Advisory committee for environmental research and education september 12, 2012

So I think there are pretty serious methodological changes, in addition to kind of challenges to the culture and the community to get focused on outcomes.

DR. TRAVIS: Kesh, and then Wanda.

DR. NARAYANAN: Thank you. Actually, what Joan said led me to view a case study through an engineering -- the engineering research centers, which really exemplify the contribution of the education, because, by almost definition, all the engineering research centers are interdisciplinary. For example, in this area an urban water source, there is a center which really deals with a wide spectrum of scientists and engineers, or physical science, social science, and the full breadth.

And the other key point is, by the nature of those centers, they also have partners, you know, industry partners and municipal partners, et cetera. So the students get exposed by going into the classroom. They also have to engage with these partners, and some from a more practical jobs point of view, many of them do get hired by these partners.

And also, that they have to work in an environment of very interdisciplinary teams. So I'm not necessarily addressing what the problems are; I'm just addressing what the opportunities are. When you set up certain programs like that and, you know, it is natural for students to go in that end. We have polled industry for, you know, in terms of satisfaction survey, if you would, about the coming students, and they find them very, very, you know, practical in the sense that they can use them in that domain, because they've already vetted them, if you will, in advance.

DR. TRAVIS: Wanda.

DR. WARD: Very briefly, we actually appreciate the candor of your question. It's one of the questions that we're asking ourselves about more seriously, Foundation-wide. And Kesh has referenced future directions that NSF is pursuing with regard to evaluation and assessment, and one of those directions is taking a look through evaluation capability, NSF-wide kinds of issues, just like this. And one of the questions we're asking ourselves is, "What do we know about what we're doing relative to interdisciplinarity, in terms of being an enable and a funder of 21st century scientists and engineers?" We're beginning to ask ourselves, "What are our investments yielding in the area of interdisciplinarity?" We're also beginning to ask ourselves, candidly, "At what point is interdisciplinary training best introduced? And what are the consequences of missing those best points?" Career options -- to what end is this kind of training going to be limited? And we would value being able to come back to a committee like this as we begin to get these kinds of capabilities off the ground and take hard, honest looks at this horizon activity of science and engineering.

DR. TRAVIS: About to use my prerogative to address one issue, which is the notion of undergraduates and careers. I draw upon my former life as the dean of a large arts and sciences college, in which I talked to representatives of the petroleum industry about, "How can we prepare our geology majors for you?" I talked to representatives of the pharmaceutical industry, "How should we prepare our chemistry majors?" I talked to managing partners of law firms about our history and English majors, et cetera, et cetera. And there's a striking agreement in the answers I got each and every time, which was, "Well, I sure hope you can train students with just a good, solid grounding in the fundamentals of the discipline. They need to be able to work in teams, and they -- God, help us -- they need to be able to think critically." Now, the fundamentals of the discipline vary one thing to another. So, for example, the law firm managing partners said, "Please, if you can send me students who can put nouns against verbs coherently, I mean, I would be so thrilled. Our law students struggle to write briefs." You know, the people from Exxon-Mobil said to me, "Oh, just teach them -- make sure they have a really good knowledge of basic geology and a good course in stratigraphy, and we're going to teach them to find oil the Exxon-Mobil way. We'll do that. You don't need to teach them petroleum geology per se." Time and again, the answers were a solid grounding in the discipline, or whatever it is.

Same in talking to people in the finance world. Our math majors got hired into jobs despite having had no course in finance or business whatsoever. The attitude was, "Give me somebody who has the mathematical skills and the ability to use Maple, et cetera, and we'll teach them the finance they need to know," or the marketing, or whatever it was. And so the lesson, I think, is to worry less about some of these issues that, as academics, we worry about a great deal. "Oh, they definitely need a course in X; they need a course in Y." Well, they do need to learn how to -- if you're going to work for a pharmaceutical firm, you need to learn some bio-informatic methods. You need to learn to work in a team. You need to learn how to think through the problem.

It was striking, the unanimity of the answers I got from discipline to discipline. And so I used to challenge my faculty and say, "In light of that, are we training our undergraduates to actually be prepared for whatever -- for their careers? I mean, are we giving them esoteric knowledge in classes, or are we giving them fundamental thinking and writing skills and those basic techniques, whether it's lab or programming or whatever, that will enable them to get jobs?" And it's difficult to confront the fact that, you know, a faculty at big university, teaching my pet boutique course really isn't preparing the undergraduates very well. So it's something for all of us to think about.

And I guess we're out of time. Coincidentally.

[laughter]

Anyways, thank you all for joining us this afternoon. It really was wonderful. We appreciate your time, your energy. Thank you, Myron, for throwing it back on us and giving us a bit of a challenge. And thank you all for being provocative, thoughtful, and engaging. We really appreciate it. We are adjourned for the day.

[Whereupon, at 5:06 p.m., Day One of the Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education meeting was adjourned.]


I N D E X

Speaker Page Number

Blatecky, Dr. Alan 240

Cavanaugh, Dr. Marge 6

Falkner, Dr. Kelly 240

Ferrini-Mundy, Dr. Joan 239

Gutmann, Dr. Myron 239

Hamilton, Dr. Bruce 22

Inouye, Dr. Richard 126

Jahanian, Dr. Farnam 239

Karsten, Dr. Jill 136

Maracas, Dr. George 162

McGinnis, Dr. David 146

Narayanan, Dr. Kesh 239

Pibel, Dr. Charles 159

Robin, Dr. Jessica 23

Rohlfing, Dr. Celeste 239

Russell, Dr. Tom 60

Ruth, Dr. Sarah 156

Stonner, Dr. David 239

Torgersen, Dr. Tom 144

Tsapogas, Dr. John 141

Uhle, Dr. Maria 37

Ward, Dr. Wanda 239

Wingfield, Dr. John 240

ADVISORY COMMITTEE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND EDUCATION

SEPTEMBER 13, 2012

National Science Foundation

Room 1235

4201 Wilson Boulevard

Arlington, Virginia 22230

P A R T I C I P A N T S
COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT:
Dr. Joseph Travis, Chairman
Dr. Lilian Na’ia Alessa

Dr. Mary Catherine Bateson

Dr. David E. Blockstein

Dr. Molly Brown

Dr. Harindra “Joseph” Fernando

Dr. Anthony C. Janetos

Dr. Eric J. Jolly

Dr. Ivor T. Knight

Dr. Upmanu Lall (via phone)

Dr. Erin K. Lipp

Dr. Bruce E. Logan

Dr. Stephanie Pfirman

Dr. Fred S. Roberts
SPEAKERS PRESENT:

Dr. Bruce Hamilton

- - -

3. Presentation from Engineering 81

Directorate’s Environmental Engineering

and Sustainability Cluster

5. Committee Business, Meeting Wrap Up 153

DR. TRAVIS: All right, we need to settle in and convene because Dr. Suresh will be here at 10:00. Is that correct, Beth, still?

MS. ZELENSKI: Yes, [affirmative].

DR. TRAVIS: And he will be here at 10:00, and we need to be prepared for what questions -- which questions we would like to ask him and who would like to address those questions to him. So first, just to remind you of a few manners of business, there's a hard copy circulating for today to sign in, and Beth would also -- the National Science Foundation would also like you to sign in on the webpage. It's not just Beth who wants you do this.

MS. ZELENSKI: That's right.

[laughter]

DR. TRAVIS: And panel ID is A122117, and your password is a secret code made by an algorithm that any hacker could figure out.

[laughter]

So but, nonetheless, you have to use it. So that's the business, I think. Is that -- there are any other items of business? If you haven't paid for your lunches, please send that money to Beth. And that really is it unless anyone has other logistical questions. People will be leaving I think at various times for various reasons, so we will shoulder on.

So Dr. Suresh is coming at 10:00. And traditionally he makes a few remarks about what's on his mind. He has had some talking points suggested for him for us, but he will speak his mind a little bit. It may take two minutes, it may take 10 minutes, so we need to be prepared with issues we'd like to raise for him. And so I'm going to declare the floor open for those for that purpose. Lacking a resounding --

[laughter]

-- response.

DR. LOGAN: I have a question. I just need to find it.

DR. TRAVIS: Well, while you look -- while Bruce looks for his -- I mean, we talked about any number of things yesterday about SEES. We also touched on the issue of workload for the workload and proposals. We touched -- we were quite inspired by INSPIRE, if you will, that particular program. And so I would be surprised if we didn't have one or more questions that we might want to raise. Stephanie -- I'm sorry.

DR. PFIRMAN: So, I have one more question. So one of them -- I think this -- the idea of the individual investigator, this was something that we raised in the first "Red Book." I remember we were talking about it way back then, and the fact that they said that he was interested in kind of an individual INSPIRE -- you know, we have -- everything requires these huge or large groups and a lot of networking, and you can only invest in those if you're at a big institution that's supporting it. I mean, not only, but it's really hard in other institutions.

DR. CAVANAUGH: That's a good one.

DR. PFIRMAN: So I think that would be good to raise. And then I felt what Eric said yesterday was really, really interesting about the, you know, "You can deal with race, and you can deal with all these other issues, but people don't want to touch environment." I'm not quite sure how to bring this up, but I know within the Climate Change Education Program, you know, we've been talking about this a little bit, too, you know, how are we to navigate this current situation? And maybe he'll say we have to wait until after November, but --

[laughter]

-- but I'm just wondering, you know --

DR. CAVANAUGH: It's the answer to everything in town, now.

DR. PFIRMAN: Right, exactly. I don't -- I was really struck by what Eric said and then how everybody reacted to that as well.

DR. TRAVIS: So, Stephanie, would you be willing to ask about the individual --

DR. PFIRMAN: Yes.

DR. TRAVIS: -- investigator because you do have a history with it --

DR. PFIRMAN: Right.

DR. TRAVIS: -- back from the "Red Book." So that would be great. And, Eric, could you -- do you feel comfortable framing a question or a comment for Dr. Suresh?

DR. JOLLY: Sure, I'll be happy to.

DR. TRAVIS: Okay. Good. That's very good.

DR. BROWN: I think I --

DR. TRAVIS: Yes, Molly, please.

DR. BROWN: I actually was thinking about what you and I were speaking about.

DR. TRAVIS: [affirmative]

DR. BROWN: This sort of goes on with Stephanie, is that, you know, interdisciplinary doesn't necessarily mean cutting edge, or, you know, really -- how were we putting it before? Engaging or, you know, just because it's interdisciplinary doesn't mean it's novel. And just because it's disciplinary doesn't mean that it's not novel, [unintelligible] saying. So I think that it really isn't enough to be interdisciplinary. We need to make sure that it is truly answering questions. And -- you know, and I think, it doesn't -- like I do a ton of interdisciplinary research in small teams, two or three people, just because I'm not a good enough manager to cope with 12. [laughs] I mean, it's just really hard. It's really hard. It takes a huge amount of effort, and it -- you need to have a big institutional effort. So I think there's a lot of stuff that we are -- you know, that it -- that just because it's interdisciplinary doesn't mean that it's great science.

DR. TRAVIS: So, second, can you work on framing that in a --

DR. BROWN: Sure.

DR. TRAVIS: -- comment or question that can elicit a thoughtful response from him?

DR. BROWN: Okay.

DR. TRAVIS: You know, it be good to have him, you know, think about whether our program perhaps inadvertently conflate interdisciplinary -- synonymize -- sorry --

DR. BROWN: Right.

DR. TRAVIS: -- synonymize interdisciplinary with innovative.

DR. BROWN: Right.

DR. TRAVIS: And those are not necessarily the same.

DR. BROWN: Okay.

DR. TRAVIS: And sometime we may seem to force that by the way we structure the program. So, okay, so let's go to Bruce, Fred, and Marge.

DR. LOGAN: I guess if I had to form a question about something we'll care about, it’s young faculty. And within the context of this committee, it's interdisciplinary work. And so the question I raised yesterday I guess I would raise to him, it would be about INSPIRE, and could this be used as a vehicle for an assistant professor to essentially begin a collaboration, because it's clear that from what we heard yesterday that collaborations already have to be well underway, so is there a sort of a way to stimulate people who go into another lab or work -- start a collaboration with somebody and then have a chance through that to get additional funding? I can probably frame that better, but that's the general form of interest.

DR. TRAVIS: Okay.

DR. LOGAN: I mean, that's -- I guess I'm sort of probing, you know, do we think that's an interesting thing? I think young faculty you're -- it's a really big concern when you have success rate [inaudible].

DR. TRAVIS: So, that seem a good question to the group, or --

DR. PFIRMAN: Yeah, it seems close to what I was asking, but maybe more specific so that, that might be a better way of framing it.

DR. CAVANAUGH: Well, or that you --

DR. LOGAN: Well --

DR. CAVANAUGH: Two of you do a tag team.

DR. LOGAN: So you were asking more about the other program? What's at INSPIRE [inaudible] --

DR. TRAVIS: And then -- no -- an individual investigator version of INSPIRE.

DR. PFIRMAN: Right.

DR. LOGAN: Yeah, but I think -- I guess it was just more a young investigator version, not -- you know --

DR. PFIRMAN: You're supposed to say early career, not young.

DR. LOGAN: All right, early career. Okay, yeah, you're right. You're right, [unintelligible], okay.

DR. BROWN: Could be old, but early career.

[laughter]

DR. LOGAN: I stand corrected. But, I mean, if you want to just say, "early career," you know, the focus on that early career person as being like -- I don't really think it's a big deal if -- as a senior faculty, I want to go start getting into a collaboration with somebody, that's not -- there's no impediment to that, there's no -- but a young career person, somebody who's only been at the university for six months, trying to go into -- and start a collaboration with somebody, that's going to be really hard. So, I mean, we've -- we got the okay for you or -- to say, "young career" --

DR. PFIRMAN: [affirmative]

DR. LOGAN: Yeah? Then she can say [inaudible].

DR. PFIRMAN: Okay.

DR. LOGAN: That way --

DR. TRAVIS: Okay.

DR. LOGAN: Yeah.

DR. TRAVIS: So the issue is that how -- is there a way to think about an Inspire-like program that could serve either for individual investigators or they could be used to help early career investigators leverage their way?

DR. LOGAN: Particularly, I would say --

DR. TRAVIS: Particularly.

DR. LOGAN: -- particularly --

DR. TRAVIS: Okay.

DR. LOGAN: -- early career because those are the guys that have the trouble, the people that have the biggest challenge.

DR. TRAVIS: Okay. Fred.

DR. ROBERTS: So the one thing we didn't do yesterday, I wanted to return to the problems of evaluating interdisciplinary programs. So what we didn't touch upon yesterday was that it might take longer to understand the impact of interdisciplinary programs. So I wanted to bring that into a question. What is it -- so in general, what are some of the difficulties of evaluating interdisciplinary programs? And what's the timetable might you understand that it will -- might take longer?

DR. TRAVIS: Okay.

DR. CAVANAUGH: Yeah.

DR. TRAVIS: Marge?

DR. CAVANUGH: Yeah, I --

[feedback]

-- I think it would be really helpful if you do agree with this, of course, to offer encouragement to the SEES group that's working on evaluations. What they're doing is pretty forward looking, shall we say? It's -- you know, we've done a lot of things within NSF to evaluate individual grants, or -- you know, or small programs, or something like that. But this is very ambitious to try to get -- find a way to look across such a diverse set of programs and to look at a -- you know, to take on that challenge of thinking about evaluation in that way. So I would encourage you to encourage that and to support that. The other thing I wanted to go back to, and maybe Tony could help with this, but I -- we had a very nice -- the issue of open access? You know, I didn't -- you know, we didn't -- I felt like I didn't give a very good answer to you, but -- when you asked the question about the -- but I know the director is very interested in open access. And we had a really nice conversation after that related to the implementation issues, so maybe something related to open access and what does he see as the challenges related to implementation or something like that? I would just -- it's up to you, though, but --

DR. TRAVIS: So what I could do is commend the SEES group for their -- for how they're doing that evaluation, use that as the lead-in to Fred to ask -- Fred to ask about the timeline for some of these programs. And I think that could be a nice segue --

DR. CAVANAUGH: That'd be very nice. They would appreciate it.

DR. TRAVIS: So, Tony, I want to let you respond now.

DR. JANETOS: I'd be happy to do that. I'd be happy to, you know, just raise the topic of open access to data, and be encouraging, and --

DR. CAVANAUGH: Yeah.

DR. JANETOS: -- and so on. What I had originally turned my light on for was on the evaluation question, because when you think about the scope of the SEES effort -- if I did my arithmetic right, SEES as an initiative is basically the size of a directorate.

DR. CAVANAUGH: A division.

DR. JANETOS: It's the size -- it's a billion -- I mean, that's not a billion dollars.

DR. CAVANAUGH: But -- well, SEES, itself, is 200 million, so it's about a division.

DR. JANETOS: Okay, so it's the size of a division. So it's --

DR. CAVANAUGH: Which is a lot [laughs].

DR. JANETOS: -- but it's a lot, and so it's like a division seeking to evaluate, you know, how did they do that kind of evaluation. So it's on a very large scale.

DR. CAVANAUGH: Right.

DR. JANETOS: I would really like -- I think what they're doing is great. I would really like them to turn some of those evaluation tools back on the foundation itself so you -- so that one could --

DR. CAVANAUGH: Right.

DR. JANETOS: -- see over time how the SEES initiative is affecting what is actually being solicited, what's actually happening to management practices as the result of everybody really, you know, trying to tackle this hard problem. But I don't have to raise that. Somebody else can.

DR. TRAVIS: Well, I think it would be a good thing for you to raise. I think this cuts at the issue of whether the SEES initiative, and the science, and scientific atmosphere that it encourages actually changes the culture.

DR. JANETOS: Right.

DR. TRAVIS: And how would we know?

DR. JANETOS: Right.

DR. TRAVIS: So perhaps that would be a good way to -- or any way you wish, I think. So let me ask you to do that then. The open access thing is an interesting point. I talked with Alan Tessier. Is Alan -- Alan's not here right now. I talked with Alan at some length afterward, and I think the issue is more nuanced and more interesting than I think we took the impression of.

DR. CAVANAUGH: Right.

DR. TRAVIS: Alan would be a good -- we might see if Alan's around to -- I'm hesitant to ask Dr. Suresh about this simply because I think there's a lot more going on that we could learn from Alan if we could get him to some point come in and talk to us a little bit more, because what he -- what he mentioned to me were a number of issues surrounding not just the -- not so much the open access but the use, ease of use.

DR. JANETOS: Yeah.

DR. CAVANAUGH: Right.

DR. TRAVIS: And it was -- there were more issues of ease of use and things like, "You have large databases, should the foundation be investing in ways in which people can download the data or should they upload the analytical programs to a central location, then download the results?" And --

DR. JANETOS: And who pays for it.

DR. TRAVIS: And who pays for all of this?

DR. BROWN: And then you have long term. What happens in 10 years, 20 years? I mean, it's [inaudible] --

DR. TRAVIS: So it might actually be worth asking Dr. Suresh a variation on this question, which is as CIF, cyber infrastructure, for the 21st century grows and matures, how do they plan to keep pace with the change in demands in the community and the changing -- the fact that universities -- many universities don't have the trunk lines to download the enormous amount of data, so how will the -- how can the NSF serve those people best, you know, how that's going to be thought through. So maybe we could ask a question along those lines, if someone feels passionately called to do so.

DR. PFIRMAN: There was also another -- somebody on our advisory committee --

DR. TRAVIS: Mic.

DR. PFIRMAN: -- somebody on the advisory committee before was really keying on smart systems for -- that would like read the data so you don't have to put it in the standard format, because that's one of the big issues, everybody hates to get over that hurdle of getting it all in the standard format. That would also make it more living, so -- because it would -- you'd be able to search for the data and be able to -- you know, so I thought that was a really cool, you know, cutting edge possibility, too.

DR. TRAVIS: Yeah, if I remember, that was Alan Kay. Alan always had ideas for how things should be done better --