Undergrad Research Budget Up

WASHINGTON—The National Science Foundation plans to increase the budget of a new research program for undergraduates after receiving an unexpectedly large number of applicants from universities and other research facilities around the country. Rushing to meet a March 1 deadline on less than three months' notice, researchers submitted proposals to hire groups of students to work at more than 600 sites as part of NSF's new Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program. Alan Leshner, coordinator for the program, said that individual research directorates plan to juggle their budgets to permit more money to go into the undergraduate program. "The floor is $9 million, and we will spend more," Leshner said. "We just have too much proposal pressure." Accepting all the proposals would require a budget almost three times its present size. NSF's original announcement called for about 2,000 undergraduates to work this summer either at new sites that offered places for at least eight students, or at projects already funded by NSF. Half of the undergraduates at an REU site must come from outside the host institution, a criterion that many universities say is difficult to meet. The program is expected to give priority to projects involving women and minority students. An average grant of $4,000 per student will cover housing costs, stipends and supplies. Although the program was not funded until October 20, NSF officials took a "better late than never" attitude. The delay will mean that schools won't be notified officially until June, when many students have already left for the summer. Benefiting the Student The program was designed to increase the country's future supply of scientists on the theory that early exposure to research would entice larger numbers of students into the various disciplines. For many institutions, however, the program's appeal lies in what it teaches the individual. "The bottom line is what the student can learn rather than what they can offer the project," said Marilyn Williams, director of the Undergraduate Research Program in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University. Cornell is seeking funding for more than 100 positions at sites that encompass various engineering disciplines and the physical, social and life sciences. Frank Senftle, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Va., sees the program as an opportunity to increase the work force in his small lab for geochemical and borehole nuclear research. "We need scientific help, but normally we can't hire anybody," he said. The program may have its greatest impact on undergraduate institutions that emphasize teaching and lack the research resources of the larger universities. "We're basically full-time teachers during the year, so we don't have much time to conduct research," said Larry Kirk, an associate professor of chemistry at California State University, Chico. This summer Kirk hopes to involve eight students in a biology/chemistry project that studies the mode of action of an antibiotic with the long-term goal of designing new antibiotics. His biggest worry is trying to recruit students from other schools without knowing whether NSF will award him a grant. Most students, he notes, must find work long before the end of classes. "If we don't get funded," he said, "we can't handle the program." Leshner promises that next year's announcement will go out sooner and that awards will be made by early spring. Institutions approved for grants this year will be told informally by early May, he added, if the research directorates can organize before that time the necessary peer review panels. Who's in Charge? NSF's decision to channel REU through the individual research directorates rankled many science educators, who support recommendations from both a task committee of the National Science Board and the National Science Teachers Association to make the Science and Engineering Education (SEE) directorate the focal point for such programs. SEE was eliminated as part of the Reagan administration's budget cuts in 1981. Although it was restored in 1983, its only program focused solely on undergraduates is the College Science Instrumentation program, which provides matching grants to undergraduate institutions to buy equipment. "It's fine for the program to be administered through the research directorates, but there must be some overall coordination through the Science and Engineering Education directorate," said Homer Neal, chairman of the NSB committee and provost of the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Last month NSF announced plans for such cooperation through a newly-created Office of Undergraduate Education within the education directorate. But more than administrative solutions are needed to bolster undergraduate science education, according to Lester Paldy, director of the Center for Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. "It wasn't so much a failure of SEE as it was a failure of colleges and universities to integrate these activities and make them self-supporting after the NSF support ended," Paldy said. "The research community has to become more involved, and the only way to do that is to involve the research directorates in the administration of grants and support of these activities." Lloyd is a freelance science writer in Vienna, Va.

Undergrad Research Budget Up

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