A New Direction for EPA's Office of Research and Development Robert Huggett has moved quickly t o transform ORD's research culture and horizons. ALAN
NEWMAN
A
lthough Robert Huggett has headed EPA's Office of Research a n d Development (ORD) for only a year, it has been a period of tremendous changes. Huggett is h a m m e r i n g out a more research-focused model for ORD: "Our premise is that we are going to prioritize our research in order to reduce the uncertainty in risk assessment." To reach that goal, Huggett is overseeing the reorganization of ORD's research laboratories into "mega-labs" based on a risk assessment-risk management paradigm. At the same time, he has moved quickly to expand ORD's research horizons through increased funding for extramural research grants, a new graduate fellowship program, and strengthened ties with EPA program offices and with other agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF). Huggett is also answering criticism about the direction and quality of ORD's research by increasing support for peer-reviewed long-term research. These changes have drawn mixed reviews within ORD. Some researchers question whether the new mega-labs will really solve their chief complaints: too much paperwork and unstable research funding. There is also deep concern that the shifting of funds to extramural grants and fellowships will put resources into the hands of researchers less accountable to EPA as well as undercut internal ORD programs. Other researchers say Huggett is on the right track; they feel some of the concern stems from turf battles over programs and resistance to needed changes. Huggett came to EPA from the College of William and Mary, where he chaired the Department of Environmental Sciences. He has served on EPA's Science Advisory Board, as a consultant to the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, and as a lecturer with the Brookings Institution, a Washington, DC, policy think tank. He is well known in the environmental research community for his work in environmental chemistry and ecosystem management. In an extensive interview with ES&T, Huggett 1 2 6 A • VOL. 29, NO. 3, 1995 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
EPA Assistant Administrator for Research and Development Robert Huggett
talked with equal relish about changes in management structure and his vision of the scientific and technological issues facing ORD researchers. Showing off an index card with a staff-prepared daily schedule of meetings, Huggett still displays a sense of the novelty of his position as a high-ranking administration official.
Prioritizing research Huggett identifies the heart of ORD's current problems as a loss of focus. "We have 12 major laboratories in ORD and a number of field stations. Over the years, for a variety of reasons, these labs have become quite independent. They have tried to be many things for many people. We now have redundancy 0013-936X/95/0929 -126AS09.00/0 © 1995 American Chemical Society
in expertise. Rather than focus on areas where we have become world leaders, we have spread ourselves thin. So we are a jack of all trades and in some cases master of none." One result of this independence is that the labs have concentrated on tackling problems based on specific media, such as air and water, or certain topics, such as global climate change. "In many issues, these areas overlap," Huggett argues. In addition, he says that ORD needs to focus on its unique capabilities relative to other federal agencies. To refocus the laboratories, ORD is reorganizing its geographically dispersed laboratories and field stations under the banners of mega-labs for health and environmental effects, exposure research, and risk management research. An environmental risk assessment center will convert this research into risk assessments. "We recognize that in the broad areas of risk assessments we have the best expertise available," says Huggett. "We are going to form teams [for research] made up of people from the various laboratories," says Huggett. "The risk assessment center will have a major role. Its responsibility, among other activities, is to highlight the areas where we need better information. The center is going to help us prioritize the research that needs to be done, rather than each laboratory independently prioritizing research. We are going to do this as a team." How the new mega-lab and centers will operate is still under discussion. Final plans on internal research, changes in contracted research, and other issues are expected later this year. Initial concerns of ORD staff that they and their laboratories would need to move have been put aside for a while; many staff members expect that the costs of moving offices and equipment will limit any future effort to centralize laboratories.
A new center for external grants In addition to the four research operations, a new center has just been formed to house the extramural grant program, the new graduate fellowship program, peer review, and quality assurance. This center for e n v i r o n m e n t a l research will be in t h e Washington, DC, area, says Huggett. William Raub, science advisor to EPA Administrator Carol Browner, is directing this effort. The center will include ORD's Office of Exploratory Research, the traditional home of the extramural grants program. The reinvention of ORD does not stop at the laboratories. Huggett's goal of reducing headquarters staff by 50% affects approximately 180 people in Washington. "We are going to do this through attrition. Some of these people will move into some of the new offices [created by the new lab structure], but we are not going to move anyone out of Washington against their will." Some people in the laboratories complain that by putting headquarters staff into new offices, the management is just being shuffled around. Major changes in headquarters staffing are not expected until 1996; ORD is now surveying personnel about their choices of where to relocate. In addition to cuts within ORD headquarters, budget limitations and duplication of programs por-
tend some program cuts for research programs. For example, says Huggett, there are overlaps between human health and environmental effects research. "In many cases the science is the same whether you are working on fish or a guinea pig model for humans. We can't afford both [types of research], and it doesn't make any sense." As a result, Huggett says he wants to bridge the "schism" between human health and environmental laboratories in the new national exposures megalab. "Our national exposure lab will look at exposures to fish, monkeys, rabbits, as well as humans," says Huggett. This broad view of research topics is a key agenda for Huggett. "We want to do more work on the effects of complex chemical mixtures and look at different endpoints in human health such as neurotoxic effects," says Huggett. "We are going to have to do more than lip service in the effects of stresses to the higher levels of biological systems. We need to do research on tomorrow's problems today."
Funding the new ORD Much of what Huggett hopes to achieve will depend on how the new Republican-controlled Congress will handle his budget this year. Major cuts in funding could jeopardize the expansion of the extramural grant and fellowship programs. Congress could also attack "We want to individual ORD programs such as the Enempower the labs vironmental Monitorand put the power ing a n d A s s e s s m e n t Program (see related back into the hands story, p. 113A). "I have talked to of scientists and some of the senators, congressmen, and staffengineers." ers, describing our program," says Huggett. "The response has been positive. I can't imagine a situation where Congress says that research and education are not important." Huggett's optimism may be justified. ORD's new emphasis on risk-based research fits with Republican initiatives for risk-based environmental regulations. Yet the best any agency can anticipate these days is a flat budget. ORD's current annual budget is $538 million, essentially the same as the 1994 budget. However, within that budget, Huggett has already doubled funding for extramural grants in FY95 to $44 million. In addition, he is committed to increasing that figure to $100 million over the next two years. The new fellowship program will support 100 students per year at an annual cost of about $5 million. To support these initiatives, Huggett is redirecting funds within the office's existing budget. "A good part of our money goes out into contracts and cooperative agreements at this time. We are identifying areas in which we are contracting with people to do our work. Are there areas where we can go out with a grant?" The shifting of funds to extramural grants has upset some ORD researchers. "How are you going to get academics to produce 'results' like a contract [worker]?"asks one researcher. Other researchers argue that VOL. 29, NO. 3, 1995 /ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY • 1 2 7 A
academia and nonprofits lack expertise in certain areas, such as smokestack monitors for clean air programs, that subcontractors now provide. "I don't think [switching funding] is as onerous a problem as people think," Huggett says. "Contracts will give you more short-term response, but if you put all your eggs in that basket you can never anticipate and head off the problems of tomorrow." In effect, Huggett is arguing that one way to solve short-term research problems is to invest in the long term. ORD would still need to tackle short-term projects—now defined as a research time frame of three years or less—but the office would have access to a greater repository of information created by long-term research studies. "We are not getting rid of contracts and cooperative agreements. We are increasing another dimension: investigatorinitiated grants," Huggett points out. Coordinating with EPA program offices To ensure that these new extramural grants relate to EPA's missions, Huggett has formed a permanent research coordination council with representatives of each of the Agency's program offices. "I told the assistant administrators, 'Place someone on this council with decision-making power.'" The council will evaluate extramural (and probably, in the future, internal) grants "ORD is schizothat receive high marks in peer review, ranking phrenic. We are them by how well they subservient to the serve their various offices. "We are going to program offices, have to make sure that proposals are in a but we have another the broad range of fields," Huggett says. Final life where we are judgment on the grants rests with ORD, but in control, trying Huggett is adamant on one point: "ORD exists to anticipate to serve EPA." tomorrow's needs." Extramural grants that are funded will be assigned to two people in the relevant program office as well as to a representative of ORD. "When the grant report [detailing the results] comes in, [the assigned people] will review it and see how we can use it in EPA. Should we continue this line or is this a line of research we should forget about? That way we will maximize the potential of the research and bring program offices into the mainstream." Huggett says that, like NSFfunded projects, research results will be communicated through peer-reviewed journal articles. The shift toward outside grants supports ORD's commitment to increasing long-term research support versus short-term projects to a 50:50 split, as outlined last July under a plan approved by Browner. The research coordination council has also played a major role in shifting monies within ORD and outlining where it would like to see grants and new areas of research. "We are basically inventing this process as we go along." says Michael Firestone, science advisor in the Office of Prevention, Pesticides and 1 2 8 A • VOL. 29, NO. 3, 1995 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
Toxic Substances and a council member. According to another council member, Arnold Kuzmack, senior science advisor in the Office of Water, "We are more than an advisory board. We are part of the process." As such, the council has taken the lead in making "painful" cuts to programs that support their offices, according to Huggett. "In the past," says Kuzmack, "ORD would have come up with its own list; we are now coming up with the list first." Decisions on the final budget rest with Huggett and his staff. Joseph Alexander, Huggett's deputy assistant administrator, is leading the work on ORD's strategic research plan. Kuzmack and Firestone both admit that as the council works with ORD staff to prepare the FY97 budget, they are concerned about short-term research funding. "We really have not quite figured out how to implement ORD's 50:50 split," says Kuzmack. The new council addresses a widespread complaint from EPA's program offices that ORD's research has not always served them well. "ORD will have to prove itself to me," states one EPA program head who has turned to industry for help rather than ORD. Indeed, there seems to be general agreement that this restructuring will require a major effort by many parties to succeed. Firestone says that some weeks he has spent as much as 60% of his time on council issues. "ORD is certainly moving in the right direction," says Kuzmack. "How it is going to work out remains to be seen." "ORD is schizophrenic," says Huggett. "It is totally subservient to the offices, such as fulfilling work for a court-ordered deadline. But we have another life where we are in control, trying to anticipate tomorrow's needs." A joint solicitation with NSF Another key indicator of how Huggett is changing ORD's research culture is reflected in the FY95 extramural grants. Approximately $14 million of the $22 million in funds added to the extramural grants program this year will be offered as a joint solicitation with NSE This unique effort is functioning under a three-year memorandum of understanding between the agencies. Both agencies gain something in this effort. "All of these grants will be reviewed by NSF," says Huggett. "We will be assigning some of our people to NSF to assist. We want to learn everything they do and combine the best of their system with the best of ours." "Peer review is a way of life in science and technology," states Huggett. "A lot of people view peer review as an onerous thing—they might find something wrong, but that is the point. You minimize the possibility of garbage." For its part, says NSF's Penny Firth, program director for special projects in the Division of Environmental Biology, "the joint solicitation is logically connecting fundamental science with national needs." Both Congress and the research community have been engaged in a debate about whether and how the NSF can better serve national needs in the post-Cold War era.
In this joint solicitation, ORD and NSF have iden tified a common ground where national needs and basic research intersect. The solicitation will target technology for sustainable development (including socioeconomic barriers), evaluation and environ mental policy (e.g., putting a price tag on things such as biodiversity), and water and watershed systems issues. The NSF and ORD monies will be kept sep arate, so that the NSF will probably fund the basic research proposals and ORD the more applied projects, says Firth. Huggett hopes that this joint effort will con tinue, but that depends on future program fund ing. The remaining $8 million in new extramural funds is a separate solicitation from EPA, targeting areas of interest to the Agency.
Promoting internal ORD research In addition to the extramural grants, Huggett ex pects to begin a program later this year for internal long-term ORD research that will be "reviewed [with in ORD] in the same way as the extramural grants program." Huggett is also exploring ways for ORD re searchers to work with academics and nonprofits as a means of "cross-fertilization." The internal grants program should provide ORD researchers with a stable source of funding. "I don't anticipate that we will end up with exclusively longterm researchers," Huggett says. "They might be get-
ting, say, 50% of their funding from grants and the rest in short-term projects. I think that it is impor tant they do short-term research—it keeps a foot in 'reality' and it gives ideas for long-term research." In addition, Huggett wants to raise the status of ORD researchers by instituting a dual career track that allows ORD staff to advance up the federal ranks by remaining in the laboratory as well as moving into management. Currently, researchers need to move into management to climb the federal ladder. One hoped-for result of this dual track will be a reduc tion in ORD management. Huggett says that within the laboratories he wants to reduce the manage ment ratio from 1:8 to 1:11. The reduction in management means that some managers will be returning to the laboratory. "If they want to switch over to research, we have a need and a responsibility to give them the training to get them back into the mainstream," says Huggett. Surveying this landscape of change, even those who support the reinvention are cautiously optimis tic, warning that ORD has tried to reform itself be fore. Huggett, however, appears firm in his vision for ORD. "We want to empower the labs and put the power back into the hands of scientists and engi neers." Alan Newman is an associate editor on the Washing ton staff of ES&T.
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