New Leader At AAU Seen Likely To Be Boon For Science

Cornelius J. Pings, due to become president of the Association of American Universities (AAU) February 15, will be a strong advocate for university-based basic science, say academic investigators, research administrators, and Washington policy professionals. Fifty-six United States and two Canadian universities with strong research programs constitute the 92-year-old AAU's membership. The institutions, about half public and half private, are represented by their chief executive officers. Based in Washington, D.C., AAU exerts considerable influence on government policies toward university research, both through direct lobbying and through respected studies of pivotal issues. Pings, chosen by AAU's executive committee for a five-year term, is expected to carry forward departing president Robert Rosenzweig's well-regarded 10-year stewardship of the association. Rosenzweig is seen as having successfully refocused AAU's mission as a champion of these universities, substantially enhancing the organization's profile with Congress and the White House. "The AAU is spoken about sometimes lovingly and sometimes not," says Milton Goldberg, executive director of the Council on Governmental Relations in Washington, whose university membership includes all of the AAU members. "The fact that they're spoken about at all is the result of Bob Rosenzweig's leadership of that association." "I see Pings coming to the AAU as a continuation and, perhaps, an expansion of the mission as it's been defined under Rosenzweig," says Thomas J. Linney, vice president and director of government relations for the Washington-based Council of Graduate Schools. Several challenging science policy debates are likely to confront AAU and Pings during his tenure, policy professionals say, including controversies over appropriate levels of government funding for basic research, conflicts of interest, and indirect costs. If the academic science community has any misgivings about Pings, they are voiced by some researchers who are concerned that he may more strongly represent the university administrators' point of view than that of individual research faculty members, especially in the discussions about indirect costs. But these same voices praise Pings's ability to build consensus on difficult issues and express optimism about working with him. Pings's experience as a bench scientist, educator, administrator, and science policy activist, observers say, will enable him to be immediately effective in his new post. "In selecting someone like Pings, the AAU is emphasizing his expertise in science," says David Morse, assistant vice president for policy planning at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. "He knows the issues from the bottom up, from the point of view of somebody who has been an active scientific investigator, as well as from the administrative perspective." Pings was a professor of chemical engineering and chemical physics at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, from 1959 to 1981. He was also vice provost and dean of graduate studies at Caltech from 1970 to 1981. From 1981 to the present, Pings has been provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He has also headed several important science policy committees, including the joint Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (COSEPUP) of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine, since 1988. "He's an activist," says Arden Albee, dean of graduate studies at Cal~tech, the job Pings held for a decade in the 1970s. "He's a very clear thinker, and he gets things done." Albee, who is also project scientist for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's upcoming mission to Mars, suggests that Pings's scientific background will give him an orientation toward the problems of research in the technical fields. "Pings is a respected scientist and an articulate and well- informed spokesman for the community," says Fred Bentley, director of the sponsored projects office at Stanford University. "He has excellent credentials to come to Washington and hit the ground running on all issues of science policy," says outgoing AAU president Rosenzweig. Pings's current administrative position at USC has provided him with opportunities to generate support, both financial and political, for basic research, his colleagues say. "Here at USC, he has been a powerful advocate for research," says Barbara Solomon, dean of graduate studies there. "He was largely responsible for a program here in which university operating funds were put into a research account so beginning faculty could develop research that would then put them in a position to go for large national grants." Solomon sees upcoming battles in Washington over levels of funding for university research in the future and expects AAU to take a central role in the debates. "There is a certain skepticism in Congress about the wisdom of continuing the [current] level of support for university-based research," Solomon says, "and I think that the AAU will be lobbying very strongly to help Congress see how important it is to continue--if not increase--support." Erosion of governmental support for basic research is an issue also identified by others as one Pings and AAU will have to deal with in the near term. "The major issue coming up is funding, particularly because we have lived in a time of essentially increasing, or at least steady, funding," says Francis E. Low, a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a member of COSEPUP. "We seem now to be moving into a period where funding is going down in real terms." "There's going to be a challenge for the AAU to be the organization that puts forth a rationale for the conduct of basic research at the nation's colleges and universities," says the Council on Governmental Relations' Goldberg. "[The present situation offers] an unparalleled opportunity to do that, with the close of the Cold War and [the end of] the previous basing of university research on national needs of a defense nature rather than an economic nature. There's going to be a lot for the AAU and Pings to do, to bring some order to that." Goldberg also says that, as economic competitiveness becomes more important to the United States, promoting technology transfer will become a more prominent component in practicing research. This, he says, will increase the potential for conflicts of interest to become a greater problem. "If there's more effort to transfer university basic research through the technological chain to some ultimate public benefit," Goldberg says, "the potential for conflicts will increase. Universities are going to have to learn to manage those conflicts, and Pings will find that's a challenge for the AAU." "It's a topic that's getting a lot more attention," says Stanford's Bentley, "particularly as regards start-up companies and faculty members in the medical research area." "The next administration will look to the universities as instruments of economic rejuvenation," says Rosenzweig. "The question is, to what extent that role is compatible with the more traditional role of universities as the center of basic research and training, and whether, if institutions are moved too far away from that, the nation will lose something that it can't recover." As chairman of COSEPUP, Goldberg notes, Pings has already done important work concerning research integrity. Under Pings, COSEPUP commissioned the recent report on scientific misconduct, "Responsible Science: Ensuring the Integrity of the Research Process." Pings also chaired an AAU ad hoc committee on indirect costs from 1987 to 1989, which produced the so-called Pings Committee report on indirect costs. "They tried to bring some rationality to indirect costs policy, indirect costs systems," says Goldberg. "[Creating that report] was probably one of the most difficult assignments anyone has taken on, on behalf of the collective interests of the community," says Jack Crowley, director of MIT's Washington office and a 19-year AAU veteran, including a half- dozen years as the association's vice president under president Rosenzweig. "There is nothing like it on the desks of anyone in the higher education establishment or in government. It really laid down the basic analysis upon which much of the subsequent debates rest." "That report," Rosenzweig concurs, "is really the intellectual basis for most of what's been going on [concerning indirect costs] since then." The Pings Committee report is also, however, the reason that some research faculty consider the Pings AAU presidency cautiously. "The initial Pings Committee report was very favorable to the administrative point of view," says Michael Sheetz, a professor of cell biology at Duke University, Durham, N.C. "And, to the extent that there is now some concern about whether there will be enough funds to go around, I think a lot of bench scientists are worried that money which would otherwise be used for bench science will end up for bricks and mortar at a time when we're just running out of money." Sheetz adds, however: "He is very forthright, a straight shooter, and I think he'll do an excellent job." Shu Chien, president of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, also says that the Pings Committee report leaned toward the administrative view rather than toward that of the individual scientist. But he adds that, subsequently, representatives of the health-related science societies and the university associations--including Rosenzweig--worked together to reach consensus on how indirect costs should be derived and used. "We did start with different vantage points," Chien says, "but, in time, we were able to get together." He adds: "It's a good appointment for the AAU, and we look forward to working with him." Other challenges facing Pings as he assumes the AAU presidency will include tracking moves to potentially recast the role the National Science Foundation will play in future research. "Most NSF science efforts are, of course, in the universities," says William Danforth, chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis and cochairman of the Special Commission on the Future of the NSF. "The new president of the AAU will have great interest in the NSF, in how it works, how it interacts with the universities and with the scientific community."

New Leader At AAU Seen Likely To Be Boon For Science

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