*Your Thoughts? *
23 JULY 2010 VOL 329 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org /Published by AAAS/ *NSF Misfires on Plan to Revamp Minority Programs* Everybody agrees that U.S. colleges and universities need to prepare more minority students to enter careers in science and engineering. But almost nobody likes a new plan by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fold three programs aimed at achieving that goal into a still-to-be-defined initiative. Scientists and university administrators involved in the programs are up in arms, and Congress is telling NSF to go back to the drawing board. NSF currently spends $90 million a year on three efforts tailored to institutions that serve African Americans and American Indians: the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP), the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program, and the Tribal Colleges and University Program. Last year, a U.S. House of Representatives spending panel told NSF to design a fourth program specifically for the nation’s Hispanic population, the nation’s largest underrepresented minority. That step could quadruple the pool of eligible minority-serving institutions. At the same time, as part of a larger campaign to eliminate redundancy in government, budget officials in the Obama Administration began urging NSF to streamline its stable of programs aimed at increasing the participation of underrepresented minorities in so-called STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. In an attempt to resolve the conflicting guidance, NSF requested a bit more money— $103 million—in its 2011 budget for a new initiative that it awkwardly labeled Comprehensive Broadening Participation of Undergraduates in STEM. “We felt we had reached a plateau in college graduation rates, in Ph.D. production, and in transition to the professoriate,” says *James Wyche (an ASI Fellow), who headed the NSF division that runs the three minority programs before becoming *Provost and Chief Academic Officer* of Howard University in Washington, D.C.*, earlier this year. “So the question was, do you stay the course or look for something else?” The specific suggestion to combine programs came from the White House, he adds. “OMB [The Office of Management and Budget] encouraged us to think about a program that would consolidate what we were doing to broaden participation among the targeted groups, something that would use the best practices from each one.” The bare-bones budget announcement, unveiled in February, didn’t provide any details. In May, NSF issued a 5-page concept paper (http://www.nsf.gov/od/ broadening participation/bp.jsp) that declared the existing programs “should serve as a foundation for a new approach,” meaning they would be dissolved. It also said that Hispanic-serving institutions, a poorly defined term for schools at which Hispanic students constitute a significant share of the overall enrollment, would be invited to seek funding. Major research universities, now partners in some existing projects run by minority serving institutions, would be eligible to apply directly to NSF as the lead institution. Although the paper asks for advice on how to proceed, the community had heard enough to ring the alarm. For openers, say critics, the three programs are working: Outside evaluations confirm that they are attracting and graduating more minority students. The programs have also developed an approach that can be scaled up. So university administrators say they don’t understand why NSF would want to dilute them. Opponents of the NSF plan also attacked the inclusion of the nation’s top research universities. That change would not only open the door to institutions with a poor track record of training minorities in science and engineering fields, they said, but also give those schools an advantage because of their vastly superior resources. Finally, critics complained, NSF hadn’t offered any evidence that a different approach to training minority scientists would work better. Last month, the 42 consortia in the LSAMP program told NSF they strongly oppose the changes. Stephen Cox, provost of Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and director of a project involving nine local and regional institutions, says he also wonders why NSF has put the burden for broadening participation in science on these three, relatively tiny, programs. “Rather than squeezing more blood from this stone,” Cox said, “why doesn’t NSF get some more stones?” Congress doesn’t care much for NSF’s new idea, either. This spring, the House of Representatives, as part of its reauthorization of the America COMPETES Act that covers NSF’s research and education activities (H.R. 5116), told NSF to keep the three programs intact in 2011 and submit a report “clarifying the objectives and rationale for such changes” before heading off in a new direction. “It’s something they had not discussed with us,” says Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson (D–TX), a senior member of the House science committee, who crafted the language on the minority programs. “I think they need to discuss it with stakeholders, who told me that it seems like a way to cut a lot of money from these programs.” A Senate version of the reauthorization bill introduced last week (S. 3605) would also preserve the programs, and a House spending bill for 2011 likewise tells NSF to keep funding them. NSF appears to be rethinking its strategy. Joan Ferrini-Mundy, acting head of NSF’s education directorate, which oversees these programs, says NSF is looking hard “at what a transition would actually look like. A lot is still on the table.” She also notes that “broadening participation is an NSF-wide commitment” and that any final plan is likely to involve the agency’s six research directorates as well. *–JEFFREY MERVIS*
23 JULY 2010 VOL 329 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org /Published by AAAS/ *NSF Misfires on Plan to Revamp Minority Programs* Everybody agrees that U.S. colleges and universities need to prepare more minority students to enter careers in science and engineering. But almost nobody likes a new plan by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to fold three programs aimed at achieving that goal into a still-to-be-defined initiative. Scientists and university administrators involved in the programs are up in arms, and Congress is telling NSF to go back to the drawing board. NSF currently spends $90 million a year on three efforts tailored to institutions that serve African Americans and American Indians: the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP), the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program, and the Tribal Colleges and University Program. Last year, a U.S. House of Representatives spending panel told NSF to design a fourth program specifically for the nation’s Hispanic population, the nation’s largest underrepresented minority. That step could quadruple the pool of eligible minority-serving institutions. At the same time, as part of a larger campaign to eliminate redundancy in government, budget officials in the Obama Administration began urging NSF to streamline its stable of programs aimed at increasing the participation of underrepresented minorities in so-called STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. In an attempt to resolve the conflicting guidance, NSF requested a bit more money— $103 million—in its 2011 budget for a new initiative that it awkwardly labeled Comprehensive Broadening Participation of Undergraduates in STEM. “We felt we had reached a plateau in college graduation rates, in Ph.D. production, and in transition to the professoriate,” says *James Wyche (an ASI Fellow), who headed the NSF division that runs the three minority programs before becoming *Provost and Chief Academic Officer* of Howard University in Washington, D.C.*, earlier this year. “So the question was, do you stay the course or look for something else?” The specific suggestion to combine programs came from the White House, he adds. “OMB [The Office of Management and Budget] encouraged us to think about a program that would consolidate what we were doing to broaden participation among the targeted groups, something that would use the best practices from each one.” The bare-bones budget announcement, unveiled in February, didn’t provide any details. In May, NSF issued a 5-page concept paper (http://www.nsf.gov/od/ broadening participation/bp.jsp) that declared the existing programs “should serve as a foundation for a new approach,” meaning they would be dissolved. It also said that Hispanic-serving institutions, a poorly defined term for schools at which Hispanic students constitute a significant share of the overall enrollment, would be invited to seek funding. Major research universities, now partners in some existing projects run by minority serving institutions, would be eligible to apply directly to NSF as the lead institution. Although the paper asks for advice on how to proceed, the community had heard enough to ring the alarm. For openers, say critics, the three programs are working: Outside evaluations confirm that they are attracting and graduating more minority students. The programs have also developed an approach that can be scaled up. So university administrators say they don’t understand why NSF would want to dilute them. Opponents of the NSF plan also attacked the inclusion of the nation’s top research universities. That change would not only open the door to institutions with a poor track record of training minorities in science and engineering fields, they said, but also give those schools an advantage because of their vastly superior resources. Finally, critics complained, NSF hadn’t offered any evidence that a different approach to training minority scientists would work better. Last month, the 42 consortia in the LSAMP program told NSF they strongly oppose the changes. Stephen Cox, provost of Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and director of a project involving nine local and regional institutions, says he also wonders why NSF has put the burden for broadening participation in science on these three, relatively tiny, programs. “Rather than squeezing more blood from this stone,” Cox said, “why doesn’t NSF get some more stones?” Congress doesn’t care much for NSF’s new idea, either. This spring, the House of Representatives, as part of its reauthorization of the America COMPETES Act that covers NSF’s research and education activities (H.R. 5116), told NSF to keep the three programs intact in 2011 and submit a report “clarifying the objectives and rationale for such changes” before heading off in a new direction. “It’s something they had not discussed with us,” says Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson (D–TX), a senior member of the House science committee, who crafted the language on the minority programs. “I think they need to discuss it with stakeholders, who told me that it seems like a way to cut a lot of money from these programs.” A Senate version of the reauthorization bill introduced last week (S. 3605) would also preserve the programs, and a House spending bill for 2011 likewise tells NSF to keep funding them. NSF appears to be rethinking its strategy. Joan Ferrini-Mundy, acting head of NSF’s education directorate, which oversees these programs, says NSF is looking hard “at what a transition would actually look like. A lot is still on the table.” She also notes that “broadening participation is an NSF-wide commitment” and that any final plan is likely to involve the agency’s six research directorates as well. *–JEFFREY MERVIS*
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