NSF Reorganization Spawns Social Science Directorate

WASHINGTON--The National Science Foundation has reshuffled its grant-making bureaucracy to give greater prominence to the social and behavioral sciences. The reorganization, announced earlier this month by NSF director Walter Massey, also addresses simmering problems within the foundation's policy analysis and survey research programs that have led to congressional inquiries and heated debate within the field. The new NSF organizational chart, as described by Massey during a meeting of its governing body, the National Science Board, features: * A new directorate, one of six serving research scientists, that will cover the social, behavioral, and economic sciences (SBES). The agency has launched a national search for an eminent social scientist to run the new entity, which was carved from the directorate for biological, behavioral, and social sciences (BBS); * The pared-down BBS directorate, renamed biological sciences (BS), roughly three-quarters of its former size. It will continue to be headed by microbiologist Mary Clutter. * The elimination of the directorate for scientific, technological, and international affairs (STIA), which is now served by an acting head. Its international programs and science resources studies (SRS) divisions will be moved to SBES, and its division of policy and research analysis (PRA) will become part of a new office of planning and assessment within Massey's office. * The dissolution of the directorate for administration, now led by Jeff Fenstermacher. Its functions will be carried out by two additional new offices overseen by the NSF director, one covering budget and financial operations and the other dealing with administrative management issues. The creation of a new directorate will not mean more money for the social and behavioral sciences, Massey emphasized at a press briefing after the meeting. Its annual budget of $85 million this year would have ranked it last among the six research directorates (mathematical and physical sciences leads the pack with an annual budget of $558 million, and even the slimmed-down biological sciences directorate will have a budget of about $250 million), and he said there are no immediate plans to increase its budget any more quickly than those of the other directorates. But the reorganization does represent a significant victory in a long, uphill campaign by social scientists for more participation in determining NSF policy- and grant-making decisions. In January, acting NSF director Fred Bernthal wrote Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) that "the position of the social sciences is problematic and not without controversy since the beginning [of NSF]." A bill calling for such a directorate was introduced in the mid-1970s but was brushed aside when BBS was formed in 1976, and the budget for the social sciences at NSF was nearly wiped out during the first years of the Reagan administration. But proponents never gave up. In 1989, Nobel economics laureate Herbert Simon of Carnegie-Mellon University testified before the House on the need for a separate directorate, and last year House science committee chairman Rep. George Brown (D-Calif.) and former Rep. Doug Walgren (D-Pa.) introduced legislation to create such a directorate. Last spring, an outside advisory panel created by NSF endorsed the idea after scientists from around the country gave it a ringing endorsement during two days of public hearings a year ago. And for the past two years, Congress has mentioned the proposed new directorate in report language relating to the foundation's annual budget. All in all, the new directorate is seen by many social scientists as a symbolic coming-of-age for the fields it will represent. "The long shadow of biology has been lifted," says Howard Silver, executive director of the Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA), a Washington lobbying group representing some 90 organizations and research universities. Conceding that the immediate impact of the change is more one of image than substance, Silver says that "the hope is that the image will lead to a substantive change in how the foundation views the social sciences. The expectation is that having an AD [assistant director] at the table will make a difference, in the long run, in how NSF allocates its resources." Paul Magee, dean of biological sciences at the University of Minnesota, was chairman of the NSF task force that proposed the new directorate. He says that the reorganization will give both the social sciences and biology a chance to expand beyond their present boundaries. "There's no question that the social, behavioral, and economic sciences have come of age, and that they need a voice to generate their own research plan," says Magee. "But it's also important for biology. The job that Mary Clutter faced, trying to juggle both balls, was nearly impossible. When you're forced to listen to too many voices, it's hard to devote enough attention to any of them. I think that this new arrangement will make that job a lot easier." Science Board president Mary Good made a similar point at the press briefing in explaining why the disciplines deserve separate but equal treatment. "Most of the other directorates [at NSF] are self-contained," she said. "But the biological sciences and the social sciences are no more related to one another than are the biological sciences and the physical sciences [mathematics, physics, and chemistry]." Massey, who took office in March, stressed at the press conference that he had consulted with hundreds of members of the scientific community before effecting the new structure. Why has the reorganization not been enacted before now? "Because the director has changed," he said simply. However, observers say that new leadership is only part of the reason for the reorganization. Another factor was the need for Massey to address festering problems within STIA and the foundation's data-collection efforts. In a memo to the science board, Massey says STIA, with its $51 million (1991) budget--allocated primarily to surveys, international cooperative programs, and contracts to small businesses and state governments--is being dissolved for financial reasons; that is, to hold down administrative costs in the wake of the creation of the new social sciences directorate. But NSF officials, requesting anonymity, point out that the reorganization is one way to deal with what one of them termed "the mess in STIA." The official was alluding to management practices and data analysis within two of its units--science resources studies and policy research and analysis--that have come under internal review and congressional scrutiny, and reports last spring of widespread unrest among employees over a planned appointment within the directorate (The Scientist, July 22, 1991, page 4). Judith Liebman, vice chancellor for research at the University of Illinois and chairwoman of a now-defunct panel that was looking into the two troubled STIA programs, sees another benefit as well: "Putting SRS into the same directorate as the people who sponsor social and economic research means that there will be a lot more people at the top of the [new] directorate who are familiar with the technical issues they face. It makes a lot of sense to me."

NSF Reorganization Spawns Social Science Directorate

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