A scientific mandate: interview with Dr. Rita R. Colwell, Director of the National Science Foundation - Special report: technology in higher ed - Interview

Black Issues in Higher Education, March 13, 2003

Established by the U.S. Congress through the National Science Foundation Act of 1950 "to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; and to secure the national defense," NSF finds itself at the epicenter of unprecedented competition and demands as to how to carry out its mission. Attending to the realities of changing domestic demographics, globalization and national security while protecting traditional as well as emerging research grant recipients is a challenge--even for an agency with a $5 billion annual budget.

Dr. Rita R. Colwell, who became the 11th director of the National Science Foundation in 1998, recently spoke with Black Issues' Editor in Chief Frank Matthews about these matters as well as about building a diverse work force, the grant-making process and the challenges facing minority-serving institutions and community colleges.

BI: What is the biggest misconception about the National Science Foundation (NSF) and what it does?

RC: NSF is a "people agency" and that's not understood. It's viewed as a place where excellent science is done and funded. But it's not understood yet that 200,000 people every year are funded by the National Science Foundation including 30,000 students and 70,000 teachers, faculty, etc. And that doesn't even count the people who are reached by the IMAX films, the "Science Guy," "Magic School Bus" and so forth. So the biggest misconception is not understanding that NSF is a very important people agency for the country, the source of scientists and engineers.

BI: You sit in what some would say is an enviable bully pulpit because of NSF's mandate. But cutting through the bureaucracy and getting effective outcomes seems to be elusive. What does the agency need to do in order to get better outcomes, especially for African Americans and other underserved populations?

RC: We know pretty much what we need to do, and now we have to develop programs that result in the output that we need. For example, with respect to bringing women and minorities into science and engineering, we have the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Partnerships, which is a big success. Over 200,000 people have gone through this program and some 70,000 people have graduated. But we haven't tracked where the graduates are. We haven't tagged them, if you will, so that they will be entrained into graduate programs. So we need to integrate our programs vertically within NSF so that the very bright high school students are tagged and encouraged into the Louis Stokes programs, encouraged into the graduate fellowship programs, mentored into postdoctoral programs and careers. We also need to link our programs within NSF so that the efforts that are under way in the biology directorate for education and for minority participation are linked with the programs in the physics division and with the programs in the education directorate. So we need to tie these, stitch these together horizontally and vertically.

BI: In one of your recent speeches about gender inequity, you used the term, "reflecting pool theory," which basically states that people imitate the people they see. One of the reasons women and minorities don't see faculty that look like themselves is that students, for a number of very good reasons, go to work instead of graduate school after they get their undergraduate degrees. And as you know, they don't come back to graduate school, especially in engineering and science-related disciplines.

RC: I think that what we're doing at NSF in establishing the National Science Foundation Academy should be emulated in industry. We are the producers of very competent people. But we have not, until recently, developed a career path for our own people. So we've established an academy where you can take instruction in accounting, or instruction in using computers, or management--the skills that you need to run a program, to run a division, to run a directorate, and even perhaps to run an agency. So I think industry should develop career paths. The other suggestion that I would make or the other aspect of it is mentoring. Mentoring is absolutely critical. I don't mean in just a general sense. I mean really sort of assigning someone to be a mentor.

BI: When I talk to the higher education community, the provosts are pulling out their hair because they say that the numbers (of minority faculty candidates) just aren't there. So they can't jump-start the reflecting pool theory because they don't have the critical mass to begin with. What is NSF's role in breaking them out of that cycle?

RC: We discovered a wonderful human resource and it's called the community colleges. And that's where minority students and women generally attend because generally they are from a lower economic bracket in larger numbers. We feel that we need to provide more funding for the community colleges to enhance the kind of science and engineering education they offer. We need to increase the number of fellowships and the size of fellowships so that they can financially make it through, so that then they can think about going to graduate school. If you've graduated, amassed a debt of tuition and living expenses that could be as high as $20,000 or $30,000, how can you go to graduate school? So we feel very strongly that we need to look at that resource because that's where the bulk of Hispanics, African Americans, Native Americans, women are.