Doubling Research Means Doubling Education

It is encouraging that a bipartisan congressional leadership has called for a doubling of the current level of federal investment in research within the next 10 years. And the Clinton administration's budget submission is a clear indication that the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue heard the call. But with this call and reponse comes a major responsibility to make a credible argument for such enhancement, and we scientists and engineers must do our part to make that case. True, even the call and response themselves are hopeful signs, given that until recently the government debate was over the size of projected cuts in federal research spending. Focusing on the size of a possible increase is certainly a more healthy debate for the country and for those responsible for investing wisely in our future. However, it is still largely unclear which societal needs will prove most persuasive to Congress and the public in justifying increased research spending. Some believe that health care alone and biomedical research will become a dominant justification in the future. Others hope that greater research investments can be motivated by the need for military preparedness in a rapidly changing geopolitical environment. And still others believe that environmental issues such as global warming will play their part in advancing the cause. There also are those who argue that the need to maintain economic strength through technology can justify greater investment in basic and applied research. But perhaps the most compelling argument that we researchers can make is that university research-besides creating new knowledge and inventions-produces an extremely valuable dividend in the form of rigorously educated engineers and scientists. These engineers and scientists are the real engines of economic power and the source of most commercially important technological advances. In fact, the human dividend may be the most important product of university basic research. Although most research yields useful advances in knowledge, extremely few studies produce revolutionary breakthroughs. But even a research project that does not immediately drive a field forward may educate students who over their careers will make important advances in that field or a different one. We must convey to Congress and the public the broad impact of research training on society. For example, many CEOs and other top-level corporate managers hold advanced science and engineering degrees that gave them a depth of research experience. This experience taught them lessons far beyond the purely technical, including how to work in interdisciplinary teams-more and more a key feature of university research projects. For example, at Duke University we've seen this teamwork in our United States Army-funded engineering project-working with partners at the California Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Ohio State and Stanford universities, and several companies-to develop new technologies for detecting and removing land mines, which endanger millions of people worldwide. One might think such engineering research to be purely technical, but we are drawing on policy experts as well as engineers and scientists across a range of disciplines. Not only will this teamwork yield life-saving technologies for deactivating mines, but also our students will gain collaborative skills that will serve them well decades from now, whether they become research engineers or corporate leaders. Another lesson research teaches is that building such teams requires adequately supporting a broad spectrum of fields, not just those areas that someone believes will lead directly to a new medicine or electronic device. Just as it takes a family or even a village to raise a child, it takes a whole community of scientists and engineers to advance knowledge. Recently, for example, I attended a meeting hosted by the Air Force on how to assess vibration and high-performance maneuvers in military aircraft. Our workshop included a wide range of experts on aerodynamic flow, mechanical vibration, and aircraft control systems. But we also needed basic experts in nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory. These latter specialists who helped us understand aircraft dynamics likely went on to other meetings to help medical scientists understand cardiac arrhythmias or electrical engineers understand the behavior of electronic circuits. It's up to us as researchers and educators to emphasize to Congress and the public how important it is to teach students the value of such cross-disciplinary collaborations and how to develop them. We must explain that participation in a research project clearly is the most dramatic and effective way to drive home such lessons. As a corollary, members of Congress should understand that research funding must be adequate across all agencies, since each leverages its research investment by drawing on specialists funded by the others. We also need to emphasize that funding policy should seek to support in significant measure the most intellectually promising research proposals, without attempting to predict too precisely which will yield breakthroughs. Such an ecumenical policy is more likely to prove rewarding both in knowledge produced and students well educated. In making all these arguments to our representatives, we must understand that our responsibility is both national and local. We certainly must communicate with our leaders in Washington. But we must also mount a grass-roots campaign, by contacting our states' congressional delegations and generating enthusiasm for this initiative to double research funding among the voters who place them in office. Earl Dowell is dean of Duke University School of Engineering and chairman of the Engineering Deans Council of the American Society of Engineering Education. In October, he joined with the presidents of more than 100 scientific, mathematics, and engineering societies to sign a statement, "A Decade of Investment," urging a doubling of federal funding for basic research.

Doubling Research Means Doubling Education

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Earl Dowell

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March 1998

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