The National Science Foundation (NSF) is responsible for supporting fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering (The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is its counterpart for medical research). NSF funds approximately 20% of research programs conducted at colleges and universities. In some fields, such as mathematics, computer science, economics and the social sciences, NSF is the main source of financial backing. Working with the 24-member National Science Board, NSF’s director and deputy director work to plan, budget for and carry out daily operations of the foundation. The National Science Board (NSB) determines NSF’s policies.
In the years prior to World War II, scientific research was not considered part of the federal government’s responsibilities. Private contributions and charitable foundations provided much of the funding for scientific experimentation. During WWII, American military success brought about greater awareness of the need for continued scientific and engineering research, and Congress began to consider funding initiatives in these areas.
In 1945, the head of the federal government’s wartime Office of Scientific Research and Development gave a report to President Harry S. Truman. Called “ Science, the Endless Frontier,” the report laid out a strong case for having the federal government fund ongoing scientific research. It characterized the rich rewards society would reap from such research, including better health care, a more robust economy and a stronger national defense. The report concluded with a suggestion to create a new federal agency to administer these efforts.
During the next five years, there was much debate on the future of such an agency, but no real consensus. Finally, on May 10, 1950, President Truman signed Public Law 507, which created the National Science Foundation. The law provided for a National Science Board to be comprised of 24 part-time members, a director and deputy director, all of whom would be appointed by the president. In 1951, Truman nominated Alan T. Waterman, the chief scientist at the Office of Naval Research, to become the agency’s first director. At first, little funding was approved because the Korean War was absorbing the bulk of the nation’s available capital.
By 1952, the first few research grants were awarded, but the agency’s budget was still only $3.5 million, which was about 10% of the amount requested. The launch of the Soviet Sputnik satellite on October 5, 1957, made science research a lot more important in the minds of Americans, who did not want to lose the space race to the Communists. For 1959,Congress increased the NSF’s budget to $134 million, nearly $100 million more than the previous year. This would grow to nearly $500 million by 1968.
In 1959, the first national observatory was established at Kitt Peak, near Tucson, Arizona. This site became a research center that made state-of-the-art equipment, especially telescopes, available to a larger pool of researchers. Over the next few years, several additional observatories, including the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the National Solar Observatory, the Gemini Observatory and the Arecibo Observatory, were created. The astronomy program forged an ongoing relationship with NASA, which handles the US’s space-based astronomy (NSF handles the country’s ground-based astronomy). That same year also brought about a treaty between the United States and the other nations operating in Antarctica to ensure the continuance of peaceful and scientific research.
The 1960s witnessed a good deal of NSF growth, based around international scientific and technological competition. The Institutional Support program, designed to fund research infrastructure at American universities, was established. The number of grants reached 2,000 per year. Additionally, the Deep Sea Drilling Project was begun. The project revealed brand new information about continental drift, sea floor spreading and the general usefulness of the ocean basins. Several other countries joined in this project in a cooperative way.
DARPA and NSF created the first “Internet” in 1977. NSF scientists organized this loose collection of networks into a three-tiered system of internetworks managed by several universities, non-profit organizations and government agencies. By the mid-1980s, the NSF assumed financial support for this growing project.
Throughout the 1980s, the agency budget increased, topping out at more than $1 billion for the first time in 1983. NSF helped to deliver ozone sensors to the South Pole to help researchers measure stratospheric ozone loss. In the 1990s, NSF’s appropriation passed $2 billion for the first time. Some of the foundation’s new initiatives included development of curricula devised by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. These standards were widely adopted by school districts over the next decade, but they also launched a controversy popularly called the “math wars” that brought complaints that schools were skipping teaching of basic skills in favor of this new math curriculum.
In 1991, the NSFNET, as the fledgling Internet was called, was altered to allow commercial traffic. By 1995, NSF decommissioned NSFNET, making way for public use of the Internet. In 1993, students and staff at the NSF-supported National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) developed Mosaic, which was the first available browser to load World Wide Web pages with both graphics and text. It became the browser of choice for more than a million users within 18 months of its release.
In 1994, NSF and DARPA launched the Digital Library Initiative. At Stanford University, two graduate students named Larry Page and Sergey Brin received an NSF grant and began to develop a search engine using links between web pages as a ranking method. Later, they commercialized their discovery under the name Google.
By 1996, NSF-funded research revealed that the chemistry of the atmosphere above Antarctica was abnormal, and that levels of key chlorine compounds were greatly elevated. This eventually became known as the “hole in the ozone layer” and spurred more research into global warming. Other NSF-funded research found that the expansion of the universe was speeding up due to a previously unknown force, now called “dark matter.” As a result, many galaxies are being pushed apart as never before.
In the new millennium, NSF joined with other federal agencies in the National Nanotechnology Initiative, which directed funds toward research into matter at the molecular and atomic levels. The agency’s appropriation continued to grow, passing $4 billion, then $5 and $6 billion. Although the NSF’s Survey of Public Attitudes Toward an Understanding of Science and Technology revealed that the public had a positive attitude but poor understanding of science, the agency continued to press forward with its plans. In 2005, NSF’s deployment of “rapid response” research teams in the wake of the Indian Ocean Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina helped to undercover why levees and other human-designed protective measures failed to protect citizens.
The National Science Foundation: A Brief History
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is responsible for furthering research and education in the non-medical fields of science and engineering. It does this largely by distributing funds to universities and colleges across the nation. NSF receives approximately 40,000 proposals each year and funds around 25% of those proposals. The reviews are conducted by panels of independent scientists, engineers and educators who are experts in relevant areas of study. To avoid conflict of interest issues, these scientists cannot work for NSF or for any institution employing the proposing researchers. NSF grants support researchers and research facilities, as well as science, engineering and mathematics education from pre-kindergarten through graduate school. Undergraduates can receive funding through Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) summer programs, and graduate students are supported through Integrative Graduate Education Research Traineeships (IGERT) and Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) programs, as well as through the Graduate Research Fellowships (NSF-GRFP).
NSF organizes its research and educational support through seven divisions, each of which oversees a variety of scientific disciplines:
- Biological Sciences - This office oversees research and educational initiatives in molecular, cellular, and organismal biology, as well as environmental science.
- Computer and Information Science and Engineering - This office oversees research in the areas of fundamental computer science, computer and networking systems, and artificial intelligence.
- Engineering - This office oversees bioengineering, environmental systems, civil and mechanical systems, chemical and transport systems, electrical and communications systems, and design and manufacturing.
- Geosciences - This office is responsible for geological, atmospheric and ocean sciences.
- Mathematical and Physical Sciences - This office handles initiatives in the areas of mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry and materials science.
- Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences - This office oversees neuroscience, psychology, sociology, anthropology, linguistics and economics.
- Education and Human Resources - This office handles education initiatives in science, technology, engineering and mathematics at every level, from pre-kindergarten up.
The National Science Foundation also supports scientific research through several offices within the Office of the Director, including:
- Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI), which coordinates and supports the acquisition, development and provision of state-of-the-art cyberinfrastructure resources, tools and services. This includes supercomputers, high-capacity mass storage systems, system software suites and programming environments, scalable interactive visualization tools, productivity software libraries and tools, large-scale data repositories and digitized scientific data management systems, networks and an array of software tools and services to enhance usability.
- Office of Polar Programs (OPP), which manages and initiates NSF funding for basic research and its operational support in the Arctic and Antarctic. OPP supports individual investigators or research teams and US participation in multinational projects. Projects are funded on their ability to help understand Earth and its systems, explore the geographical frontier and perform science enabled by the polar setting.
- Office of Integrative Activities (OIA), which supports the efforts and policy of the director and deputy director of the NSF to promote unity and alignment in support of the agency’s mission. This includes strategic planning, establishing partnerships, policy support and analysis of external reports.
- Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE), which serves as a focal point for the international science and engineering communities internally and externally. This office supports programs to expand and enhance research and educational opportunities for US scientists and engineers at the early stages of their careers.
NSF has also launched a number of crosscutting projects coordinating the efforts of experts across an array of disciplines. A few of the current projects include: Nanotechnology; the science of learning; digital libraries; and the ecology of infectious diseases.
Some Noteworthy NSF-Funded Studies
What It’s Like to Be a Bat
The National Science Foundation (NSF) spent more than $2 billion on 727 contractors this decade. According to USASpending.gov, NSF paid for a variety of services, from operation of government-owned facilities to professional, management and administrative support services.
The top 10 contractors were as follows:
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Raytheon Company
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$908,506,544
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Joint Oceanographic Institutions
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$299,264,701
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Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc.
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$82,924,101
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CH2M Hill Companies, Ltd.
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$79,206,146
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IODP Management International, Inc.
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$67,399,305
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Compuware Corporation
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$37,843,276
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Info USA, Inc.
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$28,165,461
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Digital Solutions, Inc.
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$27,397,863
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Rand Corporation
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$25,502,482
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Consortium for Ocean Leadership, Inc.
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$22,742,308
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Interestingly, NSF’s largest contractor is the Raytheon Company, which was paid $21,000,000 in FY2007 to operate government-owned contractor-operated facilities. Raytheon is best known for its work with the United States military on guided missiles, engineering, night vision equipment, radar equipment and defense missile and space systems. In Centennial, CO, Raytheon operates a research & development center for the National Science Foundation. According to the National Science Foundation’s web site, Raytheon oversees the Raytheon Polar Services Company, which provides services for researchers at the South Pole through NSF’s Office of Polar Programs.
In addition to spending money on contractors, the NSF distributes millions of dollars in grants to support research. The foundation’s
Active Funding Opportunities
details projects for which organizations can submit proposals. It also reports on
centers
(PDF) that NSF has funded.
NSF Survey Reveals Widespread Belief in Alternative Medicine
In response to a 2001 NSF survey, an overwhelming majority of people (88%) agreed that “there are some good ways of treating sickness that medical science does not recognize.” The American Medical Association defines alternative medicine as any diagnostic method, treatment or therapy that is “neither taught widely in US medical schools nor generally available in US hospitals.” However, at least 60% of US medical schools devote classroom time to the teaching of alternative therapies, generating controversy within the scientific community. Many scientists believe that alternative therapies such as homeopathy and herbs are untested and unregulated treatments that are not beneficial to people. Among the 16 therapies included, the largest increases between 1990 and 1997 were in the use of herbal medicine (a 380% increase), massage, megavitamins, self-help groups, folk remedies, energy healing and homeopathy.
Controversy About Privatization of the Internet
From 1987 to 1995, Internet stakeholders expressed concern that when NSFNET opened up the Internet, IBM and MCI were given a perceived competitive advantage in “leveraging” federal research money to gain ground in fields in which other companies previously held a competitive advantage. The Cook Report on the Internet became the largest critic of this unfair advantage.
An Inconvenient Truth Refused by Science Teachers
In 2001, the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), made up of 53,000 educators across the country, declined an offer of 50,000 free DVD copies of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Although NSTA Director Dr. Gerry Wheeler said that the organization does not distribute third-party products, the film’s producer, Laurie David, wrote a scathing op-ed in the Washington Post, accusing the NSTA of accepting money from Exxon-Mobil, among other gas and oil companies, which had tried to discredit the science behind the film before it was released. The NSTA is funded by Congress and affiliated with the NSF in its educational programs.
Movement to Change Science Curriculum to Include Intelligent Design
In 2005, a movement arose to include “intelligent design” as a subject matter in public school science classes and/or to label evolution as “simply a theory.” On one side of the argument were scientists who claimed that religious belief systems had no place in the classroom, and on the other were religious communities that want their belief systems reflected in current public school curriculum. The Theory of Evolution through natural selection is currently used by biologists, medical researchers, pharmaceutical developers, anthropologists, chemists, biochemists, geologists, and many other researchers. In contrast, the theory of intelligent design holds that life is too complex to have happened by chance and that, therefore, some sort of intelligent designer must be responsible.
Antarctica Ice Highway Runs into Difficulty
The National Science Foundation’s plans to build a so-called Ice Highway in Antarctica ran into trouble when the Antarctica and Southern Ocean Coalition (ASOC), an alliance of 230 environmental groups in 49 countries, raised concerns about the 1,014-mile road across the continent’s pristine wilderness. Explorer Sir Edmund Hillary even entered the fray, saying the Ice Highway was “an abomination.” Builders contend that the road is necessary to facilitate scientific experimentation and sharing of information among countries currently doing research in Antarctica. (by Jack Lyne, Site Selection)
Creationism vs. Evolution
In June of 2008, four NSF studies addressing basic questions about how life originated and has evolved tried to help resolve long-standing controversies about evolution and fundamental biological responses to environmental changes, such as global warming. Some of this research was in response to an ongoing public debate about whether the Theory of Evolution, which has been accepted as scientific and taught in public schools for several decades, should continue unchallenged. The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) defends the teaching of evolution, to the exclusion of “intelligent design,” which has also been called “scientific creationism.”
As part of this debate:
- A creationist teacher in Ohio was fired in June of 2008.
- A bill to allow creationism to be taught in Louisiana schools landed on Governor Bobby Jindal’s desk. A June 21, 2008, editorial in the New York Times urged Jindal to veto the bill.
- In July 3, 2008, Governor Bobby Jindal signed Senate Bill 733 into law, which allows the teaching of both evolution and creationism in schools.
- Antievolution bills were also introduced in the South Carolina, Michigan, Missouri and Texas legislatures. None has been passed to date.
Theory of Evolution
Supporters of evolution argue that humans evolved from apes over thousands of years. The landmark 1925 Scopes “monkey” trial, in which Tennessee high school teacher John Scopes was charged with teaching evolution from a book by Charles Darwin, had established that state-funded public schools had to teach that man had descended from God’s original creation.
Scopes’ attorney, Clarence Darrow, argued that Scopes was within his rights as an employee of the state, under the separation of church and state as guaranteed by the Constitution. Although Scopes was found guilty of teaching disallowed material and ordered to pay a fine of $100, the case influenced several other evolution/creationist cases over the succeeding decades. The Butler Act of 1925, the original statute that had been broken by Scopes, remained on the books until it was repealed in1968 by the US Supreme Court.
Intelligent Design
During the Scopes trial, prosecutor William Jennings Bryan argued that Scopes was bound by law to teach the state-mandated curriculum that restricted anything that denied the story of the “Divine Creation of Man.” Believers in intelligent design argue that life is too complex to have happened as the result of chance. Instead, some sort of intelligent designer, or God, had to have been responsible for creating it. Defenders of this thought were outraged by a 1987 Supreme Court ruling that stuck down a Louisiana law that prohibited the teaching of evolution unless equal time was given to creationism. But victory was attained in 1999 when the Kansas State Board of Education decided to delete evolution from the state’s science standards.
Over the past decade, controversy over the teaching of evolution has emerged in Kansas and nearly 20 other states. Proponents of Intelligent Design want to introduce intelligent design in science classrooms as a viable alternative to evolution, and to add disclaimers about evolution in science textbooks going forward. (by Gail Becker, John F. Haught, Stephen Low and Dennis Wint, Museum News)
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Founded: 1950
Annual Budget: $6.06 billion
Employees: 1,087
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National Science Foundation
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Dr. Arden L. Bement, Jr. has served as the 12th director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) since November 24, 2004. Bement’s education includes an engineer of metallurgy degree from the Colorado School of Mines and a master’s degree in metallurgical engineering from the University of Michigan.
A retired Lieutenant Colonel of the US Army Corps of Engineers, Bement worked as a senior research associate for General Electric from 1954-1965. He was then a manager in the Fuels and Materials Department and the Metallurgy Research Department at Battelle Northwest Laboratories from 1965-1970. He served as a professor of nuclear materials at MIT from 1970-1976.
From 1976-1979, Bement served as the director of the Office of Materials Science for the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA) at the Pentagon. He was promoted in 1979 to deputy under secretary of defense for research and engineering. In 1980, Bement returned to the private sector as vice president of technical resources and of science and technology for TRW Inc.
In 1992, Bement joined the University of Purdue faculty. There, he held appointments in the schools of Nuclear Engineering, Materials Engineering, and Electrical and Computer Engineering, as well as a courtesy appointment in the Krannert School of Management. He was director of the Midwest Superconductivity Consortium and the Consortium for the Intelligent Management of the Electrical Power Grid.
On December 7, 2001. Bement was appointed to be director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), position he held until he was chosen to be director of the National Science Foundation.
He also serves as a member of the US National Commission for UNESCO and as the vice-chair of the Commission’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Committee.
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