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Statement of
Dr. Vera C. Rubin, Member
National Science Board
Before the VA, HUD, & Independent Agencies Subcommittee
April 1, 1998
Chairman Lewis, Ranking Member Stokes, and members
of the Subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity
to testify before you. I am Dr. Vera Rubin, member
of the National Science Board and staff member, Department
of Terrestrial Management at the Carnegie Institution
of Washington. I would like to convey to you today
some of the excitement and value to the Nation of
the research and education activities that will be
supported by the National Science Foundation's FY
1999 budget request. I will also mention some of the
work of the Board in helping to develop this budget,
and in trying to understand possible effects of changes
in Federal agency research programs on the broader
picture of Federal support for research.
First, however, I would like to thank the Subcommittee
for its strong support of the Foundation in the past.
Your continuing commitment to a strong national effort
in research and education is extremely important to
the NSF as we carry out our various responsibilities.
The National Science Board is a 24-member body appointed
by the President for six-year terms. We represent
a broad cross-section of the Nation's leaders in science,
engineering, and education, and include full-time
researchers, educators, university officials, and
industry executives. Since the founding of the NSF
in 1950, the Board has exercised two roles: that of
a national policy body, and that of a governing body
for the Foundation. In many respects the latter role
is similar to that of a corporate board of directors,
but as a Federal entity we operate within the framework
of policy guidance established by the Congress and
the Administration.
The Board approves NSF's policies, budget proposals,
new programs, and major multimillion-dollar awards,
and generally oversees the fiscal and management operations
of NSF as a whole. We work very hard to make sure
that all of the Foundation's policies, systems, programs,
and awards are of the highest quality, incorporate
our best thinking, and reflect the perspectives of
the communities we represent.
We continue to provide oversight to NSF as it develops
methods and processes to comply with the present and
forthcoming requirements of the Government Performance
and Results Act. To provide oversight to the development
of the GPRA strategic plan and the performance plan
by the National Science Foundation, I established
an NSB Task Force on GPRA. This task force reports
to the NSB Committee on Audit and Oversight and has
provided constructive guidance for these important
documents.
In addition to our close and continuing oversight
of NSF, the Board has a special role in monitoring
the health of science and engineering in the U.S.
and in providing advice on national policy in research
and education. Last year the Board was asked by Presidential
Science Advisor Jack Gibbons to contribute to the
response of the National Science and Technology Council
to the Presidential Review Directive on the Government/University
Partnership.
The resulting NSB report on the Federal Role in Science
and Engineering Graduate and Postdoctoral Education
affirmed the critical importance of Federal support
to graduate and postdoctoral education and offered
more than a dozen recommendations to strengthen this
overwhelmingly successful partnership in advanced
science and engineering education for the future.
With your permission, I would like to submit this
report for the record.
The Board further, as part of its national policy
role, has drawn attention to the need for improved
coordination and decision making at the Federal level
in funding of science and engineering research. Such
improvements are needed to avoid gaps, overlaps, and
a failure to meet priorities that may otherwise occur.
To further this objective, the NSB, in its recently
released Working Paper on Government Funding of Scientific
Research, urged initiation of a national dialogue
among stakeholders in Federally-supported research
to develop a broadly accepted methodology for priority-setting
across fields of science. With your permission, I
would like to submit this document to the record also.
Mr. Chairman, the budget before you has the wholehearted
approval of the Board. In the face of very tight constraints
on Federal discretionary spending, President Clinton
has stepped forward to champion a 10 percent increase
in NSF's 1999 budget. This important commitment to
the strength of our national scientific infrastructure
-- which I hope will be shared by Congress -- would
enable NSF to help maintain U.S. world leadership
in all aspects of science, mathematics, and engineering.
NSF funding is a vital investment in the Nation's
future. The budget you are considering today will
provide the means to fund thousands of worthwhile
projects across the exciting frontiers of all fields
of research, and it will fund important efforts to
improve the Nation's education in science, mathematics,
engineering, and technology.
As we enter the 21st Century and the third millennium,
there is so much we don't know and need to explore
and discover. You might think about the state of the
world 1000 years ago, when we were entering the second
millennium and Leif Erickson and the Vikings sailed
the oceans. Until recently, however, our understanding
of the very deep ocean environment has remained the
same as in the days of the Vikings.
NSF investments under the agency's Life and Earth's
Environment theme hold tremendous possibilities for
probing the mysteries of our natural world like the
very deep ocean. Unidentified new life forms found
thriving in the Earth's most extreme environments
-- like Yellowstone's hot springs, the sea ice of
Antarctica, or the ocean depths -- might revolutionize
medicine, produce new materials for use in everyday
life, and further our understanding of the origins
of life itself.
Over this past century alone, incredible advances
have occurred in fields like telecommunications. In
1898 telecommunications meant Morse code and Western
Union. Today we are grappling with challenges unimagined
at that time: how to handle the outpouring of information
and data flowing from satellites, fiber optics, the
Web, and other advanced telecommunications.
NSF has responded to these challenges by investing
in a wide-ranging set of activities we call Knowledge
and Distributed Intelligence, or KDI. Greater knowledge
about how we learn and remember, or how we think and
communicate, and the machine-human interface, could
advance computers and communication technology beyond
the current astonishing state. Such advancements hold
immense potential as a driver of progress -- an opportunity
for all Americans. KDI is not simply about hardware;
KDI is not simply about software; KDI is about the
wherewithal to change and expand the way we communicate,
research, and learn.
Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence as well as
Life and Earth's Environment are exciting programs
that cut across numerous fields of inquiry. While
NSF continues, appropriately, to promote interdisciplinary
activities, these activities are unlikely to be successful
without strong disciplines at their core. The NSF
FY 1999 budget will allow NSF to maintain core competency
while pursuing exciting initiatives that cut across
disciplines. We need both the core investments and
the flexibility to pursue emerging research opportunities.
The Foundation's FY 1999 budget also is important
for improving education in science and mathematics
at all grade levels. The Board strongly believes that
we must engage all children in inquiry-based, hands-on
learning so that the next generation of workers, researchers,
and leaders has the necessary science, mathematics,
technology, and problem-solving skills to keep the
United States a world leader in the 21st Century.
High standards with high accountability for student
performance is the path to improved achievement in
K-12 math and science. We must act on our high expectations,
however, not just declare them. Indeed, the National
Science Board's response to the recent 12th grade
results of the Third International Mathematics and
Science Study (TIMSS) was swift. We have created a
Task Force on Mathematics and Science Achievement
to consider the issues raised by the TIMSS report.
Later this year, building on a series of hearings
organized by its Committee on Education and Human
Resources, the Board will issue a policy report that
clarifies the role of the science and engineering
communities, especially higher education, in rallying
as well as supporting schools, teachers, students,
and families to the literacy and numeracy demands
that all citizens now face. The next generation of
workers, researchers, and leaders must have the necessary
science, mathematics, technology, and problem-solving
skills to keep the United States a world leader in
the 21st century.
This proposed NSF budget would help keep America at
the cutting edge of science. It would enable new discovery
and educate the world's best scientists and engineers
-- setting the stage for the next millennium. It is
good for the country, good for science, and good for
economic growth. But most important, it is also good
for the American people.
Strong support for NSF is clearly a keystone of our
investment in the future. And strong support for the
research performed or supported by other Federal agencies,
in connection with their missions, is vital as well.
Just taking the example of nanoscale science and engineering
mentioned by Neal Lane demonstrates that this cutting-edge
research supported by NSF has applications for the
R&D; mission of many agencies, including DOD, NIH,
DOE, and NASA.
The Board is very concerned about the funding of science
and engineering research in the future. Indeed, we
concluded our Working Paper on Government Funding
of Scientific Research, mentioned previously, by stating
that changed global and domestic circumstances "...do
not reduce the desirability of continued government
funding of scientific research...A nation requires
a robust high-tech industry, a scientific talent base,
and a vigorous research activity to prosper over the
long term."
We are concerned as well for the possible fate of
many research programs in other Federal agencies that
complement those of NSF but which are currently being
challenged. We urge the Congress, when considering
funding for Federal agencies that have science, engineering,
and education programs, to do so with explicit regard
for the relationships among those programs across
the government and with industrial research and development.
It is important to take actions, in the national interest,
that fortify the vitality of U.S. science and engineering.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would be glad to take any
questions.
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