must consider the time-extended activities are really pretty low on the cost-effective scale. Is that a correct interpretation? Dr. RUTHERFORD. No; I don't mean to imply that, if that is the message it carries. I am saying after we get up above some level like $5 million we can begin to be more active in various types of effort. I think there is some misunderstanding. I am not talking about teaching college faculties to use the new telecommunication technologies. I am talking about the use of computer networks, satellites, information systems and the like to assist faculties in more effective ways as opposed to always depending on the more extensive face-to-face teaching. I want to be able to do enough of that so that when the technology develops we will be in the position to exploit it. It is really a question of R. & D. Mr. PEASE. Mr. Chairman, I am aware of your time. Could I have a few more minutes? Mr. BROWN. Yes. Mr. PEASE. OK. Thank you. As I recall last year's committee report in the NSF authorization directed that vigorous efforts be made by the Foundation for changing the physical location of the education directorate so it can be contiguous to the best of the Foundation. Have you made progress in that? Dr. RUTHERFORD. We have worked awfully hard on that. We have been doing that for the 211⁄2 years I have been here, but we also seem to run into problems with the GSA and the prevailing prices. Would you say that is the main problem right now? Dr. ATKINSON. We are continuing to work on getting more space for the Foundation. It is a difficult matter; the main building is located centrally in Washington, and space in that area commands a rate higher than the Government is prepared to pay. The Board, as you know, has clearly emphasized this issue time and time again. It was a key issue when I came to the Foundation. It was a key issue when the Deputy Director came to the Foundation. It is just something that we seem unable to solve. Mr. PEASE. Thank you. Finally, if I might direct a question perhaps to Dr. Cota-Robles and also Dr. Atkinson, and give Dr. Rutherford a rest. Last year there was some concern raised in the committee about composition of the National Science Board and what seemed to be a paucity of representation on the Board, over the years, from people who are primarily teachers or administrators at undergraduate institutions rather than graduate schools. Has there been any change in that situation in the last year? Dr. Cota-Robles? Dr. COTA-ROBLES. Well, I myself am at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where the primary responsibility is undergraduate instruction. I left my administrative post and am back as a teacher and researcher. So from that perspective there has been that change. Dr. ATKINSON. I would like to enter for the record an analysis of the present and former Board members. Of course, the President decides who is appointed to the Board. NSF always places emphasis on college versus university background in the lists that go to the President, and NSF always wants a strong representation of members from colleges on the Board. I think NSF achieves such balance over time; this analysis will show it. Mr. PEASE. I would appreciate that, Mr. Chairman, and hope we can enter it into the record. Mr. BROWN. Without objection, it will be entered into the record. [The material to be furnished is as follows:] ANALYSIS OF BACKGROUND, EXPERIENCE, AND MAJOR INTERESTS OF PRESENT AND FORMER NATIONAL SCIENCE BOARD MEMBERS Mr. PEASE. What I have seen in previous years was that your strong efforts did not produce very many people who were on the Board and at the same time were engaged in undergraduate teaching or even administration in an undergraduate institution. There certainly were a lot of people who had backgrounds at such institutions. That is almost a given, but I was concerned about people who can bring to the Board a current perspective and a current concern about undergraduate teaching. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. BROWN. Thank you very much, Mr. Pease. I want to emphasize that Mr. Pease's questions are probably difficult at times, but these are questions that have been raised in the committee and in the Congress and he is by no means going off on some obscure direction here in trying to define the justification for the decrease in funding. Thank you all very much, gentlemen. We appreciate your thoughtful and forthright presentation. Our next witness will be Kenneth Baker, president of the Harvey Mudd College, in Claremont, Calif. Dr. Baker is well qualified as a spokesman for the various institutions which focus on science and technology and engineering in higher education. We are pleased to have you here this morning. [The biographical sketch of Dr. Baker follows:] DR. DAVID KENNETH BAKER Personal Data.-Born: October 2, 1923; Glasgow, Scotland. Citizenship: USAnaturalized 1956. Married: Vivian Christian Perry. Children: Richard R. Residence: President's House, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, California. Education.-1937-1942: Hamilton Central Collegiate, Hamilton, Canada. 1946 B. Sch. McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada. 1953 Ph.D.: University of Pennsylvania. Positions: 1976: President, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont, California. 1967-1976: Vice President and Dean, St. Lawrence University. Feb.-Sept. 1969: Acting President, St. Lawrence University. 1965-1967: Manager, Professional Personnel and University Relations General Electric Research and Development Center, Schenectady, New York. 1953-1965: Assistant, Associate, Professor of Physics, Union College. Summer 1963, 1964: Program Leader, Agency for International Development, Delhi, and Ahmedabad, India. 1960-1961: Visiting Lecturer, St. Andrews University, St. Andrews, Scotland. Summers 1956-57-58: Director, Summer Institutes for Science Teachers. 1951-1953: Instructor of Physics, Department of Physics, University of Pennsylvania. 1947-1951: Teaching Assistant, Department of Physics, University of Pennsylvania. Consulting positions: 1954-1955: Alco Products, Schenectady, New York. 1956-1957: General Electric Company, Schenectady, New York. 1954-1964: National Science Foundation, Washington, D.C. 1962: Agency for International Development, Washington, D.C. 1964: Ronald Press Company, New York City. Advisory positions: 1976: Advisory Council/Los Angeles Council of Engineers & Scientists. 1979 : President/Association of Independent Engineering Colleges. STATEMENT OF DR. KENNETH BAKER, PRESIDENT, HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE, CLAREMONT, CALIF. Dr. BAKER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be here. I come from out "there," where the action is. My sole purpose here this morning is to ask you to seek additional funding for scientific equipment beyond NSF requests. I want to emphasize that I feel that these should be additional dollars for scientific equipment in undergraduate laboratories. My institution is primarily an undergraduate institution in science and engineering. It is no longer time for us to be shy about our needs, and I think that Dr. Rutherford, in listening to him this morning, is a little bit shy about stating the needs of undergraduate institutions. I also serve as president of the Association of Independent Engineering Colleges, consisting of 16 of the major independent engineering colleges and universities in the country. There is a list of those colleges on the last page of my submitted testimony. Some of you may like to look at it. My day-to-day responsibility is to work with the ultimate resource of this country. By the "ultimate resource" I mean those young people, those young men and those young women, who will form the science and technology base of the next few decades. Without them no progress is possible on health, on defense, on production, on new jobs, or on social progress, let alone the day-to-day operation of our sewage treatment plants, our agriculture, our electrical power systems. The future of this Nation depends upon their training. I would like to make several points in this oral testimony. First of all, I do place the emphasis on the 4-year undergraduate science and engineering colleges or departments of science in liberal arts colleges. You should understand that of the students who graduate from those institutions generally the very best go into research and into teaching. But the majority of them enter industry, and it is on behalf of these students that I want to speak. They are the ones that form our future technological base, and we have to provide for them the very best education and training that we are able to provide. Our concern is not the quantity of those students but rather their quality and the quality of education that they receive. The quality is directly determined by two factors. First of all, the faculty who instruct them, and second, the tools that faculty have available to do the job, that is, the scientific equipment that they have available. It is the latter that is my concern today. When I was an undergraduate much of the scientific equipment we had was of the string and sealing wax variety, and World War II changed that dramatically. After World War II we saw increasingly sophisticated equipment in scientific teaching laboratories. The acceleration of that development has been very rapid in the last decade and we simply cannot keep up. The Association of Independent Engineering Colleges made a survey a year ago of our general position with regard to scientific and engineering equipment-we left out Cal-Tech and MIT because they are predominantly research institutions and therefore are atypical from the rest of us. But in those 14 member institutions we estimated that we have $41,500,000 invested in laboratory equipment, with a replacement value of $58 million. We estimated further that the lifetime of that equipment was about 612 years. In 1978 we had 30,000 undergraduates in science and engineering, and we awarded about 6,000 degrees in that year. So that if one takes $58 million and divides by 6,000, the number that were graduated, and again by the replacement period of 6.5 years roughly $1,500 per graduate would be needed for replacement of obsolete equipment alone. Now, in my small institution, where we graduate over 100 scientists and engineers a year, that means well over $150,000 a year for simply updating of laboratory equipment. We cannot meet that kind of a need. What kind of scientific or engineering equipment is dramatically needed? One of the principal needs is computers. For engineering instruction, the need is in a very specialized area of computers; that is, computer graphics and computer-assisted design. If you recall the first segment of the Bronowski program on the Ascent of Man, he showed a human skull; the skull as it was discovered in prehistoric times and how it has evolved through history. He showed that evolution with computer graphics and showed the skull gradually evolving into its modern form. That was a classic example of how you can see trends and shifts with the aid of computer graphics. Industry is applying computer graphics to manufacturing and production at a much more rapid rate than anyone could imagine. To our left in this room I see a model of a building, a refinery, I suppose, really a pilot plant. You might be interested to know that industry is now designing such plants through computer graphics. Engineers are able to place the pipes; they are able to actually construct that building on computer before they actually begin the construction. Such computer-assisted design can be used throughout science and engineering education, but is not yet done except in a very few institutions. For example: an electronic circuit, it is very easy for a student to sit down in front of a computer graphic terminal and analyze in several hours a multitude of circuits. Before the availability of graphics the student had to grind these out by hand or actually construct the boards. He can now increase his productivity. A second example might be the landing gears for aircraft. They previously had to be actually constructed before they could be tested in the aircraft, but now they can be designed with computer graphics, thus increasing the productivity of the engineers who are involved with that activity. This dramatic change in the way engineers are doing their work has been described by some as a metamorphic change in the way knowledge is applied. It is one area where science and engineering colleges are lagging very far behind. But we have needs for sophisticated instrumentation everywhere, in chemistry, in physics, and particularly now in biology; in each of these areas there is an important link with industry. Now, to address our needs, let me say a few words about NSF funding. I have no quarrel with the level of research funding in the National Science Foundation; we will mortgage our future if we reduce our funding for research. Science education funding, however, is quite a different story. For 20 years National Science Foundation funding for science education has decreased as a percentage of NSF funding; down from 40 percent in 1957 to about 10 percent at present. Over the last 10 years alone, the dollar, the actual dollar support, has declined by more than 30 percent. At the same time we have increased their program responsibilities. It places education in an impossible situation. They cannot respond to the critical needs that we have now before us. If we wish to see productivity in this Nation increase over the next few years, we must turn our attention to the tools used by future scientists and engineers and I urge you to seek additional authorization for science education funding. I would be pleased to try and address questions. |