People: Ex-OTA Staffer Brings 'Fresh Eyes' To NSF Division Director's Post

Post Sociologist and science policy analyst Daryl E. Chubin has been appointed division director for research, evaluation, and dissemination in the education and human resources directorate of the National Science Foundation. His appointment follows seven years at the congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), which he left in the position of senior associate. The move from the legislative to the executive branch has given him a new perspective on the challenges of implementing congressionally mandated education initiatives at NSF, Chubin says, but also gives the agency a pair of "fresh eyes" in evaluating its educational programming. The responsibilities of the year-old division, Chubin says, are twofold: It administers several primarily research-based education programs and evaluates and monitors the entire portfolio of the agency's 200-plus educational initiatives, ex- ercising a sort of "quality control." One example of a program Chubin's division administers is Application of Advanced Technologies (AAT). AAT's general mission, says Chubin, is "to bring technology to bear on as many NSF educational programs as possible." On a broader scale, Chubin says, his division looks at all of the agency's education programs with an eye toward whether they fulfill performance objectives and NSF's overall educational goals. "When NSF lends its imprimatur to something that can be used in the classroom, what does that mean?" he says, as an example of a central question his division tackles. "What kind of `back-end' quality control has it received?" More specifically, he says, his division tries to determine: "What difference are the programs making? How do you measure outcomes? What have been the targeted objectives of various programs?" In taking the lead in determining science education goals and methods, Chubin says, NSF is in a "good news-bad news" position: the good news is that the agency is an "important player," in the eyes of Congress and others, in setting educational priorities; the bad news is that this is "very often done within current budget constraints." He adds: "I happen to think that Congress asks very pertinent questions. But they sometimes have unrealistic expectations of time and of magnitude. `Well, if you can do this in 10 states, why can't you do it in 40? If you can find this out in three years, why can't we do it in two?' "Education does not fit those kinds of time frames ... or scale questions." Chubin says his experience with OTA and Congress will help him in dealing with their demands, but also has given him the ability to look at NSF's programs critically. "New leadership brings new opportunities," he says. "I come here with fresh eyes.... It behooves us to take a hard look at ... what needs to be expanded, what needs to be consolidated, and what needs to be let go. We can't do everything." Because of the challenges NSF faces, Chubin says, he left OTA to help: "The central motivation for my moving into the position is that this is a critical time for the foundation ... and the work that I had done in science education and science policy convinced me that I could make a difference." Chubin, 46, received his Ph.D. in sociology from Loyola University in Chicago in 1973. He became a sociology professor at Georgia Institute of Technology in 1977. He joined OTA in 1986 as a senior analyst. Eliot Stellar, a physiological psychologist and former provost of the University of Pennsylvania, died of cancer October 12 in Philadelphia. He was 73 years old. Stellar's research focused on the physiological processes of the brain that affect human behavior, especially appetite and obesity. Stellar was the author or coauthor of numerous highly cited papers. His most cited work was "Palatability, food intake, and obesity in normal and hyperphagic rats" (Journal of Comparative Physiology, 58[1]:63, 1964), which had garnered 235 citations as of 1990. His 1954 paper "The physiology of motivation" (Psychological Review, 61[1]:5-22, 1954), which had received 180 citations as of 1992, is considered by many to be a seminal work in his field. In addition, he was the author or coauthor of several books, including Physiological Psychology (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1950), considered a standard text in the field; Eating and Its Disorders (New York, Raven Press, 1983); and The Neurobiology of Motivation and Reward (New York, Springer Publishing Co., 1985), co-written with his son James. He also edited the Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology (now the Journal of Behavioral Neuroscience). Stellar graduated from Harvard University in 1941 and earned master's and doctoral degrees from Brown University. After graduating from Brown, he joined the psychology department of Johns Hopkins University and moved to Penn in 1954 as an associate professor of physiological psychology in the School of Medicine. While at Penn, he served as director of the Institute for Neurological Sciences, provost during a controversially extensive restructuring of the university, and Joseph Leidy Professor of Neurological Sciences. At the time of his death, he was chairman of the department of cell and developmental biology- -formerly the anatomy department--and University Professor of Physiological Psychology in Anatomy. In addition to his research and administrative duties, he was a founder of the Society for Neuroscience, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member and former president of the American Philosophical Society--the United States' oldest general learned society (see story on page 21). Stellar was an active member of NAS's Committee on Human Rights, which persuades U.S. and foreign diplomats to intervene on behalf of political prisoners, especially scientists. Russian physicist Andrey Sakharov was among the prisoners the committee helped.

People: Ex-OTA Staffer Brings 'Fresh Eyes' To NSF Division Director's Post

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