An unsettling state of affairs

NEW SECURITY REGULATIONS INITIATED IN THE AFTERMATH OF SEPTEMBER 11 ARE CREATING HAVOC FOR ENGINEERING RESEARCHERS ACROSS THE COUNTRY.

For one engineering professor at Tulane University, what was supposed to be a two-month summer trip has unexpectedly stretched into a semesterlong sabbatical. In July 2002, Uvais Qidwai had just finished a successful first year of teaching and traveled to his native Pakistan to get married. There, he applied for an endorsement of his H-lB visa and went for an interview with the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. "They wrote the remarks 'excellent' and 'good character' on my application and highly recommended it," Qidwai said via e-mail. After a security clearance, he expected to get his endorsement and come back to New Orleans for the start of the fall semester. But months later, he and his wife are still in Pakistan -waiting.

Reluctantly, Tulane's department of electrical engineering and computer science canceled the class Qidwai was supposed to teach. His research has been put on hold, and his graduate student was left without an adviser. "The impact of this delay not only disturbed my schedule for the whole next year but also traumatized my students," he said.

Qidwai is one of many people in the engineering research community who are feeling the effects of new security measures initiatied after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The most immediate and visible impact has been on international students and faculty, who are being scrutinized more closely by the U.S. State Department and Immigration and Naturalization Service than ever before. Based on a survey of 77 institutions in October, the Association of American Universities (AAU) and the Association of International Educators reported an 8 percent drop in the number of scholars and researchers at their schools compared with the previous year. Many said that scientific research had been stalled as a result.

But researchers are noticing other changes too: New language hidden in the fine print of funding contracts designed to protect "sensitive" information from leaving the country; new administrative responsibilities for schools to track foreign students and hazardous materials-both of which could, in the government's eyes, act as agents for terrorism. Some institutions fear that these new regulations will put a chill on engineering research, and even threaten the open nature of their universities.

As it became known that several of the September 11 hijackers entered the country on student visas, government officials began to worry that openness led to the problem. The State Department began scrutinizing visa applications more closely-which translated into long delays. The pileup affected many colleges and universities, as shown in an online survey conducted by the Institute of International Education (IIE) of its member institutions. Many reported longer-than-usual waits for visas for international students, with some being put on "indefinite hold" and a high number of outright denials. It appeared that students from China, the Middle East, and North Africa were having the most trouble.

Nicholas Altiero, dean of engineering at 'ulane, says the backlog has had "a gutting effect," especially at the doctoral level. And if the delays continue, it's unlikely that domestic students will fill the gap, since they tend to pursue master's degrees, not Ph.D.s. "It's not helping the research infrastructure at all," he says. "International students are a pretty big part of our research workforce."

The numbers support his observation. According to ASEE's annual survey, in 2001, 43 percent of master's degrees and 54 percent of doctoral degrees in engineering went to nonresident aliens, including foreign citizens on temporary visas. And in some engineering departments, the number of international students dwarfs that of U.S. citizens and permanent residents. These students often form the core of research groups, and in some cases, might be the only ones working on a particular project.

What's more, many of these new graduates stay in the country to work. The Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Engineering reported that 54 percent of the 1992-93 engineering doctorate recipients who had temporary visas at the time of their degree were still in the U.S. in 1997. "And of the ones who don't stay here," Altiero says, "they go back to their home countries generally being pretty good ambassadors for the U.S., understanding our culture and being comfortable with Americans."

Still, the increased visa scrutiny might not have hurt overall college attendance as much as some feared. The lIE survey found no dramatic change in expected enrollments by students from major Islamic countries, like Indonesia, Malaysia, and Pakistan. A few institutions reported that enrollments by students from Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates had been cut in half.

But for those students who got shut out, all hope was not lost. Altiero says his department chairs have told him that many of the top-notch international students they admitted who couldn't get U.S. visas found an alternative: They went to Canada.