Federal Support for University Research: Forty Years After the National Defense Education Act (Conference: October 1, 1998)
Remarks by Glenn T. Seaborg
Early Federal Role in Higher Education and Research
I made my first major address on a non-scientific (i.e., sociological) subject on March 23, 1953 - the Charter Day Address at the University of California, Riverside, on the subject "Dawn of the Nuclear Age." Since the 1950’s, I have been quite interested in the improvement of the teaching of science, the impact of science on society, the necessity for greater scientific literacy among the general public and the need for scientists to understand social problems and the humanities and to help bridge the gap between the two cultures.
Then on October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched an earth satellite, which they called "Sputnik". This caught the United States by surprise. It intensified the "Cold War" between the Soviet Union and the United States and caused the United States to focus more on the need for preeminence in science. Dr. James R. Killian was immediately appointed in November, 1957, by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as a Special Assistant to the President for Science and he soon served as Chairman of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). The impact on my life of the new federal role in higher education and research started soon.
On November 25, 1958, Roy Hall (Assistant Commissioner for Research, U.S. Office of Education) telephoned to ask if I would serve on the U.S. Office of Education’s new Educational Media Advisory committee. This was the group that would make decisions on proposals under Title VII of the National Defense Education Act for television projects. In response to my question about the amount of time such participation would demand, he said that it would very much depend on whether the committee evaluated projects itself (which might take six days each quarter) or assigned evaluations to sub-committees or consultants. I accepted the appointment. He commented that he had heard through the grapevine good reports about our efforts to explore educational uses of television here on the Berkeley campus.
On December 5, 1958, I attended and spoke at the Conference on the National Defense Education Act held at the University Extension Center at 55 Laguna Street in San Francisco. The conference, organized by the federal government to explain the provisions of the Act which authorized $1 billion in federal aid to education, was attended by over 200 administrators from California colleges and universities.
I opened the meeting with a few prepared remarks on the need for the National Defense Education Act, the provisions of the various titles of the Act (in a very general way) and my disappointment in some of the provisions (i.e. Title IV’s restriction to newly established graduate programs.) I spoke about my faith in the potential of television in higher education and my hope for great strides in this application through the support of Title VII. I concluded,
"I would like to say that I am very glad to participate in the formulation of this pioneering program of federal aid to education, which points the way which I believe we shall have to travel in the future. I would hope that methods may be found in future programs to allow more flexibility in the deployment of federal funds, relying more on the discretion and experience of individual institutions. But I believe that we should work diligently together, under the provisions of the present Act, to realize its advantages to the greatest extent possible, and to help establish a precedent for future revisions and expansions of the Act favorable to the optimum development of our system of higher education."
At the luncheon for the NDEA Conference, I spoke with J. Peter Elder who was on leave until April from Harvard, where he was Dean of the Graduate School to head Title IV (graduate fellowships) of the Act. Essentially, he advised me that we might apply under Title IV with the argument of expanded graduate programs. He told me that Harvard would not apply under Title IV because of his position in administering it.
As an example of my attendance at meetings of the Advisory Committee on New Educational Media, I shall describe the meeting of October 21, 1959, at the Office of Education of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW). As the meeting was getting underway, I had a conversation with C. Scott Fletcher, President, Fund for Adult Education, Ford Foundation, who gave me the gratifying news that he feels that the UC Extension Division is doing the best job of any extension division in our country. This has come about since we began to use regular faculty more regularly.
We were given a description of the educational television experiment at Purdue; they had an airborne transmitter which reached 5 million students over a 200 mile radius with the airplane operating out of the Purdue University Airport. Plans included possibly dividing the country into 12 such areas in order to follow up on this experiment.
I returned to the Statler Hilton Hotel to have cocktails with Homer Babbidge (Assistant Commissioner and Director of the Division of Higher Education), Roy Hall and Walter Stone (Office of Education). I asked them to look for chances for HEW to support research in humanities in universities. They said present laws forbid it but they are sympathetic. I told them about UC hopes for an Institute of the Humanities. They suggested bringing this to the attention of Robert Lumiansky (President of the American Council of Learned Societies) who might help find support.
As a follow-up to my service on the Office of Education’s Educational Media Advisory Committee, I served on the Board of Directors of the National Educational Television and Radio Center (1958-1964, 1967-1970), which included such luminaries as Everett N. Case, Kingman Brewster, Norman Cousins, Peter C. Peterson, Herman B. Wells and John F. White (President). I also served on the Board of Trustees of the Educational Broadcasting Corporation (1970-1973) and on the National Programming Council for Public Television (1970-1972). These were the forerunners to the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and Cable Network News (CNN), etc.
In 1960, I served as a member of the National Science Board which has cognizance over the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Federal source of support for so much of higher education and scientific research in our country. I served as a member of the Scientific Personnel and Education Committee. I recall the actions by the National Institutes of Health in creating 100 professorships throughout the United States and the NSF instigation of a policy to pay the faculty salaries of principal investigators.
I served on the first General Advisory Committee (GAC) of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) from January 1947 to August 1950, along with J. Robert Oppenheimer (Chairman), Enrico Fermi, James B. Conant, Isidor Rabi and Lee A. DuBridge. This was at a time before the creation of the National Science Foundation and the GAC advised the AEC on the instigation of its marvelous program of support of basic research in U.S. universities and colleges. Later, I served as Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (1961-1971) under Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. During my regime the AEC expanded its laboratory cooperative endeavors - faculty and student research participation - faculty-students conferences, laboratory graduate fellowships, honors programs and engineering practice schools. An example close to home is the University of California, Berkeley - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory relationship - here we have today 270 faculty, 390 graduate students, 250 undergraduate students and 200 postdocs participating.
Glenn Seaborg and President Kennedy
Although I had had earlier contacts with Dwight David Eisenhower, my formal association with his administration began when I was appointed to the newly created President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) early in 1959 and attended the monthly meetings in Washington, D.C., from April 1959 until January 1961. PSAC was a very influential group. A major component of our advice to President Eisenhower, illustrative of this cold war period, was in the military field, where we advised on antisubmarine warfare, missile and potential anti-intercontinental ballistic missile programs, continental air defense (including early warning against missile attacks), chemical warfare, plans for limited warfare, and especially arms limitation and control. In addition, we gave advise on high-energy and accelerator physics, life sciences, science and foreign relations, space science, and basic research and graduate education.
I served as chairman of the Panel on Basic Research and Graduate Education. I brought in Roy Hall and Homer Babbidge, as representatives of the HEW Office of Education, to serve as Consultants to the Panel. Our report, "Scientific Progress, the Universities, and the Federal Government," which became known as the "Seaborg Report," drew special attention from President Eisenhower and had a substantial impact on federal support of graduate education and science.
Following a number of meetings of my Panel, and with critical drafting help from McGeorge Bundy, we finished our report, "Scientific Progress, the Universities, and the Federal Government," by the November 1960 meeting of PSAC. When the report was made available to President Eisenhower, he became so interested that he actually edited and made some changes in it. When PSAC members met with the president on Dec. 19, 1960, in the oval office, he took special note of my PSAC panel report. Perhaps the report’s most famous recommendation was the statement that the basis of general policy should be that basic research and the education of scientists go best together as inseparable functions of universities. Furthermore, the report stated that federal support for basic research and graduate education in the sciences should be continued and flexibility increased, so as to support excellence where it already exists and to encourage new centers of outstanding work.
Glenn Seaborg and Presidents Johnson and Nixon
I had the privilege of serving on the Commission on the Humanities (1962-1965), whose report played an important role in the establishment of the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities. In March of 1965, I testified before the Special Sub-committee on Arts and Humanities of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare in support of establishing the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities. In my statement at that time, I emphasized my belief that our nation’s support of science had produced "what might be called an imbalance in our national personality" and that we need the humanities to "tell us how to live as human beings" and "guide our course of action in the use of science." I expressed the view that the creative arts were a stimulus to scientific and engineering creativity.
And in February of 1970, I testified before the Select Sub-committee on Education of the House Committee of Education and Labor in support of new legislation on the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities extending its life and doubling its support. In my testimony, I said "what must be stressed most about this legislation is that it - together with other moves on the part of the federal government such as the creation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and support of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts - bring out the concern of the government with the cultural life of the nation."
As a follow up to this involvement with the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities, I served on the American Council for the Arts in Education, Panel on Arts, Education and Americans (1975-1977).
Although it is, perhaps, beyond the scope of the present program on "Past and Future Support for American Research Universities" I shall append here a few remarks on my involvement with pre-college science education.
Beginning in January, 1960, I served as Chairman of the Chemical Education Material Study (CHEM Study) which developed new teaching materials for the high school chemistry course, including a textbook, laboratory manual, teachers guides, instruction pamphlets, achievement tests, related monographs and films. A measure of the project’s success is the wide adoption and use of these materials in the nation’s high schools and their direct and indirect influence on the content of numerous texts and laboratory manuals that have been prepared by many authors. Another measure is the many foreign language translations of the written materials and films. CHEM Study has made it possible to upgrade much of the teaching of college chemistry - an effort that is still in progress to reach the described goal.
Having been involved with the Lawrence Hall of Science on the Berkeley campus since it inception in the fall of 1958, I immediately resumed an active role on its Faculty Advisory Committee upon my return from Washington in 1971, later serving as the Chairman of this committee. I then served as director of the Lawrence Hall of Science from 1982-1984 and have served as chairman since 1984. The Lawrence Hall of Science has and is playing a leadership role in solving the national crisis in pre-college science and math education. It carries on in three areas: 1) to improve the quality of mathematics and science instruction for the benefit of pre-collegiate students through materials and teaching training services; 2) to augment pre-college mathematics and science instruction provided by schools by offering special mathematics and science courses at the Hall; and 3) to enhance the knowledge, appreciation, and enjoyment of mathematics and science for the general public by providing the community with a math and science center. The Hall’s curriculum materials have a widespread use on a national scale and substantial use on an international scale.
I served as a member of the National Commission on Excellence in Education (NCEE), which worked under the chairmanship of David P. Gardner from the fall of 1981 until April 1983 to produce its report, "A Nation at Risk." This included the recommendation: "The Federal Government has the primary responsibility to identify the national interest in education. It should also help fund and support efforts to protect and promote that interest. It must provide the national leadership to ensure that the Nation’s public and private resources are marshaled to address the issues discussed in this report."
We presented this report to President Ronald Reagan on April 26, 1983. This report has had a substantial impact on the national reform movement toward improving the status of pre-college education, especially science and math education, in the United States.
I served as co-chairman with Secretary of Energy James D. Watkins at a summit conference on pre-college science and math education held at the Lawrence Hall of Science October 9-10, 1989. The report covering this conference was issued on May 22, 1990. It makes a call for the following reforms by the year 2000: a core curriculum in science and mathematics for pre-school through high school; high quality teacher training in hands-on science for 10% of the nation’s teachers each year; a significant increase in female, minority, disabled, and disadvantaged students completing high school and advancing to graduate education, careers in mathematics and science, and science teacher training; the establishment and expansion of community alliances involving government, education and business to improve mathematics and science education; and the development in the U.S. of a workforce equipped to meet the technological demands of the 21st century.
I served as Chairman of Science Service from 1966-1995. Science Service is a national organization that is devoted to an increase in the public understanding of science; it conducts the annual Science Talent Search in Washington, D.C., and the annual International Science and Engineering Fair, and publishes the very effective weekly Science News magazine.
More recently, in January 1998, I was appointed by California Governor Pete Wilson to serve as Chairman of the Science Committee of the California Commission for the Establishment of Academic Content and Performance Standards. After a number of contentious meeting, we have submitted our rigorous Standards to the California State Board of Education for revision and approval. It is our hope that our Standards will serve as a model for use by other states in our Nation.
Glenn Seaborg (Chancellor Emeritus UC Berkeley and Nobel Laureate) provided this paper as a contribution to the conference "Federal Support for University Research Forty Years After the National Defense Education Act and the Establishment of NASA." Dr. Seaborg's critical role in helping to develop U.S. science policy in the post-Sputnik era is outlined, and the importance of the 1961 "Seaborg Report" is a major focus of the historical segment of the conference.
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