partnerships among
agencies, businesses, universities, and national organizations. Of
course, DOE's ability to assume this role clearly depends on
interagency discussions and the development of shared resources, both
virtual and programmatic.
The leveraging opportunities associated with the national
laboratories extend beyond their ability to bring teachers or students
into contact with individual scientists or research programs at each of
the 17 facilities. The laboratories, for example, also are home to some
of our nation's most advanced computational resources, which are
capable of creating powerful simulation environments. These tools are
key ingredients in American competitiveness. Computational tools have
become essential to research, made it easier to bring concepts to the
marketplace quickly, and greatly increased productivity in both
manufacturing and service industries throughout the economy. In work we
have done through the Council on Competitiveness' High-Performance
Computing Initiative, I personally have seen how some of these
facilities, such as those at the Sandia National Laboratory, can assist
industry in performing complex simulations to support improved
manufacturing competitiveness.
These tools can also increase the productivity of the process of
education and make concepts in science and mathematics more compelling
and more accessible for a wide range of students. All of us are now
familiar with how movie animation and video games have created
compelling experiences built around simulated landscapes, cities and
complex processes brought to life through high-performance computing.
Modern personal computers and video game consoles now deliver computing
power comparable to that of devices called supercomputers just a few
years ago.
These powerful simulation capabilities, thus, hold another
leveraging opportunity for DOE--namely, that of creating the sort of
exciting and captivating interactive features that make possible the
delivery of exploration and discovery-based learning tools long
recommended by educational scientists. For example, agencies such as
NASA and NOAA have taught students about space or deep ocean
exploration through their Challenger and Jason programs. Now, STEM
simulation tools can be created at a price that becomes affordable to
the large number of students and teachers who cannot otherwise
participate directly in experiences at the laboratories. Engaging
simulations can connect what would otherwise be abstract concepts in
the physical sciences, engineering and mathematics to simulations of
real-world applications. DOE is in an excellent position to facilitate
this by leveraging its subject matter expertise and strong record in
computation. Even with comparatively simple instructional simulation
tools, it should be possible to demonstrate a 30% reduction in learning
time.
Tools that can increase the productivity of our educational system
and tailor learning to the unique interests and needs of a diverse
student body are essential if America is to produce the talent needed
to ensure American competitiveness. But capturing the potential of
simulations and other information technologies will require significant
and sustained investment in research, demonstration and evaluation of
such tools. A strategy for achieving this is contained in another piece
of pending legislation: S. 1023, the Digital Opportunity Investment
Trust (DO IT). Although the PACE legislation you are considering
proposes much-needed strategic advancements in STEM education and
support for the physical sciences, those investments--in my judgment--
would be greatly enhanced if we find a way to fill a large hole in our
national research portfolio, namely in the support of research into
innovation in the process of education itself and a careful assessment
of what works and what doesn't work. That is the purpose of S. 1023, DO
IT.
During the course of our work, SMETF heard of how little of what
has been shown to work is actually in practice and how much of what is
being done is lacking in assessment of its effectiveness. As a nation,
we currently do not support much in the way of research into
educational and training effectiveness, and yet we are now in a global
labor market that puts a premium on information-technology-based jobs
where our systems of education and training must be the bedrock, the
very infrastructure, of our economic competitiveness. The fact that
modern computers offer the potential to implement sophisticated
approaches to instruction in STEM has both changed the rules and raised
the penalty for inaction.
Quite simply, we must enhance the effectiveness and productivity of
our systems of education and training and ensure that they can benefit
from the same revolutionary broadband technologies that have
transformed our communications, defense, commercial and entertainment
sectors. To achieve this, I urge your serious consideration and support
of the Digital Opportunity Investment Trust (DO IT) as an integral part
of the PACE Act's strategy for strengthening American innovation.
As a member of the Digital Promise Coalition's Leadership Council,
I have supported the DO IT legislation, S.1023 introduced by Senators
Dodd, Snowe, Durbin and Burns. That legislation was based on a
comprehensive research and development learning roadmap that was
submitted to Congress two years ago. DO IT would be a form of venture
capital fund to support the research necessary to create new teaching
and learning tools using advanced technologies such as highly
interactive virtual reality, simulation, embedded intelligence and one-
on-one tutoring. It is time to harness the power of these tools for
teaching and learning, especially in abstract areas of mathematics and
science. We know that an integrated use of advanced technologies can
make learning faster, more efficient, and allow a higher proportion of
students to reach greater levels of competence. Our competitor nations
are already far ahead of us in this area of research and in digitizing
high-quality educational content for new educational technology
applications. I feel strongly that no national strategy for
reinvigorating our systems of research and innovation would be complete
without something like the DO IT component.
In summary, Mr. Chairman, the work of SMETF will undoubtedly
support the PACE legislation and we look forward to sharing a copy of
our final report.
In closing, allow me to acknowledge my colleagues in SMETF. In
particular, I want to thank Dr. Robert Calfee, vice chair of the task
force, for his dedicated and insightful comments as well as for his
many substantive contributions. We are most grateful for all the
dedicated and talented staff in DOE and other agencies that took time
to inform us of all the ongoing educational activities within the
agencies and had the patience to answer our many questions and help us
to understand the feasibility of the proposals we are considering. In
particular, we wish to acknowledge the support of John Giordano and
Peter Faletra.
Thank you for your attention; this concludes my testimony.
Senator Craig. Thank you very much. Your testimony is
fascinating.
Let us turn now to--Senator Domenici is back. I was turning
to Senator Bingaman. He has to leave at noon. So we will yield
to you, Senator, for questions.
Senator Bingaman. Thank you very much.
Thank you both for being here and thank you for your good
work, Dr. Vest. Thank you particularly for your work as a
commissioner.
Let me ask you about this issue of ARPA-E. According to
``Inside Energy,'' I think yesterday or the day before, they
had an article where Secretary Bodman was quoted as saying that
they would look at this issue, but he was inclined himself to
build along the lines of Incutel rather than an ARPA-E model;
Incutel being the private, as I understand it, the private fund
that the CIA has established for promoting development of
technologies useful for the intelligence community, ARPA-E, of
course, being much more modeled after DARPA. There is a good
quote in here, I thought, from Norm Augustine saying that ``The
DARPA model would be more closely matched to DOE's needs
because in our view''--speaking I guess explaining the
commission's position--``in our view the opportunity to gain
new and create new technologies through contracts and through
the current DOE structure, rather than venture investments, is
greater.''
Do you have a point of view you could express, either for
yourself or for the commission, on this question?
Mr. Vest. Senator Bingaman, I would like to address at
least parts of what you have raised. I will try to be clear as
to my ideas and where it is the committee's. First of all, this
is all about people and ideas and bringing new communities of
scientists and engineers and innovators to the table of energy.
Incutel, as you have indicated, at least in shorthand
notation is a venture capital operation for the intelligence
community and a very effective one. Its primary role is to turn
the venture capital and entrepreneurial small companies loose
on developing new technologies that are generically of interest
to the intelligence community, and it is very effective.
That is part of what needs to be happening in the
Department of Energy today, in our committee's view. It
certainly is not all of it and maybe is not even the core of
it. We saw four reasons to recommend this ARPA structure.
First--and again I refer back to Senator Craig--we think that
the establishment and effective work of ARPA-E could bring a
freshness and excitement and a sense of mission to certain
areas of energy research that would go a long way to attracting
many of the best and brightest minds, both mature scientists
but, even more importantly, students and young researchers, and
including those in the entrepreneurial world, to energy
problems.
Second, that it would focus on creating out-of-the-box
potentially transformational research that industry cannot or
will not support.
Third, that the reason for utilizing an ARPA-like
organization is that it is flat, it is nimble, it is sparse,
yet it is capable of making decisions that allow it to sustain
for long periods of time those projects whose promise is real,
but also to phaseout programs that in their early stages prove
not to be as productive or as promising as anticipated.
And fourth, to create a new tool within the Department of
Energy for use by the Under Secretary for Science to help
bridge some of the troubling gaps that develop between basic
energy research, development, and industrial innovation. We
think it can serve as a model for science and technology
transfer.
So our committee actually discussed the idea of an Incutel-
like model. We still feel there might be room for that. It
might in fact be a component within ARPA-E. But we did not
believe it was appropriate for us, with our limited time, to
specify the organization of ARPA-E in great detail. That really
needs to be up to the Secretary and the Under Secretary for
Science.
I know I am running on just a little long, but I went back
over the last couple of days and read about--read further about
the origin of ARPA in the Department of Defense in 1958, in
response to Sputnik and all the things that were starting to be
on the horizon, ICBMs and so forth. It has the following
characteristics: a risk-taking culture, working in high-risk,
high-payoff areas; independent from the military service R&D
organizations; does not maintain its own laboratories--I want
to be very clear about this. This is an administrative
structure--idea-driven, outcome-oriented; funds researchers
based on their quality, rather than in the defense industry,
elsewhere in the private sector, or in universities; and is an
honest broker among competing approaches.
It is not a single model. It has morphed and changed with
time. So it is this nimble structure, something new, something
exciting, bringing new talents into the energy problem, that we
believe and I personally believe could be effectively done by
an organization of this type. I would put the larger emphasis
on that and bringing new people and ideas in and let the
Secretary and others explore whether or not an Incutel-like
structure should be part of it.
Senator Bingaman. Thank you very much.
The Chairman. Senator Bingaman, thank you for the question.
Some of us will have to follow up on that issue and see if we
can understand it better.
Mr. Vest. I should point out that our hero, Norm Augustine,
was also the person who established ARPA--Incutel, excuse me,
Incutel.
Senator Craig. Is that called truth in--full disclosure, I
guess.
Mr. Vest. It is truth in expertise, if we may call it that.
The Chairman. I just want to put this one marker down on
the entire discussion. The issue of moving science and
scientific research from the public laboratories to the private
sector is an enigma. Everybody loves it, everybody views it and
says what a great thing. And then you look at it and with each
decade you find that you made only a little incremental gain in
actually being able to get it done. I think you understand
that. It is because of all the rules of public property,
disclosure, patents, exclusivity. Every time you have capital
venture companies trying to fund breakout activities, they run
into the same problem.
We are making headway, but I would think before we are
finished you ought to tell us whether--what is the difference
in application in these two in terms of maybe the ease with
which you make the transition from the R&D to something that
the private sector can use. Do you understand my question?
Mr. Vest. The difference between an ARPA model and Incutel?
The Chairman. Yes. I would think the latter is more like
what we are doing today.
Mr. Vest. In the first order, the directions are different,
Senator, because Incutel basically turns the venture capital
community loose on technologies that they want to bring into
the Department of Defense--into the intelligence community, and
ARPA has more the function of seeing that the right ideas are
generated to begin with. So they are somewhat complementary.
The Chairman. Okay, we will take a look.
Let me move down to the Senators, if you would like. Who is
next here, Senator Craig or Senator Alexander? Larry, go ahead.
Senator Craig. I will be very brief, gentlemen. Thank you
again and I will spend time with your testimony. Both of you
have challenged us and I will be anxious to see, doctor, your
work, where it takes us as it relates to DOE and our
capabilities there. We see these phenomenal resources and
wonder how we energize them.
But Dr. Vest, you said something that is so profoundly
true. I think of the phenomenal--I know of no other way of
saying it because we have all benefited from it--the phenomenal
wealth that the IT economy has brought to our country, that
started way back when as we began to energize and focus and
invest, and it morphed and morphed and morphed itself. It
challenged bright young people and we became a world leader,
and then it moved to the rest of the world and we took our
technologies to them.
Two years ago this past December, I was sitting on a
platform with the head of the environmental agency for mainland
China at the national--or the World Climate Change Conference
in Buenos Aeres, and he turned to me after his comments and
said: We need to build 100 nuclear reactors. And oh, by the
way, he kind of smiled, would you come and build them? What he
was saying to me was that, because we were then at the edge of
announcing to the world that we are going to get back into the
nuclear game--we were almost there, the chairman was almost
there, we were crafting the legislation, we felt that we had
the wind to our back, that the world was coming with us, at
least our immediate political world.
But it was fascinating to me because it registered on me
once again how anxious the world is for us to lead because they
know that when we do everything is transparent, largely
speaking, and that it is transferable to them in many
instances.
I think what you say is very true, that we ought not forget
the marketplace, we ought not forget that what we do is the
next wealth cycle, if you will, of our country, not just for us
but potentially for the rest of the world.
I was visiting with Senator Domenici during some of the
testimony, saying one of the great drains of our country today
is that our wealth is moving abroad to acquire energy in just
unbelievable amounts. Oh, if only half of it could stay and be
invested in the types of things we are talking about.
Anyway, thank you both very, very much. That is certainly
more of a comment than a question, but I do believe we
oftentimes forget that what we do is the market, it is the
economy, it is not just inside the laboratory. It challenges
the great minds to produce something for a marketplace that is
the engine of this great country.
The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Bingaman. Thank you.
The Chairman. Senator, I should have gone to you a little
sooner. I am sorry. Would you like to proceed?
STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT MENENDEZ, U.S. SENATOR
FROM NEW JERSEY
Senator Menendez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate
your courtesy.
Let me say I am really impressed by the legislation that
Senator Bingaman and Senator Alexander put together here, Mr.
Chairman, and your calling it up so early. I am a strong
supporter and co-sponsor of it. This is really in my mind about
the future of our country, about innovation and technology in a
world which has been transformed by technology. The boundaries
of mankind have been transformed, where human capital can be
located just about anywhere in the world and where a blueprint,
a radiologist's report, an engineer's report, a tax return, can
be accomplished just about anywhere in the world.
So having America be able to be at the very apex of that
curve of intellect and the collective human capital and
intellect that we have as a Nation is going to be our greatest
opportunity and our greatest challenge as well. So I really
appreciate what it is that we are doing through purposes of the
legislation and I look forward to supporting it on the road
ahead.
[The prepared statement of Senator Menendez follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Robert Menendez, U.S. Senator
From New Jersey
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for moving so
quickly in holding a hearing on this very important piece of
legislation that I strongly support, and that I am proud to be an
original cosponsor of. I would like to commend Senators Bingaman and
Alexander of this committee, along with my former colleagues in the
House, Representatives Boehlert and Gordon, for asking the National
Academies to look at this issue of American competitiveness in science,
technology, and innovation, and I hope that all three bills to come out
of this report will get to the Floor of the Senate in short order.
As the subtitle of the National Academies report makes clear,
investing in education and innovation is about our economic future.
Today's young people will be facing a new world when they enter the
workforce--a world that is globally integrated and where technology has
transformed the boundaries of human capital. Our tax forms, blueprints,
and x-rays can all be analyzed halfway around the world. The greatest
asset we have in this country is our collective intellect, and the
nation's competitive future will depend on us nurturing the intellect
of the next generation of Americans.
This legislation is about more than our ability to compete in the
global marketplace. It is also about the quality of our lives. It is
about finding new cures for diseases such as cancer or alzheimers so
that Americans can live longer, more fruitful lives. It is about
discovering new technologies for generating energy that do less harm to
our environment. And it is about the next technological breakthrough
that makes us wonder how we ever lived our lives without it.
This bill, in conjunction with the two other bills that enact the
recommendations of Rising Above the Gathering Storm, will help this
country maintain its position as the world leader in research and
development, high technology, and innovation. Already there are signs
that our preeminence in this field may be slipping. As the National
Science Foundation points out in Science and Engineering Indicators:
2004, the United States is losing ground to the rest of the world in
the number of published articles in scientific journals, the number of
patents, the share of global exports for high-technology products, and
the percent of college graduates with natural science or engineering
degrees. We need to turn this around, and we can do that by making sure
our children have the proper tools, and the proper support, to succeed
in science and technology.
I am concerned, however, that these bills will not properly equip
the entire next generation of Americans. Currently, there is a distinct
shortage of minorities in science and engineering jobs. According to
the National Science Foundation, only 7% of our scientists and
engineers are Hispanic, African-American, or Native-American, despite
the fact that they make up 24% of the total population. A minority
scientist is also far less likely to achieve a post-graduate degree. By
2020, one-quarter of the nation's schoolchildren will be Hispanic, and
another 14% will be African-American. That's 40% of our precious human
capital, and we can not neglect that tremendous resource when we talk
about improving our competitiveness for the future. No business could
afford to leave 40% of its capital sitting idle, and neither can the
United States. I look forward to working with my colleagues to make
sure that we don't leave this enormous cohort behind as we strive to
ensure America's scientific and technological future.
As for the bill before this committee, I am particularly excited
about the way it would forge closer links between the Energy
Department's National Laboratories and local students and teachers. We
have one of these labs in New Jersey, the Princeton Plasma Physics
Laboratory, and the world-class research that it performs is already a
tremendous asset for New Jersey, the United States, and the world as a
whole. But if we can leverage the strengths of that laboratory into
better learning experiences for our students and training opportunities
for our teachers, both the local community and the PPPL itself benefit.
One of the overriding themes through this bill, and the other two
PACE bills, is that we need to make a major national commitment to
research and development, and I hope we can follow through on that. The
President has also talked a lot recently about making a serious
commitment to innovation through the American Competitiveness
Initiative (ACI), and I think he should be commended for making such a
strong statement of support. However, I am disappointed that his budget
proposes to eliminate, again, the Advanced Technology Program (ATP).
New Jersey is the 5th largest recipient of ATP funds in the nation,
obtaining 36 grants worth $110 million over the life of the program.
The ATP makes competitive matching grants to businesses that do high-
risk, high-reward research and development, which is exactly what this
Administration has been trumpeting as its priority. The ATP has
provided $18 billion in economic growth on $2.1 billion in investments
and has more than paid for itself since its inception. I believe this
program does a tremendous job in stimulating research by the private
sector that otherwise might never be performed, and I hope we will once
again be able to reverse this ill conceived plan to kill the ATP.
Senator Menendez. I do have one line of questions. Dr.
Proenza, you said in your comments about building mathematics
and science in the elementary and secondary level as we create
building blocks of learning and enthusiasm for math and
sciences as we move on to higher education. I just wonder when
I see that over the next decade and a half 25 percent of all
the Nation's school children will be Americans of Hispanic
descent, added to between 15 and 20 percent of African
Americans, that is anywhere between 40 and 45 percent of human
capital in this country, in terms of the educational future,
which I consider the economic future of the country. How do we,
within this broad context that we are trying to pursue,
significantly try to engage that part of the student population
to be enthused and engaged when considering some of the
challenges they face in science and mathematics?
There is no corporation in America could afford to have 40
or 45 percent of its capital sitting idle or not fully
productive, and I am concerned when we are talking about this,
our legitimate pursuits in math and science to continue to be
the leader of the world and to be at that apex of human
intellect in some of the most significant aspects of our lives,
that we are going to leave a lot of that human capital behind.
I wonder if you have any thoughts about that, or Dr. Vest as
well?
Mr. Proenza. Senator, that's a very important point that of
course faces the Nation as a whole. As a person of Hispanic
background that came to this country at a very early age, I did
notice that we tend to expect less of our children in America
than the educational systems of other countries. That is an
element. Certainly we have to build into our society the kind
of anticipation and expectation of success that some societies
have been able to do quite widely and start early. Jim
Hechtman's work at Chicago certainly indicates that the
greatest return on investment will be seen by looking at the
early childhood years. The work that we have done in our task
force indicates that our young people in America tend to stay
even with those in other parts of the world up into the middle
school years. That is where we begin to lose them, and that is
why we emphasized that that is where we have an opportunity to
leverage our resources optimally early on.
Obviously, we want to see this continue and we would
certainly be looking to recommendations along those lines.
Expecting more, starting early, and ensuring that we do not
lose them in those vital years would be three suggestions that
I would make, Senator. Thank you for your question.
Mr. Vest. Let me add to that, and let me begin by saying
this is purely a personal statement, not the statement
representing the committee.
Former Governor Jim Hunt runs an institute that studies
higher education policy. One of the recent reports had the
following fact: if you are an adult, white American like
myself, you have two times the probability of having a
bachelor's degree as your African American colleague and fellow
citizen and almost three times the probability of a Hispanic
citizen.
This cannot go on. One of the points he makes is that if
you then add to that the correlation between earning power and
income and having a bachelor's degree and look at the
demographic projections, you will come to the conclusion that
the average income in America is going to go down if we do not
resolve this problem.
Now, I am an engineer, not a politician, so I will be
pretty straightforward. When you see a problem you are supposed
to analyze it and fix it. I think the only way we are going to
make the kind of rapid progress in drawing on all our citizens
in this country the way we have to is to be explicit about it.
If I had my way, these summer institutes and the outreach
programs of American colleges and universities and so forth
would have a very explicit component of their mission to
address the specific needs of our minority citizens.
I think we have to roll up our sleeves and work hard at
this, but, having said that, at the end of the day having
inspirational activities, learning opportunities, and jobs is
the same for everybody no matter what your background is, and
that is the starting point.
Senator Menendez. I appreciate that. I find it interesting
that as we look at part of the legislation, which I support, it
takes away the numerical limitation on aliens to come to be
part of our research efforts here, that domestically we have a
very large population that hopefully we can enhance in the math
and sciences, that we can produce from our own citizenry the
human capital to meet some of these challenges.
Mr. Vest. Behind our requests and our recommendations in
this report on undergraduate scholarships and graduate
fellowships for U.S. citizens is a model that looks roughly
like this. We believe we need to increase the fraction of our
American citizens who are educated in these fields, both
undergraduate and advanced levels. We believe that that should
be done by raising ultimately on the order of another couple of
percent or so the number of U.S. citizens going into these
fields, while not diminishing that extraordinarily important
talent, the world's best and brightest, that also come here.
That is really our goal.
Senator Menendez. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. I am very glad you explained that, because I
think, Senator, we need Senators like you, who have the concern
that you have expressed, to understand that the recommendations
are not intended to be penal and say, let us say we are not
going to get that for the minorities in the United States, but
let us bring the counterpart, that is a minority who was
educated overseas. We are trying to do both, as he indicated,
knowing that in the mean time we are very, very short. We
cannot get there in the right way unless we do both.
So I hope before we are finished that you will see your way
clear to think that is a positive. I have the same concerns as
you and I support the thrust. Thank you.
Let us see. Senator Talent, did you want to inquire or not?
[No response.]
The Chairman. Senator Alexander.
Senator Alexander. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thanks to the witnesses for your presence and your work in
helping us understand these issues. Dr. Vest, I want to say
especially to you I appreciate your leadership as I have worked
with you more on the two commissions that you have been a part
of. Without that consensus document, we would not really be
anywhere in this effort.
I want to endorse your point about the shortage of
engineers in America. That is the wrong way of thinking about
what we are doing. We are educating more talented engineers and
scientists, not to take jobs, but to create jobs. We are and
have been for years losing millions of jobs every year. What
distinguishes the United States from the other countries in the
world is that we create more good new jobs than we lose, and we
need to help people understand that we are not doing this to
graduate people to take jobs. Most of our new jobs come from
little startups, one or two people, this idea, that skill. That
is true in every part of this country and that is a very
important point.
I want to ask you if you would be willing to ask your staff
to write a letter to the chairman describing in a page the
process that you went through reviewing, coming to the
conclusion about the 20 recommendations of the Augustine
Report, because I think many Senators are not aware that you
sifted through many models and many ideas and you narrowed them
down and you subjected them to peer review. You did something
that we are really not able to do, and that is one reason it is
getting such wide acceptance here.
But I would like to be able to cite that from time to time
when somebody says, well, why did you pick the You Teach
Program in Austin, Texas? Here is another good program over
here in Salt Lake City. Well, you probably considered 20
programs and you came with this model. So just a page on that
would be helpful.
A second thing would be, could you comment for a minute on
why you believe, as I have heard you say, that all 20 of these
recommendations need to be adopted, not 18 of them or 15 of
them or 14 of them, that they are as a whole, that they are not
individual recommendations? Would you want to make a brief
comment about that?
Mr. Vest. Yes, Senator Alexander. You and Senator Bingaman
asked us a very straightforward, if complex, question, in a
single sentence: What are the things that the Nation needs to
do in science and technology to ensure our prosperity and
security in the globalized economy of the 21st century, or some
words very close to that?
That is the question that under Norm Augustine's remarkable
leadership we have attempted to answer. We came up with
something that I have characterized here as being bold,
comprehensive, and strategic. Frankly, that represents a lot of
business thinking. Businesses do not go forward--and you know
we had many CEOs or former CEOs on our committee. Businesses do
not move forward without both a strategy, a long-term vision,
figuring out what all the pieces are of the puzzle, recognizing
that they each have a role to play in coming up with a
comprehensive thrust forward.
So it is sort of a business kind of analysis and thought
that led us to believe that we had to produce something very
comprehensive, that recognized the fact this is a long-term
problem, it is not all going to be solved overnight, that we
have to look at the educational pipeline all the way from
kindergarten forward, and that many of these things would bear
fruit at different points in time. But it is a comprehensive
package and we believe that each of its parts will be more
effective if somehow the entire program moves forward.
Senator Alexander. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you very much, Senator. Thanks for all
your hard work.
Senator Talent, we are glad to have you here.
STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES TALENT, U.S. SENATOR
FROM MISSOURI
Senator Talent. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for letting
me get in here at the end.
Two areas I wanted to bring up with you, just your general
opinions on them, and this is based on what I have seen and
observed over the years on the ground about how we can
encourage the interest in the sciences. The first is, what do
you see as--what would you like to say that you see the role of
the community colleges in general being? When I think of
institutions that sort of connect up, that are the connectors
between the needs of the corporate community, the business
community, the trade for highly skilled people, and then the
kids or the younger people, it is the community colleges that
are on the ground sort of pulling all that together.
So if you have a view on that, and it does not necessarily
have to be all that specific, but what do you think?
Then the second thing is, how as a practical matter do you
think we can get more scientists, people who have maybe had a
career or half a career in research or in private life, into
the classroom? Because I think what inspires young people are
being around people who themselves have a passion for the
subject. If you get a historian in teaching history, those kids
are going to see the passion that that person has and they are
going to be attracted to that.
How would you go about--how important do you think that is
and how would you go about doing it?
Mr. Proenza. Senator, to your first question, community
colleges are playing an increasingly vital role in the
fundamental workforce training of the United States,
particularly entry-level jobs and those that utilize
technology, but from the perspective of knowing how to use it
in the workplace. Our universities are advancing the knowledge
frontiers, if you will, and thereby adding to that dimension
the kinds of people that need to come in and transform the
workplace to become more efficient, more productive, and
ultimately to bring on line the new tools that will create
competitiveness and indeed increased wealth creation
opportunity for our Nation.
But there is no question that community colleges have done
an outstanding job in linking to the fundamental needs at the
workplace.
Your second question requires that we do continue to
transform the way in which teachers are certified and we get
away from the need to simply put them through pedagogical
courses, if you will, and look to bridging the gap between
teachers who are studying pedagogy and those that need
fundamental content. You are absolutely right, there are many
people in the economy, coming out of the military, in various
businesses, particularly those that are high technology and
utilizing science and engineering in what they do, that can
bring to the classroom that vitality that I spoke about, which
the laboratories are able to engender in those teachers that
they bring in, and why we feel that that is such a vital
component for leveraging the national laboratories.
In Ohio, for example, at my university we have brokered a
partnership with the National Inventors Hall of Fame to bring
exciting things in the National Inventors Hall of Fame that
have so dominated the recognition of those inventors by that
organization into a middle school that is focused on science
and mathematics. That is a partnership between our university,
the National Inventors Hall of Fame, and the Akron Public
Schools.
It is possible there are, as Dr. Vest indicated, many
exceptional models out there of similar enterprises and we
should do as much of that as we can.
Senator Talent. I was visited earlier today by an
engineering professor from Missouri and we were talking about
the subject. He said he had two daughters and, talking to them
about going into engineering, they say, no, it is just not very
cool, dad. I think there is too much of that sense among young
people, but if they were exposed to somebody who had created
some product for some company and could give them these real
life stories and just sort of show that, I think the kids would
see: Wow, you know, you can really make these things or design
on the computer or whatever.
I do not know how much this is a big money item, really.
This is just--because I bet these resources are out there and
there are people who are willing to do this.
Doctor, do you have a comment?
Mr. Vest. Senator Talent, we could have an entire hearing
on this last point you have made.
Senator Talent. Well, do not tempt the chairman. It is a
subject that he might call you all back.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Vest. But I want to say this. I was horrified recently
looking at a survey that had been done in a small area, but a
survey of why young kids were not going into engineering. The
No. 1 reason given in the sort of open form part of the survey
was: We want to go into something where we can make the world
better. This is our failure. It is not somebody else's failure.
I spent my whole life in engineering education. This is our
failure.
They need to understand that their scientific and
engineering backgrounds can in fact be the things that can
solve these great global problems. That is the message we all
have to get out.
Community colleges are extremely important because I try to
consistently use the phrase, we have to create, we have to have
a workforce and leadership that can both create and perform the
jobs of the future. But it all begins with K-12. If you do not
fix K-12, colleges cannot do their job, universities cannot do
their job.
Finally, I will just tell you, sir, that industry is full
of people ready to go out and play this role as Luis, as Dr.
Proenza has said. IBM, Intel, all these companies already are
launching these programs. The national labs do it. We just need
to build that momentum, get whatever barriers are there out of
the way, because inspiration is the major deal here.
Senator Talent. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Proenza. If I might just say, Dr. Vest just reminded me
we have a mutual colleague on the President's Council on
Science and Technology, Floyd Kwame, who made I think a very
telling point. He said you do not go to college to study French
to become a Frenchman. So when you go to school and study
engineering, it is not just to become an engineer; it is
actually to learn how to solve problems.
It is that linkage that I think Dr. Vest is looking to find
a way to solve, to convince our young people that these tools
of science, engineering, mathematics, and technology are
problem-solving tools. To Senator Craig's earlier comment, it
is that connection that we have been so vitally interested in
and which the PACE legislation I think underscores.
Senator Talent. And the easiest way to do that is if you
can expose them at the right age to people who believe that
passionately and will just naturally communicate that to them
because they have lived it, that is better than public service
announcements or other things talking at them. It is the
teacher that they are around or some class that they are in.
That is kind of my feeling about it.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Well, we are going to close now. But I just
wanted to say, while it might not--I am not sure yet whether it
is within this piece of legislation or the one that goes to the
Education Committee, but, you know, Dr. Proenza, we are going
to run into a problem in terms of certification of teachers. We
have extreme self-righteousness on the part of States, that you
are going to be certified the way we say and you are going to
go to our universities and take 2 years of learning how to
educate kids. Even if you already have a Ph.D. and you have
taught this, that, and the other, you have got to go back to
college and get--we have got to find some way in this
legislation that if we are going to go through all this
resource-building that we are not going to end up with doing
all this training and getting people ready to teach, only to
find that the State has a different thought about it. They have
got to find out up front. If they want to participate, they
have got to join up. They have got to accept what we are doing
as something good for them. They cannot be out in left field.
I know you already know that, both of you, very well and I
am a little--I am permitted to be a little tougher on it than
you because you are part of that system. But I have been very
open that about 6 States decided about 15 years ago that we did
not even need colleges of education within their universities.
I think you know that, Dr. Vest. I praised them because I did
not think their colleges of education were doing much good.
What we needed to do is get teachers who knew how to teach
and that knew the subject matter, not only what you teach in a
college of education. The statistics are terrific, terrible,
how many kids are being taught in the fourth through twelfth
grade by people that do not know nothing about math and they
are being taught math, being taught science by a person that is
not a scientist.
We cannot do that and get where you want to go, can we,
doctor? They have to know something about it.
Mr. Vest. No, sir. That is why that recommendation in our
report is numbered A-1: get kids to go into these fields and
disciplines, get the additional work they need in pedagogy, and
get out into the field.
The Chairman. Well, I thought the hearing went well. Since
our piece of this major legislation is pretty well defined, we
are going to take a look with our staff and see if we need any
further things to fill in. But I want to state for the record,
if we think we have got enough we are going to proceed to mark
up this bill one of these days not too far off and see if we
can get the first piece of this legislation at least down to
the Senate floor.
I am fully aware and the leadership in the Senate knows
this is not the legislation, this is a piece of it, and our
goal is to find a way to do what you recommended and that is to
get all of it forwarded and in some way to put it together. So
if it goes down by itself and you talk about it as
commissioners who put it together--we do not intend to run it
on its own. We are going to wait for the other committees and
then see how they package it. Then the House is starting its
version.
So all we are trying to do is set the pace. It is
interesting, set the pace for PACE.
Thank you for being here and it is a pleasure getting to
meet you, doctor. I look forward to meeting and talking with
you more. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 12:30 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
APPENDIXES
----------
Appendix I
Responses to Additional Questions
----------
Responses of Luis Proenza to Questions From Senator Domenici
Question 1. In your written testimony, you propose a ``hub and
spokes'' model for math and science education programs, centered on the
National Laboratories. You also mention the need for flexibility to
make each program meet the local school district's needs.
How can the national laboratories best ensure that they are
targeting their programs to the needs of local school districts?
Answer. The hub-and-spoke notion is one in which each of the
laboratories is assigned a geographical service area. In fact, DOE has
identified such geographical areas, as shown in the attached diagram.*
The ``flexibility'' idea relates to the needed local adaptations that
are appropriate to each of the laboratories areas of expertise, as well
as to possible local needs of the school districts served by each
laboratory. Such needs could include, for example, some districts
having greater need for mathematics teachers as compared to science and
vice versa. Guidance on this matter could follow the approach
identified by the California Council on Science and Technology or
utilize established networks within each state's educational systems.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Attachments have been retained in committee files.
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Question 2. In your written testimony, you discuss the importance
of incorporating digital technologies, such as virtual reality
simulations, into math and science instruction. These technologies, as
you point out, rely on broadband communication.
How many of our public schools are equipped for broadband today? Is
funding the only limiting factor to increasing broadband access at our
nation's schools?
Answer. Broadband is rapidly expanding and is now increasingly
available even through wireless communications providers. What is more,
we are rapidly seeing the deployment of additional technologies, such
as Pod casting and self contained portable technologies (e.g., PDA's,
pentop computers, tablet computers, etc.) that enable simulations to be
brought to the classroom independent of broadband. In Ohio, the Third
Frontier Network and initiatives such as One Cleveland/One NEO are
rapidly expanding broadband access to the classroom. Also, The
University of Akron, for example, has had an exemplary tradition of
enabling broadband access to university resources for a wide array of
public schools throughout the Northeast Ohio region. In short, the
current state of the broadband access issue, given the Administration's
efforts to advance broadband access, the initiatives of local
communities and the continued evolution of technology, should make this
matter a moot issue.
Responses of Luis Proenza to Questions From Senator Bingaman
Question 1. Sections 171 and 181 of the PACE bill in the HELP
committee direct the Secretary of Energy to establish large
undergraduate and graduate programs at the Department in the areas of
math, science and engineering education. Can you please comment on how
you think the Department can handle such large scholarship programs?
Answer. The DOE is experienced in the handling of numerous
undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral support mechanisms. I am not
aware of any apparent limitations for DOE in this regard.
Question 2. The PACE--Energy bill authorizes the development of a
summer internship program for middle and secondary school students to
actually work with scientists for hands on experience. Can you please
comment on the best way to implement such a program--should a technical
staff member be physically assigned a student much like a graduate
student or are there other interactive methods that can be employed?
Answer. DOE already has many programs that involve middle and
secondary school students in summer internships and other programs. Our
review of these programs suggested that they are positive and should be
continued wherever possible. However, we did not see the opportunity of
such programs to have anything like the leveraging impact of working
through teachers. In other words, the 17 National Laboratories can and
should have programs that provide access opportunities for students,
but such programs can never equal the impact that can be gained through
the transformative effects of laboratory experience for teachers. It is
a simple matter of the ``10,000 teachers for 10 million minds''
leveraging opportunity.
Question 3. Based upon your experience with the SEAB study on math
and science education and our PACE--Energy bill concerning summer
institutes--how should the Department best implement the program to
affect the greatest number of students in the most beneficial way?
Answer. See my response to 2, above. Once again, it is a question
of leveraging vs. direct exposure. The Science Bowls and other outreach
efforts should be continued, particularly in the local service areas of
the National Laboratories, but the greatest leveraging impact, we
believe, can be gained through the professional development of
teachers.
Question 4. This legislation proposes to strengthen the math and
science competencies of K-12 teachers in a number of ways, which of
course we hope will lead to better prepared and educated students. PACE
also creates opportunities for students to participate in internships
at the labs, which we hope will give them an exciting, hands-on
experience leading to greater interest and success in math and science.
What more can we do to excite, interest, or encourage young people to
pursue postsecondary education and careers in math or science?
Answer. As far as creating opportunities for exciting, interesting
and encouraging students to pursue STEM careers, we believe that DOE's
most direct opportunity lies through the professional development of
teachers. Beyond that, we see untapped potential in the domains of (1)
making Web-based materials available that provide interactive
opportunities for students and teachers alike and which enable powerful
simulation or visualization experiences of complex physical and
engineering problems and (2) that enable students and teachers to
remotely access laboratory facilities in an interactive mode.
Responses of Luis Proenza to Questions From Senator Akaka
Question 1. Dr. Proenza, I would like to ask you for your ideas on
this as well. Are there ways that you could see extending the reach of
National Labs' expertise to states that are geographically remote from
Los Alamos, Brookhaven, or Lawrence Livermore?
Answer. Once again, the role of teachers cannot be underestimated
as a leveraging force. In addition, the National Laboratories can
develop computer-based exercises as well as remote-access opportunities
that utilize the Internet to extend the reach of the laboratories
beyond their immediate locales and the boundaries of their assigned
geographical areas. In addition, we are of the opinion that other
Federal agencies, as well as university and corporate resources, can
and should be considered as adjuncts to the National Laboratories. That
means that a significant interagency coordinating role must be mounted,
perhaps through the National Science and Technology Council and the
Office of Science and Technology Policy.
______
Responses of Charles M. Vest to Questions From Senator Domenici
Question 1. In the Gathering Storm report, your committee
recommended an increase in long-term basic research of 10 percent a
year over the next seven years.
Does the President's American Competitiveness Initiative go far
enough towards meeting this recommendation?
Should research agencies beyond the three highlighted by the
President be considered for similar funding increases? If so, which
ones?
Answer. The President's American Competitiveness Initiative is a
very positive first step toward the comprehensive actions recommended
by the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering,
and Institute of Medicine report Rising Above the Gathering Storm.
As indicated the committee recommended that funding for basic
research be increased by 10% per year over the next 7 years. The
President's American competitiveness initiative doubles ``the Federal
commitment to the most critical basic research programs in the physical
sciences over the next 10 years.''
The committee did not specify the agencies that should receive the
increase--other than indicating that the Department of Defense 6.1
budget and the fields of the physical sciences, mathematics,
engineering, and computer sciences throughout federal agencies were of
particular concern. Based on past history as analyzed by the National
Science Foundation, the four agencies providing the highest percentage
of funding for the fields identified by the committee as being of
special concern are the National Science Foundation, the Department of
Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the
Department of Defense as shown in the table below:
PRELIMINARY FEDERAL OBLIGATIONS FOR BASIC RESEARCH IN THE PHYSICAL
SCIENCES, MATHEMATICS, COMPUTER SCIENCES, AND ENGINEERING, BY AGENCY, FY
2004\1\
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Funding
(billions % of
$) total
------------------------------------------------------------------------
All agencies...................................... 7.4
Department of Energy.............................. 2.1 28
National Science Foundation....................... 1.9 26
National Aeronautics and Space Administration..... 1.5 21
Department of Defense............................. 1.1 15
------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Other agencies which fund these areas are Commerce, HHS, USDA, DHS,
Interior, VA, and EPA. HHS is largest at 6%; remainder at 1% or less
for a total of 10%. Source: NSF, 2005. Federal Funds for Research and
Development: Fiscal Years 2002, 2003, and 2004 (Publication No: NSF 05-
307)
The President's budget increase focuses on the National Science
Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the
Department of Energy Office of Science.
Maintaining or increasing funding for all federal research
agencies, of course, is important. If additional agencies were to be
added, the committee would suggest focusing the increases on the basic
research activities of the Department of Defense (6.1) and the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration in the physical sciences,
engineering, computer sciences, and mathematics.
Although not an exact match, the committee believes that the
actions provided in the President's American Competitiveness Initiative
are consistent with the recommendations in the report.
Responses of Charles M. Vest to Questions From Senator Bingaman
Question 1. What were the academies thinking that led to the
proposal for an ARPA-E entity with the Department and what other models
did your panel consider?
Answer. The committee believes that ARPA-E would be an important
and productive component of the research and development infrastructure
needed to respond to the nation's urgent need for clean, affordable,
reliable energy. ARPA-E would provide the following benefits for the
nation:
Bring a freshness, excitement, and sense of mission to
energy research that will attract many of our best and
brightest minds--those of experienced scientists and engineers,
and, especially, those of students and young researchers,
including those in the entrepreneurial world.
Focus on creative, out-of-the-box, potentially
transformational research that industry cannot or will not
support.
Utilize an ARPA-like organization that is flat, nimble, and
sparse, yet capable of setting goals and making decisions that
will allow it to sustain for long periods of time those
projects whose promise is real, and to phase out programs that
do not prove to be productive or as promising as anticipated.
Create a new tool to bridge the troubling gaps between basic
energy research, development, and industrial innovation.
The committee considered several models before deciding to focus on
energy and to use ARPA as a template. Among these were In-Q-Tel (which
engages the entrepreneurial community with technologies of potential
interest to the intelligence community), HSARPA (the Department of
Homeland Security Version of ARPA), SEMATECH (a jointly funded research
venture of the federal government and the semiconductor industry),
Advanced Technology Program (ATP), Small Business Innovation Research
program (SBIR), Civilian Technology Corporation (recommended in a
previous 1992 National Academies report chaired by Harold Brown), and
Discovery Innovation Institutes (recommended by a 2005 National
Academies report chaired by James Duderstadt).
Question 2. It is my understanding that legislation for the
Department of Homeland Security includes the formation of a Homeland
Security ARPA. Did you panel look at how this ARPA has performed?
Answer. The committee did consider HSARPA and found its focus was
more on short-term research than what the committee intends to be the
case with ARPA-E.
Question 3. One of the recommendations of your panel was to set
aside 8 percent of programmatic funding for out of the box R&D
proposals which would not normally or otherwise fare well in the
tradition peer review process. Is this similar to the Laboratory
Directed Research and Development funding or set aside for the National
Laboratories? Can you please explain say how this would be implemented
in the Office of Science?
Answer. This proposal is somewhat different from the National
Laboratory set aside which is focused on the top of the organization.
Our discussions with National Laboratory directors indicate that
although they have discretionary funds, the same is not true for those
in the middle of the organization. We have also heard concerns that the
earmarking of funds limits the ability of the national labs to make the
best use of their funds.
The committee also believes that this investment should be managed
in the DOE's Office of Science by appropriately expert technical
program managers in the middle of the organization, who we believe are
already well organized to do so.
Question 4. In a companion bill which now resides in the HELP
committee, the Office of Science and Technology Policy was given the
added responsibility for coordinating Math and Science education across
various agencies, like DOE, NASA and NSF. Can you please comment on
this?
Answer. The committee believes this action is consistent with the
goals of its report. This coordination role is familiar to OSTP and was
effectively executed more than a decade ago under a now-defunct
coordinating council. The placement of the deputy assistant director
under the assistant director for science in OSTP is also consistent
with the organization of the office over the last several years.
The major issue with coordinating across federal agencies in
general is in finding the right balance between ensuring coordination
and effectiveness across agencies while not diluting or trespassing
upon individual agency missions.
The case of coordinating STEM education is particularly challenging
because there are no national goals--thus the bill's language about
establishing the goals and opening them up for public comment. It is
important that this process not become overly political. To avoid
politicization, there might be some kind of public input to the
appointment process.
Quesion 5. This legislation proposes to strengthen the math and
science competencies of K-12 teachers in a number of ways, which of
course we hope will lead to better prepared and educated students. PACE
also creates opportunities for students to participate in internships
at the labs, which we hope will give them an exciting, hands-on
experience leading to greater interest and success in math and science.
What more can we do to excite, interest, or encourage young people to
pursue post-secondary education and careers in math or science?
Answer. The greater the degree to which middle and high school
students have the opportunity to engage in research activities whether
at national labs, universities, industry, community colleges, or within
their own schools, the greater the degree they will be excited,
interested, and encouraged in pursuing careers in science, math, and
engineering. Funding for these activities would be very useful.
Response of Charles M. Vest to Question From Senator Akaka
Question 1. Professor Vest, thank you for your testimony. I am
pleased with the provisions in S. 2197 for education, teacher
enhancement, and for supporting young researchers and advancing
innovating technology. As many of my colleagues on this Committee know,
I began my professional career as an educator, so educational
initiatives are very important to me.
I endorse the programs in the PACE-E bill, but I am concerned about
the ``Lab-effect,'' in that some of the programs are to be established
in the geographic regions of the National Labs. I am interested in your
suggestions of how we can ensure that states like Hawaii which do not
have a Department of Energy National Laboratory can enjoy the fruits of
the program for assistance for specialty schools and Centers of
Excellence in Math and Science in specialty or magnet schools? These
two initiatives can be very important for reaching middle and high
school students, and I am sure our schools would like to participate in
the expertise of the National labs.
Answer. Although the legislation focuses on Department of Energy
National Labs, there are 700 federal labs supported by many other
agencies located in every state that could be used for a similar
purpose. (See http://www.federallabs.org/ )
According to the information on this website, each year
approximately $25 billion of federally funded research and development
takes place at more than 700 federal laboratories and centers which
address virtually every area of science and technology and employ more
than 100,000 scientists and engineer.
Examples in Hawaii include the Pacific Basin Agricultural Research
Center in Hilo, the Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry in Honolulu,
and the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Honolulu
laboratory.
I would make two additional points. First, I think that there
should be modest coordination among these educational outreach efforts
by the labs. There should be sharing of best practices and some degree
of coherence brought to the programs in order to do the best possible
job and to gain efficiencies. Second, our Gathering Storm report
recommended the establishment of summer institutes for teachers, with a
goal of reaching 50,000 practicing teachers each summer. We envision
that these could be conducted in industry and at universities, as well
as at the national labs.
______
Responses of Raymond L. Orbach to Questions From Senator Domenici
Question 1. What are some of the strengths of current education
programs at the National Labs? Which of those programs should we be
emulating at other facilities?
Answer. The key differentiating factor in all the education
programs our national laboratories offer is mentor-intensive research
experiences that expose the participants to the real world of science.
This is done through internships and fellowships that peak in the
summer but occur year-round. There are three types of programs, each
based on a specific target population, which could be emulated at all
national laboratories. Each of these types of programs has operated in
some form or another at many of the national laboratories. The most
common program type, which has the greatest number of participants, is
the internship program for college-level students. Two of the most
important best practices that define internship programs are to set
clearly defined goals for the students and to provide proper guidance
to the mentors. Other critical components of this model are providing
stipend support for the students and having each national laboratory
education office administer its own programs to ensure the proper
guidance and assessment of the programs. The second program type is
targeted at teachers and provides them with professional development
research experiences that their respective school systems cannot
provide. Although research indicates the most successful programs
involve teachers for many weeks over multiple years, only about half of
our labs have the resources to carry out such extensive programs. The
third type of program targets faculty from colleges and universities
who have typically not been at a national laboratory. This is a
developmental program that has led the participating faculty to compete
successfully for federal grant support, often for the first time in
their careers.
Question 2. Are there particular areas of science and engineering
the Department of Energy has an interest in assuring that students are
still ``entering the pipeline?''
In other words, are there energy fields that, given current trends,
we expect will have future shortages of qualified employees?
Answer. The Department is working to improve its understanding of
market and employment trends. There are professions related to certain
sectors of energy-related fields that will probably see an increase in
employment demand because of retirement and/or renewed growth. For
instance, with renewed interest in nuclear power, student enrollments
in nuclear-related disciplines have swelled. In such cases where the
Department does not foresee future shortages, it has and will continue
to direct its funding to more pressing priorities. There are, however,
small niches within certain sectors such as radio-chemists which are
and may continue to see some shortages. The difficulty in projecting is
that, rather than a few large sectors seeing shortfalls, numerous small
sectors are more likely to see shortages.
Responses of Raymond L. Orbach to Questions From Senator Bingaman
Question 1. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 established a stand-alone
fund in section 1102 that required the Secretary of Energy to set aside
0.3 percent of the monies made available for research, development and
demonstration or roughly $40 million for this fiscal year. How has the
Department implemented this provision?
Answer. The Department is still in the process of reviewing section
1102 of the Energy Policy Act. If you include all sources of funding
for education, including direct funding by DOE as well as education
programs funded by the national laboratories you will find that DOE
funding exceeds the amount called for in the Energy Policy Act.
Question 2. The PACE Energy legislation proposes to amend the DOE
Science Education Act to create a coordinator for Math, Science and
Engineering Education programs which reports to the Undersecretary for
Science and is responsible for the various education programs
Department-wide. Does such a position help the Department?
Answer. The director of my Workforce Development for Teachers and
Scientists program effectively serves that need already. Over the past
three years, the director has convened all the education offices in the
National Labs to plan a concerted effort in education. The director
typically represents the Department in interagency and governmental
meetings that involve science and engineering education.
Question 3. The PACE Energy legislation proposes to have each
national laboratory establish a program whereby the laboratory supports
a Center of Excellence in Math and Science at a public school in the
region of the laboratory which will involve laboratory staff teaching
at the school. Do you think the laboratories will embrace such a
program when they so programmatically oriented?
Answer. I do not think many of the labs would embrace such a
program. A problem with such a program is that the scientists are not
trained as teachers. Companies such as IBM and organizations like Teach
for America have often struggled with placing non-teachers with science
content knowledge in school settings without the help of experienced
teachers. Another issue in implementing such a program, especially for
national laboratories near metropolitan areas with very large numbers
of schools, is determining who should be provided with this intensive
support and deciding what schools should be served.
On the other hand, providing schools access to the scientific
community on a long-term basis can be very constructive. By far, the
most efficient and effective impact that national laboratory scientists
could have is by working directly with teachers. That is why bringing
teachers to the national laboratories to learn how science is actually
done and training these teachers to be leaders and agents of change is
so well received at all our national laboratories.
ARPA-E and Potential Alternatives
Question 4. Secretary Bodman has been quoted in the trade press as
preferring an In-Q-Tel like entity. To me the overall question is how
the Department can accelerate high risk basic energy research into
something which is acceptable to the marketplace. Can you discuss the
pros and cons of the ARPA proposed in the legislation versus say the
In-Q-Tel that the Secretary is quoted as favoring?
Answer. The Administration is in the process of evaluating the
provisions of S. 2197, the Protecting America's Competitive Edge
through Energy Act of 2006 (also known as the PACE-Energy Act)--
including the Advanced Research Projects Authority-Energy (ARPA-E)
provisions.
The Secretary has stated that In-Q-Tel, the Central Intelligence
Agency's ``venture capital fund,'' is a possible alternative model to
ARPA-E. As the Department proceeds with its consideration of the
legislation, we look forward to substantive discussion with the
Committee and others on the merits of ARPA-E or possible alternatives.
Question 5. PACE takes some important steps to leverage the
resources and expertise available to the Department of Energy, and the
Office of Science in particular, to strengthen math and science
education at both the K-12 and postsecondary levels, such as summer
institutes for teachers, internship opportunities for middle and high
school students, and statewide specialty schools. Are there additional
ways to maximize the resources and expertise available to the
Department to strengthen math and science education at both the K-12
and postsecondary levels?
Answer. This occurs through collaborations with other federal
agencies, the entire education community, and the private sector. For
example, the Office of Science supports a Faculty and Student Team
program that last year brought nearly 40 teams to our national
laboratories. This was done in partnership with the National Science
Foundation. This year the National Institutes of Health are also
starting to use the national laboratories to help provide advanced
research experiences to some of its students, through a similar
partnership.
Responses of Raymond L. Orbach to Questions From Senator Akaka
Funding DOE Math, Science, and Engineering Education
Question 1. Dr. Orbach, it is nice to see you again, and I
appreciate all the work that the Office of Science does to promote
hydrogen, fusion, and other cutting-edge initiatives. I agree with our
distinguished witnesses that science education is critical for
America's competitiveness, and I support the goals of the PACE bills.
I want to ask you about financing for these proposed education
initiatives since I noted concerns in your testimony. If I understand
correctly, .3 percent of the total Department of Energy appropriation
would be set aside for a Math, Science, and Engineering Education Fund.
Secondly, there would be a revolving fund established in the Treasury
Department that would help fund the ``Advanced Research Projects
Authority'' for the Department of Energy.
I am interested in any comments you might have on these two
provisions in particular, and any additional thoughts you might have
about financing promising energy technologies and encouraging
scientific education and teaching.
Answer. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 already amended the Science
Education Enhancement Act to include a provision for a ``Science
Education Enhancement Fund'', composed of ``not less than 0.3 percent
of the amount made available to the Department for research,
development, demonstration, and commercial application''. The PACE-
Energy Act would further amend the same section of the Science
Education Enhancement Act to change the title of the fund to the
``Mathematics, Science, and Engineering Fund'', in the same amount as
the Energy Policy Act provision.
The 0.3 percent set aside for the ``Math, Science, and Engineering
Education Fund'' would amount to roughly $40 million dollars a year
when applied against all research, development, demonstration, and
commercial application funding within the Department. If you include
all sources of funding for education, including direct funding by DOE
as well as education programs funded by the national laboratories you
will find that DOE funding exceeds the figure called for in the PACE-
Energy and Energy Policy Acts.
ARPA-E and Potential Alternatives
Question 2. I have previously spoken about the need to rely less on
oil and natural resources and look more toward the use of advanced
technology to facilitate renewable energy sources.
The PACE-Energy bill includes a provision to establish the Advanced
Research Projects Authority--Energy (ARPA-E). This organization will be
headed by a newly appointed Director [and] will have authority to award
competitive, merit-based grants, cooperative agreements, and contracts
to public or private entities.
Given that this office will be charged with rapidly developing
critical energy technologies, do you anticipate that the Director would
have any special acquisition authorities to expedite the research and
development, and, if so, how will you ensure that the efforts of this
ARPA-E office will not result in loosely-managed research projects that
do not yield the desired results?
Answer. The Administration is in the process of evaluating the
provisions of S. 2197, the Protecting America's Competitive Edge
through Energy Act of 2006--including the ARPA-E provisions. As this
assessment proceeds, we would be happy to discuss our views on ARPA-E
or possible alternatives with you or your staff.
Responses of Raymond L. Orbach to Questions From Senator Wyden
Legislation to Commercialize Promising Technologies
Question 1. All the research in the world won't improve U.S.
competitiveness if it doesn't lead to new products and services that
the U.S. can sell to global markets. What is the timetable for this
legislation to commercialize promising technologies?
Answer. The Administration is currently evaluating the provisions
of the PACE-Energy Act. DOE would be happy to discuss proposals to
accelerate the commercialization of promising technologies with you or
your staff
We cannot address the question of a timetable for this legislation
as the legislative schedule is set by the Congress.
PACE and U.S. Competitiveness
Question 2. According to the World Economic Forum, the U.S. is no.
2 behind Finland on their competitive index. We must be doing something
right. How does the PACE legislation build on and further the things
that our nation is already doing successfully.
Answer. There are a number of reasons why the U.S. has been so
successful. Two of our biggest advantages are our very substantial
pnvate and public sector investments in research and development for
new technologies and our sustained support for the next generation of
scientists via our world-leading college and university system.
Although economists are loath to identify a precise number, it is
widely accepted that, as Nobel Laureate Robert Solow put it,
``[T]echnology remains the dominant engine of growth, with human
capital investment [that is to say education] in second place.'' From
his December 8, 1987 Nobel Prize lecture: ``. . . Technological
progress, very broadly defined to include improvements in the human
factor, was necessary to allow long-run growth in real wages and the
standard of living . . . . Gross output per hour of work in the U.S.
economy doubled between 1909 and 1949; and some seven-eighths of that
increase could be attributed to `technological change in the broadest
sense' and only the remaining eighth could be attributed to
conventional increase in capital intensity . . . . The broad conclusion
has held up surprisingly well in the thirty years since then . . .
[E]ducation per worker accounts for 30 percent of the increase in
output per worker and the advance of knowledge accounts for 64 percent
. . . .''
Or, in other words, Science is good for the Nation. Support of
science, the basis of technological growth, is a necessary investment
for fully two-thirds of economic growth, according to Solow.
The President's American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI), unveiled
in his State of the Union message, demonstrates the President's strong
commitment to continued U.S. competitiveness through a renewed national
effort in basic scientific research science and math education, and
private-sector investment. The State of the Union message, and the
subsequent release of the President's FY 2007 budget that contains
substantial increases for basic research in the physical sciences, are
all part of the strategy to maintain and sharpen America's
competitiveness.
With respect specifically to the PACE-Energy legislation, the
Department has just begun to consider this legislation. As our
assessment proceeds, we would be happy to talk with you or your staff.
Science and Technology Training for Women and Girls
Question 3. Could the PACE legislation achieve the same or better
results at lower cost, if the Energy Department was enforcing Title IX
and not writing off the potential contribution of 51% of the U.S.
population--women and girls--who want to become leaders in the STEM
(science, technology, engineering and math) fields?
Answer. The Department certainly does not write off the
contributions or potential contributions of any part of U.S. society.
Participants in all of DOE's education programs as well as all
recipients of our research funding are selected competitively, based on
merit.
Ensuring DOE R&D Funding goes to the ``Best and the Brightest''
Question 4. Do you have any objections to adding language to the
PACE bill to help ensure that Energy Department R&D funding goes to the
best and the brightest, regardless of gender?
Answer. As stated in the previous response, Office of Science
funding is awarded on a competitive merit basis, ensuring that only the
``best and the brightest'' receive funding. While we strongly support
funding the best proposals, without regard to gender, we do not feel
that legislative language mandating what we already do will offer any
additional benefit.
Responses of Raymond L. Orbach to Questions From Senator Feinstein
ARPA-E and the Development of Low-or Non-Carbon Emitting Technologies
Question 1. The ``Protecting America's Competitive Edge Through
Energy Act of 2006'' includes a provision that would create an Advanced
Research Projects Authority-Energy (ARPA-E). On the surface, ARPA-E
should promote the development of new technologies. However, these
grants do not target the development of low-carbon or carbon-free
technologies. Given the real threat of climate change, would you
support targeting climate-friendly technologies?
Answer. The Administration is currently evaluating the provisions
of S. 2197, the Protecting America's Competitive Edge through Energy
Act of 2006--including the ARPA-E provisions. As our assessment
proceeds, however we would be happy to discuss the details of the
legislation, including ARPA-E or possible alternatives with you or your
staff.
The President's Advanced Energy Initiative aims to reduce America's
dependence on imported energy sources, encourage the use of alternative
fuel technologies that reduce emissions, and generate cleaner
electricity. The FY 2007 DOE budget requests $2.1 billion to meet these
goals, an increase of $381 million over FY 2006.
The FY 2007 budget request emphasizes investment in alternative
fuel technologies, among other areas. Numerous DOE offices will
participate in the Advanced Energy Initiative. The Office of Science's
share ($539 million) of this Initiative will fund the ITER project, an
experimental reactor expected to further the potential of nuclear
fusion as a source of environmentally safe energy, as well as solar,
biomass, and hydrogen research programs.
The Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy's share ($771
million) of the Initiative includes funding increases for hydrogen,
fuel cell, biomass, solar, and wind research programs. The Office of
Fossil Energy's share ($444 million) supports its Coal Research
Initiative and other power generation/stationary fuel cell research
programs. The Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology's share
($392 million) includes $250 million for the Global Nuclear Energy
Partnership (GNEP) and also supports Generation IV, Nuclear Power 2010,
and the Nuclear Hydrogen Initiative. GNEP is a comprehensive strategy
to enable an expansion of nuclear power in the U.S. and around the
world, to promote nuclear nonproliferation goals; and to help resolve
nuclear waste disposal issues.
ARPA-E and the Commercialization of Promising Energy Technologies
Question 2. Additionally, ARPA-E does not include a clear
regulatory pathway to commercialization. Do you believe that the DARPA
model is a good model for energy technologies given the lack of a
customer in the energy markets compared to the military? Can you
provide thoughts on how these technologies can be commercially
developed?
Answer. As stated above, the Administration is in the process of
evaluating the provisions of S. 2197, the Protecting America's
Competitive Edge through Energy Act of 2006--including the ARPA-E
provisions, and so we are not in a position to comment at this time. As
our assessment proceeds, however, we would be happy to discuss our
views and gain input from the Committee and its staff.
Appendix II
Additional Material Submitted for the Record
----------
Prepared Statement of Dr. Patrick Kociolek, Executive Director of the
California Academy of Sciences
I would like to thank the Committee for the opportunity to present
this testimony for the record on the important issue of improving
science education to ensure America's long term competitiveness. The
PACE-Energy Act (S. 2197) currently being considered by the Committee
provides an excellent foundation for improving the scientific
understanding of future scientists and non-scientists alike. I applaud
the effort.
America's competitiveness in the 21st century is inextricably
linked to science and, therefore, science education. The areas of
science that have been important to our country, and continue and will
be important in the foreseeable future include space sciences,
technology, medicine, agriculture, chemistry, energy and biology. 1
would, however, like to add additional perspective on the important
role played in science education by ``informal'' institutions such as
the California Academy of Sciences as well as other zoos, aquaria,
planetariums, science centers and museums.
As the Committee prepares to markup S. 2197 I recommend that the
Committee consider opportunities for informal science education within
the scope of the new programs authorized in the bill. The remainder of
my statement discusses the significant contributions of informal
science education to the objectives of this legislation.
INFORMAL SCIENCE INSTITUTIONS ARE INSTRUMENTAL IN DEVELOPING EARLY
INTEREST AND EXCITEMENT KEY TO LONG-TERM INTEREST IN SCIENCE AND
SCIENCE CAREERS
Through a wide ranging set of exhibitions and programs, museums,
aquaria and planetariums play important roles in helping people better
understand science, appreciate the role of science in their daily
lives, have them participate in the scientific process and experience
and consider careers in the scientific enterprise. This familiarity
with science is critical for our stature in the world and the
functioning of our democracy. The pipeline for future scientists must
be developed early, to not address immediate needs, but to ensure a
reliable source of scientists for future generations.
A study by the National Science Foundation indicated that over 90%
who currently have careers in science remember being stimulated about
the sciences through visits to natural history museums, aquariums and
planetariums. This staggering figure demonstrates the impact informal
learning opportunities can have on our children's interests and their
career decisions.
Our institution, and others like it, take this a step further and
provide real world training to young people. The California Academy of
Sciences runs a program called ``Careers in Science'' in which we offer
paid internships to young people (concentrating on underrepresented and
economically disadvantaged populations) starting at age 15. Once
accepted into this program, students continue as employees of the
Academy, working in laboratories, libraries, and on the public floor of
the museum, through their first year in college. Over 90 percent of the
students who participate in this program do go on to college, many
representing the first in their families to do so. Last year we had 135
applications for the 8 openings in this program.
INFORMAL SCIENCE INSTITUTIONS AND FORMAL EDUCATION ARE INEXTRICABLY
LINKED
Museums are excellent adjuncts to the formal education process. In
San Francisco, the California Academy of Sciences hosts classes and
teachers from every school-public and private, elementary, middle and
high school, to its museum every year. In addition, 40% of the schools
from Monterey to the Oregon border send at least one class to the
Academy every year. The importance of augmenting what is happening in
the classroom cannot be underestimated. Early assessment tools are
showing students who have had an experience at a museum do better on
classroom assignments and test scores than those not attending the
museum. It has been estimated that museums spend more than $1 billion
helping to provide over 18 million instructional hours for educational
programming. These programs are built around national and state science
standards to ensure a direct link between classroom topics and
expectations and the museum programs.
Museums also provide teachers with access to scientists,
experiences, information and objects that can augment their classroom
activities and learning environment. In this day and age where
resources of many kinds are in short supply in our nation's schools,
museums have important education tools and objects support inquiry-
based learning. In some instances informal science education
institutions provide access to resources that it does not make sense
for each school system to possess--for example, few school systems
would consider duplicating the live animal collection of the National
Zoo. In other instances, school systems do not have access to even
rudimentary science tools such as microscopes. In these cases, access
to a museum or science center provides students with their only hands
on experience with the scientific process.
In addition, these ``informal'' institutions can and do provide
career enhancement opportunities for teachers, allowing them to engage
and discuss with scientists on the cutting edge of their fields,
providing teachers with the latest knowledge to take into their
classrooms. Teacher trainings and a wide range of professional
development opportunities afforded by museums help with the ``domino
effect'' of leveraging impact from teachers to students.
INFORMAL SCIENCE INSTITUTIONS INCREASE THE GENERAL SCIENCE LITERACY SO
IMPORTANT IN AN INCREASINGLY COMPLEX TECHNICAL ENVIRONMENT
Museums are great equalizers in our society: They bring real
objects and ideas to a large and diverse audience that would otherwise
not have direct access to incredible resources: resources from the
community as well as from around the world. Natural history museums,
aquaria, planetariums and science centers host hundreds of millions of
visitors, local, regional and national.
Museums are trusted sources of information. 90% of Americans,
across large segments of our society trust what they learn from
museums. This incredible responsibility of museums can be translated
into access and the ability to convey important concepts and
information that are relevant, useful and make impacts on the daily
lives of our citizens.
To meet the current and emerging demands in the sciences, we need
to create a workforce well versed in the sciences, and invest in
research and development to stay ahead and apace of the world. However,
it is also essential that all Americans better understand the
scientific process and the importance science has on their lives, as
well as the lives of their children, grandchildren and future
generations of Americans.
So many decisions that we make each day, from the foods we eat,
medical procedures we choose, transportation alternatives we consider,
to how we heat and cool our homes and businesses, and the environmental
conditions in which we live, require some understanding of scientific
principles and processes. And--as much of the legislation brought
before our local, state and national legislatures have scientific bases
(homeland security, agriculture, and transportation to name a few)--the
integrity and effectiveness of the democratic process is impacted by
the level of understanding of science by the general public. To
maintain and forward our competitive advantage on a worldwide scale,
America needs to help make a more scientifically literate citizenry.
INFORMAL SCIENCE INSTITUTIONS CONDUCT IMPORTANT SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH
In many museums, original scientific research is conducted that is
critical for America's future. Identities and distribution of organisms
that share the planet with us helps us understand climate change,
environmental degradation, conservation biology all with impacts on the
food we eat, water we drink, air we breathe, energy we use. Confirming
the identity of potential organisms from bioterrorism to alien and
invasive species in our lands and waters, is accomplished by research
expertise in America's museums. This research is supported by tools
such as geographic information systems, high throughput DNA analysis,
bioinformatics, electron microscopy, as well as environmental data
capture and imaging. A wide range of collaborators with museum-based
research include federal agencies, institutions of higher learning,
national laboratories and museums, agencies and NGO's all around the
world. This research in museums also forms the foundation of
exhibitions, and engages high school, undergraduate, and graduate
students as well as professionals. Participation in museum sponsored or
conducted research provides real world experiences in the scientific
process for high school, undergraduate and graduate students.
INFORMAL SCIENCE INSTITUTIONS FOSTER LIFELONG LEARNING
An increasingly important aspect of our society is providing for
meaningful learning opportunities for our aging population. Lifelong
learning for retirees, seniors and others are critical to ensure
quality of life for this growing segment of our society. Docents and
volunteers at museums allow people the ability to continue their
learning experiences until late in life, to stay up-to-date and young
in ideas and experiences. And they help to teach and serve as role
models for children. Many docents have retired from careers in science,
and these programs continue to utilize important resources in our
communities. Adult education programming offers traditional school
settings, while museum travel programs and nature tours, hikes and
forays provide alternative settings and learning opportunities. All of
these provide our citizens with scientific knowledge and ways of
thinking that benefit them in choices related to quality of life issues
and support for scientific and education initiatives.
OUR IMPACT ON EDUCATION EXTENDS WELL BEYOND OUR WALLS
The impact of museums goes far beyond the physical buildings
themselves. Literally tens of millions of Americans access information
developed by museums via the world wide web on topics as diverse as
biology, astrobiology, mathematics, physics, geology, foods and energy-
related topics, gaining access to authentic and reliable information
images, sounds, research results and curricula as well as other
information resources.
museums are important partners in realizing america's competitiveness
So, as we discuss the important roles of education, research and
incentives for America to stay on the front edge of scientific
innovations to remain competitive, it is important to consider and
realize the importance America's museums, science centers, aquaria and
planetariums play in advancing the knowledge of the general public, in
all of its diversity, for better lives today and in the future.