CoRElator 1970 I f / 7 ^ ? You. What? Science and Technology. When? The Future. Where? The U.S. Why? Because anthropologist Margaret Mead tells us " t h e future is n o w . " Because management specialist Peter Drucker says this is "an age of discontinuity." Because the kids at Woodstock believe it's the "age of Aquarius." Because biologist Barry Commoner thinks the despoliation of our environment might make life untenable by the year 2000. Because biophysicist John Piatt computes—in grisly half-life terminology—that we'll be lucky to survive the decade. That's why. VIEWPOINT 1970: Belief in the unlimited efficacy of reason —and most particularly of science and technology—has been questioned, and this questioning will undoubtedly be central to the 1970's. There is an anecdote, perhaps apocryphal, that illustrates this waning trust in reason, its tools, and disciples. Robert McNamara, when Secretary of Defense, was discussing the progress of the Vietnam war with an old friend and trusted adviser, the story goes, and with customary incisiveness ''quantifying' ' progress of the U.S. effort. When all the figures had been analyzed and their generally optimistic nature duly noted, McNamara—the rationalist—asked his friend and adviser h o w he thought the war was going. "Badly," was the reply. The Secretary was amazed and asked for data to support this viewpoint. His friend had none. All he had was a "feeling" that the war was not going well, but the force of his intuition was sufficiently strong that he could not be made to back down. Secretary McNamara allegedly dismissed the man and never again sought his advice. Of course, the war was going badly. In plotting the future of U.S. science and technology in the decade ahead—and in calculating the role the individual will be called upon to play—this central conflict between reason and "feeling" will influence both directly and indirectly a host of less dramatic considerations.
" W e mustn't be discouraged or in despair because historical processes aren't instantaneous or because first solutions have to be corrected by second and third solutions." John Piatt, University of Michigan
(jur look at cooperative efforts in-problemsolving is itself the product of collaboration. C&EN's Madeleine Polinger talked with people in research institutes; David Kiefer brought in the industrial viewpoint; Tom Feare examined government*s stance; and Lloyd Dunlap presented academe and melded every ones' efforts into one story
There are, for example, the real concerns among students about what to study and for how long, and about where they should market their talents. Teachers worry about curriculums and teaching methods. Academic administrators, looking at the projected explosion in the student population, wonder where the money for buildings, equipment, and salaries will come from. Financial worries plague research scientists, too, as they view the shrinking financial support from federal coffers. The professional in industry frets over job security in an uncertain economy and over the pension rights and other fringe benefits that tie him to a single employer. Obsolescence hovers over his career as a constant threat. Industrial managers look at eroding prices, rising costs, tight money, changing tax and import regulations, and the furor about our environment and worry and wonder and worry some more. Think tanks and research institutes share industry's concern about changing tax laws and, like the universities, are perplexed by the uncertainties of government patronage for research. Almost without exception, the problems that confront society today are problems involving science, though they are by no means amenable to purely scientific solutions. That is, today's problems are interdisciplinary in nature. One man's actions impinge closely on another's; organizational activities are inextricably wound together. The CORE of knowledge possessed by the specialist is increasingly questioned unless the specialist can relate what he knows to the expertise of other specialists in other disciplines and pursuits. Hence we arrive at the idea of a coRElator; the man who can bring this off. Today's problems affect in a major way the "commons"—the area that is no man's exclusive interest but instead is held in joint trusteeship for the use of all. When some act affects the commons—the air, natural waterways, public health, public education, or public welfare—it is of great importance, for it affects us all. Career Opportunities 5A
"Science used to be private terrain," one research chemist relates. "It was society's rock of objectivity. Some of us gamboled about on it, using it as a sort of intellectual jungle-gym. Others stood on it and orated. Some even built on it—and magnificently. And there were those, too, who hid behind it. " ' 'But today there's no hiding place. Sometime during the Depression the mortgage on our rock came due, and we defaulted. The Government bought us out and then blew the rock to hell with the bomb. Now science is looking for a new place to stand, and it looks like we're going to have to settle for a very precarious foothold in the shifting sands of relevance." Though many people would.undoubtedly reject casting Government in the role of the bombardier of pure science, since World War II Uncle Sam has certainly become science's principal mortgagee. The U.S. Government spends about $16 billion a year on R&D, some of which is included in a $4 billion tab for federal support of higher education. Compared to the ferment on the campuses and in society in general, the changes in government science policies seem slow—perhaps painfully so. No matter what happens it appears science's rich uncle will continue to foot the bill. This is changing, though. Government continues to stimulate the development of new science and new technology, only less so. Though it still employs the same basic mechanisms and acts through the same regulatory agencies, it has begun to regulate technology more closely. Through its grants and contracts Government still provides much of the support and thereby directs to some extent the research conducted and the education given at universities and colleges. To a lesser degree it also guides the projects and studies performed by private organizations—especially think tanks and research institutes. As the Government introduces new programs and shifts emphasis in some old ones, its changing role will affect research, industry, and education as well as the kinds of scientists and engineers the country produces during the next decade and the careers in which they find themselves. By now Government's retrenchment from supporting basic research in the universities and colleges at postWorld War II and post-Sputnik levels is common knowledge. Well known also is the fact that the public and Congress increasingly ask what the nation receives from 6A C&EN MARCH 9, 1970
the federal dollar spent on science and technology. Equally apparent are the growing number of scientists questioning the ends to which their science is directed. Meanwhile, many a national forum has seen debates pitting national security matters and the space program against a host of domestic needs with environmental quality—very broadly defined—rising to head the list. Several rounds of budget cuts have led to laboratory closings and layoffs of scientific and technical personnel employed by the Department of Defense, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and their related industries. The universities and colleges did not escape from these decreases in defense and space spending, either. Their woes were compounded when Congress imposed the Mansfield amendment, which restricts DOD funds to academic R&D directly related to a defense mission. The intention is to shift basic research support to other federal agencies, notably the National Science Foundation. Meanwhile, the direct impact is beginning to be felt by campus researchers. Admittedly, this much of the picture looks gloomy indeed. The federal budget for fiscal year 1971 that begins July 1, though, starts a decade in which more funds will be directed toward research on understanding and solving national problems involving our environment, education, housing, transportation, and crime. More than offsetting decreased spending by DOD, NASA, and AEC in the academic sector will be increases through NSF and HEW. Some $50 million of "new thrust" money at NSF will be used to bring a better understanding of how to deal with environmental and other problems of society. Major increases at HEW affecting its own as well as campus efforts will be directed at understanding the relationship of viruses to cancer, studying heart disease, developing air pollution control technology, as well as studying the health aspects of environmental problems. More funds will also go to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Transportation. ^ President Nixon, in presenting his budget, stated that "where technology has polluted, technology can purify... the solutions to many of our problems can be found only through greater understanding of our environment and man's impact on it." He expressed confidence "that this challenge can be met by our leading research institutions and scientists." As more scientists and engineers become involved with
" D i v e r t i n g p a r t of our science a n d technology t o e n v i r o n m e n t a l , social, a n d domestic problems is consistent w i t h scientists' wishes.
What hurts
is t h e t r a n s i t i o n stage." Lawrence M . Kushner, National Bureau of Standards
social problem-solving, the nature of this kind of work indicates a break from the traditions and concepts estab lished during the past 20 years. To solve the problems requires a new mix of basic, applied, and social sciences. It also requires finding the new ways and new institutions in which the talents of many kinds of specialists can be combined. It also implies new kinds of specialists and new education programs to produce these specialists. Although the Government has only begun taking ten tative steps in the direction indicated, the outlines of what may be done have become increasingly apparent. Perhaps the starting point occurred nearly a year ago. Speaking to the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, Dr. Lee A. DuBridge, President Nixon's science adviser, identified a need for new interdisciplinary efforts. "As we seek solutions to [social and environ mental] problems, we run up against barriers of tech nology, of economics, of political conflicts, and of inade quate knowledge of what happens to our people and en vironment as we seek to expand our industrial and agri cultural economy, on the one hand, and to make our cities and countryside more livable, on the other. ' ' Beyond working on "immediate and obvious prob lems' ' Dr. DuBridge suggested mounting research efforts involving physical, social, and political scientists and engineers working together "to seek new causes, to develop new technologies, to invent new social and poli tical instrumentalities, to identify and experiment with long-range solutions" to problems. He pointed out, however, that there are not many research centers where such things can be done, few trained people are available, and the methods and traditions aren't as highly devel oped as in the natural sciences.
Dr. DuBridge has not been alone, of course, in suggest ing new interdisciplinary approaches. Many university and college professors and particularly their students have seen the need and have the desire for* greater in volvement in environmental and urban affairs. The en vironmental teach-in set for April testifies to this as do the interdisciplinary environmental institutes being set up at Antioch College, the University of Illinois, Cal tech, Michigan State University, and others. Within the Federal Government there have been a number of developments related to interdisciplinary efforts. A report prepared by Dr. John S. Steinhart of the Office of Science and Technology for the President's Environmental Quality Council recommends creating schools of the human environment on campuses and urges a commitment to problem-focused education (C&EN, Nov. 17, 1969, page 12). Rep. Emilio Q. Daddario (D.-Conn.) has said he sees "traditional disciplines and the classical university departments being torn apart and restructured to put many sciences to work on this major societal problem of environmental quality. ' ' The chair man of the House Subcommittee on Science, Research, and Development believes ' 'new knowledge and specially trained manpower required cannot come from depart ments of chemistry, physics, biology, or engineering iso lated from each other" (C&EN, Jan. 19, page 23). Support for these ideas and specific proposals for new interdisciplinary approaches are contained in a "back ground paper" on the environment issued by the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Engineer ing. The NAS-ΝΑΕ committee—composed of scien tists, engineers, lawyers, economists, and conservationists —recommends creating multidisciplinary programs of environmental affairs within existing universities and setting up an experimental problem-oriented graduate school. Training the manpower to cope with the environmental problems in the future should be done at both the undergraduate and graduate levels in the uni versities. Undergraduates should receive broad inter disciplinary problem-oriented education, yet acquire proficiency in a discipline. For graduate students, the paper recommends advanced training in a specialty but multidisciplinary work on real environmental problems in groups where such investigations lead to a group thesis. Aside from the problem of obtaining funds to set up such programs, the paper points out that there would be difficulties in attaching "prestige value" to applied environmental problems to attract the best students and faculty, and in teaching faculty members from different disciplines to work together in "new, unfamiliar, and perhaps awkward ways." Career Opportunities
7A
As far as creating new institutions, the paper recommends setting up a privately financed Institute for Environmental Studies to do long-range planning and provide early warning on environmental threats. It also sees the need for a contractor-operated National Laboratory for the Environmental Sciences where basic and applied research would be conducted. At the state government level, Dr. Thomas G. Fox, science adviser to Gov. Raymond P. Shafer of Pennsylvania, sees Dr. DuBridge's call for interdisciplinary approaches relating to domestic technology and coordinating federal-state science programs. The chemist and interdisciplinary professor at Carnegie-Mellon University sees a real interest in working on domestic problems among the students whom he teaches. Students today tend to view narrowly his generation that brought science to the U.S. and tended to stockpile knowledge. Although Dr. Fox believes that some basic science is necessary, he argues that too much emphasis on it tends to prepare students only for positions with large corporations and university posts. The challenge he issues to the academic, scientific, and engineering community is to make "unequivocally clear" that the "goal of responsible use of knowledge to serve society is at least as challenging and important as that of the generation of knowledge." Dr. Herbert S. Gutowsky, who heads the department of chemistry and chemical engineering at the University of Illinois' Urbana campus, echoes much the same view. In the past, Dr. Gutowsky notes, education in chemistry has tended to be a single-track system. The implicit end point was the Ph.D. and a career in research. The master's degree was a sort of consolation prize. It's different now, though. Perhaps a third of the student body at Urbana today, UI's department head speculates, isn't even interested in going to college but has done so because of parental and societal pressures. "Colleges must now provide training for the whole spectrum of career opportunities," he says, and the single-track system is not particularly well suited to this task. "A man's psychology—his temperament—can keep him from getting a Ph.D. Industry, junior colleges, four-year colleges, and government all need people, though. "It costs about $60,000 to turn out one Ph.D., and only a few become topnotch researchers." Thus, he concludes, the single-track system just doesn't accommodate today's students or mesh with prevailing manpower needs. 8A C&EN MARCH 9, 1970
Dr. Gutowsky believes that UI's environmental institute will funnel off some graduate students now in the basic research pipeline. He thinks this is a responsible response to current conditions. At the federal level NSF is now the focus of governmental concern for interdisciplinary or coRElative work. Within the next year the new thrust money will be spent on environmental research and research directed at society's problems. NSF Director William D. McElroy has said he sees the agency acting as a "catalyst: for the scientific and technological underpinnings to resolve those problems." Much of this new thrust relates to a relatively new, but increasingly more important concept in Government : technology assessment. Although the concept defies precise definition, it implies examining both technology's direct and obvious impacts on society and, to an even greater extent, its indirect and unforeseen impacts. Thus at different levels technology assessment may involve regulatory or legislative control of obvious and unwanted impacts, using basic and applied science to develop ways to measure these impacts, and technological innovation and forecasting. Thus the performance of technology assessments affects not only Government, but universities, industry, and private research organizations. Probably the most immediate consequence of Government's recognition of the need to assess technology, however, will lie with federal science agencies such as NSF or the National Bureau of Standards. Both NSF and NBS have neither regulatory authority over—nor a mission interest in— developing new technology, but a "third-party objectivity." This objectivity can enhance both agencies' capability to support technology assessment. NSF will still support good science, but the priority system for technology assessments will supplement the priority system used for supporting basic research. The agency will also break with the tradition of funding only unsolicited proposals. Dr. Lawton M. Hartman, special assistant to Dr. McElroy, says NSF will stimulate schools and not-for-profit institutions to submit good, creative ideas and "solicit" industry for its help in areas related to society's problems. NSFs thrust The scope of NSF's new thrust covers nine programs, including its involvement in the International Biological Program, Global Atmospheric Research Program, earthquake engineering, weather modification, drilling for core samples of ocean sediments, Arctic and Antarctic research, and a program of interdisciplinary research relevant to the problems of society (IRRPOS). As its name implies, IRRPOS will concentrate on broad problem solving, not "discipline-serving" research. Directly related to NSF* s plans for technology assessment, IRRPOS encompasses problem areas such as the cultural and social consequences of changes in tech-
nology, structure of the environment, environmental quality, national manpower needs and incentive structures, economic and social consequences of peace and war, technology and economic development, and social implications of modern information handling techniques. No research has begun yet under IRRPOS, but the incoming flow of ideas has kept Dr. Joel Snow, the theoretical physicist who heads the program, quite busy. Based partly on the desire to do more productive, more applicable research, as well as on the ' 'real disaster" in availability of research funds, Dr. Snow finds many more basic research people willing to work in problemrelated areas. "Four years ago you would have had to seduce some chemists to do this rather than work on free radical research," he says. A possible problem that Dr. Snow finds "quite susceptible to being done quickly" and that involves chemists is the effect of lead in the environment. Numerous federal agencies are involved in the problem, but no one is doing the base-line studies, putting the data in a coherent package, and then analyzing the social and economic tradeoffs. One difficulty with these and other interdisciplinary efforts, Dr. Snow stresses, is that chemists will tend to lose their identity as chemists when they work in such efforts. "It will be interesting to see how many chemists are hung up on their profession and their publications." Apparently Dr. Gutowsky's forces at Illinois are not hung up, at least not on the question of the biological pathway that lead takes after it is spewed from auto exhausts. UI's environmental institute is looking at the problem, and in involving such diverse fields as agriculture science, biochemistry, chemistry, sanitation, water resources, and law, is seeking to establish the very base lines that are presently lacking. The problem of identity exists also for chemists working in an agency such as NSF that does no laboratory research. Dr. Snow sees "tremendous opportunities" in government for scientists as administrators and R&D managers. - The chemist has to realize, though, that the slot he will fill is for both a "political operative and political chemist"—in short, that of a technocrat. Coincident with its interest in environmental and social areas, NSF is also taking a hard look at the graduate degree programs it supports. Although no specific changes have been spelled out, it's clear the thrust will be away from producing as many research oriented Ph.D.'s. Thus, the "single-track" system that Dr. Gutowsky questions won't be the sole recipient of NSF support. Dr. McElroy suggests that NSF may want to develop curriculums for "high-level technologists" in graduate schools. His special assistant, Dr. Hartman, says that "options that don't exist today" will be created for the "guy who does things." This option might lead to a professional degree in engineering—similar to an M.D. —for an engineer with greater social science training and more exposure to physical sciences.
"Ten years ago, everyone aimed for a Nobel Prize, but with federal support now a disaster area, many more scientists are willing to work in problem-related areas/' Joel Snow, National Science Foundation
Howard E. Sorrows, National Bureau of Standards
NBS's role x In contrast to the research support activities of NSF, NBS functions chiefly as a government research institute. Some three and a half years after moving into a $120 million research park amid the open spaces of Gaithersburg, Md., the agency's activities are far removed from those of a bureau set up at the turn of the century to watch over the nation's weights and measures. Still a cloister of physical science, the $46 million a year agency is becoming increasingly involved in developing the science and technology needed in a number of consumer protection areas. NBS deputy director Lawrence M. Kushner emphasizes, however, that the bureau is not another consumer testing laboratory nor is it a "mill" for generating standards for rubber hose, lumber, and other consumer products. NBS's role, on the contrary, is to identify the relevant criteria, develop test methods, and indicate performance levels for consumer products, Dr. Kushner says. Standard setting and measurement of performance are done by professional standards and engineering societies or consumer testing labs. The agency will become further involved in consumer protection as Congress adds new responsibilities for product safety research—if not necessarily the funds to carry out these new tasks. NBS Director Lewis M. Branscomb has also asked for a role for the agency in technology assessment. The Institute for Basic Standards, Institute for Materials Research, and Institute for Applied Technology house most NBS personnel. Scientists in the materials institute (which includes most of NBS's chemists) under Dr. John Hoffman range somewhat afield from that institute's basic mission of furnishing standard reference materials and measuring and characterizing materials' properties. For example, they aided Federal Highway Administration and state officials in investigating the cause of collapse of Silver Bridge at Point Pleasant, W.Va., December 1967 that killed 46 people. NBS scientists helped develop evidence linking the collapse to stress corrosion cracks probably caused by localized high stress coupled with a corrosive environment of oxygen, water vapor, and sulfur-bearing gases. Although the materials institute largely works on intramural problems, NBS's applied technology institute does two thirds of its work for some 30 other federal agencies based on 96 contracts adding up to $8 million 10A C&EN MARCH 9, 1970
yearly. Much of this outside work reflects the fact that agencies involved in social concerns such as HUD and Transportation haven't built up much of an R&D competence yet. Thus the applied technology institute headed by Dr. Howard E. Sorrows is involved in vehicle safety research, building technology such as evaluating projects for Operation Breakthrough, fabric flammability and fire research and safety, psychophysics, environmental engineering, product safety, and invention and innovation. Consistent with his institute's role, Dr. Sorrows looks for individuals who understand fundamentals and can use an interdisciplinary approach to social problems. Demand for problem-solving accounts for 90% of the institute's work. Essentially, the institute's program managers must be technocrats, people with the ability to interact with people from other agencies, the public, and Congress. Management science is where the institute's greatest impact may lie, Dr. Sorrows says. Commenting on possible growth areas and needs for people Dr. Kushner says that solid waste problems should offer "fantastic opportunities," particularly the disposability of disposals. He also believes that one "honorable way" for more scientists to spend their careers is in combating the information explosion. "Clearly, the organization and evaluation of what is known needs to occupy a larger number of professionals —not semiscientists—who can evaluate the credibility and integrity of measurements in the literature and who can synthesize and integrate this into a body of information." Room should be made on faculties, he feels, for those who evaluate, review, and publish guidelines for research. The reciprocal relationship—the coRElativeness—of government to academe is aptly illustrated by Dr. Kushner's plea for the creation of faculty space for information scientists. The need is there; Dr. Kushner as an agent of the government recognizes it, but the government as a financier of higher education has instituted policies that have stymied faculty growth, at least for ilie near-term future. Funding cuts Rapidly rising costs, inflation, and—most important— reduced federal outlays have caused such eminent private institutions as Stanford and Caltech to virtually freeze their faculty size. Stanford, in particular, has been hard hit, and the school's financial vice president, Kenneth M. Cuthbertson, lists reduced federal sponsorship of research as the primary reason for the school's budgetary problems. Federal grants to Stanford dropped from $44 million in 1967-68 to a predicted level of $37 million for 1970-71, and Mr. Cuthbertson thinks it unlikely, despite NSF's "new thrust," that any new government programs will evolve in the near future to offset the decline. The pinch, tight as it is at Stanford, is hurting other schools much worse, president Ken Pitzer says.
" M a n y people in middle class culture are less linear
This financial crunch has hit at a particularly bad time, coming as it does in the midst of cries for colleges and universities to be more things to more people. Not only has a greater breadth of instruction been called for (with no sacrifice in depth) but the movement toward "socialization of access" promises to create unprecedented problems of sheer numbers of students. Socialization of access is related to the interdisciplinary movement in that both seek to achieve open access—to education in one instance and to its application in the other. "Interdisciplinary study is open access in intellectual terms," says president James P. Dixon of Antioch College, "just as 'socialization' is in the real world." Today, higher education, once considered a privilege, is rapidly becoming a "right." The Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, a champion of open access, notes that federal spending must move up—and sharply —if open access is to be achieved. The blue-ribbon panel chaired by Clark Kerr computes that new programs are needed that would cost the Federal Government $7 billion in the coming school year and almost $13 billion, or well over three times current government outlays, by 1976-77. The commission notes that only about 2% (50,000) of young Americans entered college a century ago, compared to more than 40% today (almost 6 million). By 1980, this number may climb as high as 12 million, according to some estimates.
than in previous generations. Thus we will probably see an increasing trend toward multivocationalism." James P. Dixon, Antioch College
University services
"aimed at considering human needs or improving the quality of life" unless such programs are of "such superb character that they justify the risk. . .taken in allocating dollars to them." At the state-run University of Illinois, Urbana, Dr. Gutowsky thinks he recognizes—at least partially— what motivated the state board's edict. Summing it up, he says it's population pressures. UI now has about 5500 students enrolled in Dr. Gutowsky's department and the department is instituting a variety of programs designed to deal with its army of students and their changing outlooks. To help achieve socialization of access, Dr. Gutowsky's department recruits black graduate students from southern, all-black colleges. To help lower the unit cost of education, a necessary prerequisite if limited funds are going to be stretched to cover education for 80% of the state's college age young by 1980, videotape lectures are now used to reach about half of the 2000plus students in the basic freshman chemistry course. Additionally, experimental studies in computer-assisted instruction are continuing. Dr. Gutowsky notes that UFs new interdisciplinary environmental institute has been well received by his department. Chemistry, he believes, closely reflects the value system that prevails at Urbana—a forward-looking, middle-of-the-road progressivism typical of many large state multiversities. Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and Caltech —the two other institutions of higher learning selected
As the percentage of young Americans seeking higher education has risen and continues to rise, the function of the institutions they attend has grown more complex. Colleges and universities are now performing a wide range of public services directed toward meeting civic and social problems; pressures to accelerate efforts in these areas will almost certainly intensify. In Illinois, for example, where 55% of the state's college-age youths are now enrolled, the state board of higher education (in a staff report) has explicitly proscribed any new courses or programs that are not
H . S. Gutowsky, University of Illinois
Career Opportunities 11A
3 Q ο
lo
Donald J . M y a t t , Antioch College
Alfred Brown, Celanese Research
by C&EN editors as barometers of nationwide campus developments—reflect different circumstances. Both in stitutions have their own personalities and special prob lems that arise out of what they are. Both are private institutions and both are very different from Illinois and from each other. Different as they are, however, Antioch, Cal tech, and Illinois all boast budding environmental institutes. At Antioch, an institution that has long featured studentdesigned courses, a work-study program, and which has achieved both fame and notoriety for its innovations in education and its liberal ways—engineering depart ment head Don Myatt puts it this way: "The success of our proposed science institute (of which the environ mental center is one part) is a matter of survival. As budgets and tuition have gone up, the number of science majors has gone down. The disparity has become clearer and clearer." "The science institute will hopefully touch the lives of more people," Antioch president James P. Dixon confirms. "It strikes me as a form that is more collaborative. Science becomes a concept—where it started. You can start in a conceptual sense and move from that point into whatever else you need. "The old department strategy," Dr. Dixon says, "was a time filling, not a time sharing one. In the science institute, time sharing is normative." Science at Antioch is currently structured into six major departments: biology, chemistry, earth sciences, engineering, mathematics, and physics. The Science
Institute, when in full operation, will regroup these units into four centers: • Environmental studies. • Scientific research. • General studies. • Teacher education. By 1971 budgeting by department will be eliminated and general reorganization is scheduled to be complete in three years at the latest. The thrust is interdiscip linary; the key concept is that of problem-solving.
12A C&EN MARCH 9f 1970
Problem solving The concept of placing more pedagogical emphasis on solving problems, and less on serving disciplines, is by no means unique to Antioch. MIT's Unified Science Study Program, for example, offers selected students the opportunity to study any suitable problem, learning at their own speed whatever they need to know. The program emphasizes problems "with both human and physical dimensions," says Judah L. Schwartz of MIT's educational research center. The 29 freshmen in the program are "learning at a prodigious rate," he adds. At least a few industry executives agree that a package of knowledge by itself is of diminishing importance at a time when vast amounts of information can be stored effectively and quickly retrieved by computer. "The emphasis on knowledge in a person's head will decline," says Celanese Research president Alfred E. Brown, "while the accent on creative and innovative problem solving increases."
" I n too many schools, the s t u d e n t . . . never gets a chance to restructure ideas and fool around with using them to try to solve meaningful and original problems." Richard S. Gordan, Monsanto
Richard S. Gordon, general manager of Monsanto*s new enterprise division, puts it this way: "The value of the graduate with a Ph.D. is inversely proportional to the number of courses he was required to take. In too many schools, the student becomes nothing but a sponge or a performing monkey grinding out research results for his professor. He never gets a chance to restructure ideas and fool around with using them to try to solve meaningful and original problems. But now it is the way of thinking that is most important: the ability to think a problem through, to recognize what ideas are related to it, and to reshape those ideas so that the problem can be restated in a new way." The problem-centered approach is far from being universally accepted. Its critics in the universities often stress that a paucity of factual and descriptive knowledge is already a major problem and that free-form problem solving will only make a bad situation worse. Industrial views "Interdisciplinary" has already become something of a catchword to many industry executives as well. In many cases industry is not really looking for new professional employees who have an education or training much different from what it has demanded in the past. It is not interested in acquiring ready-made, for example, a kind of jack-of-all-trades renaissance man with a bachelor's degree in social or political science, a master's in economics or business administration, and a doctorate in science or engineering.
Although there are no hard and fast lines between those who champion the interdisciplinary approach and those who debunk it, there are perhaps four major schools of thought: open study or collaborative; interdisciplinarian; the coRElator idea; and the traditionalist. The collaborative view holds that traditional disciplines simply serve to mask an individual's incompleteness. As Antioch student Paul Perlsweig puts it, "Present curriculums are designed to simply reproduce students in the mold of their instructors." To the collaborationist, the lecture-recitation-laboratory sequence is a bankrupt concept. Brilliant students may succeed in spite of it, but others are turned off and walk away. Collaborationists tend to believe that course content and structure should continually change. At Antioch, for example, engineering is moving into the arts and social sciences. Its historical concern with material and energy, notes department head Don Myatt, is now being diverted to a concern with information and action. "The Future is Now" (Mr. Myatt emphasizes that Antioch was using the term before Margaret Mead made it famous) is a course jointly sponsored by Antioch's department of engineering, philosophy, and sociology. Some topics it includes are mechanical man, sexuality, garbage, and alternative life styles. The collaborationist says, "I'll learn calculus when I need i t " and Mr. Myatt thinks this is a valid idea. In the future, he opines, computers could be used to teach techniques, such as calculus, previously consigned to course work while teachers concentrate on "teaching wisdom," i.e., the meaning of things. Antioch student John Eastman underscores the basic premise of the collaborationist approach when he says of Antioch's science institute: "Perhaps at no point will equilibrium ever be reached. Feedback will continue to effect changes." Not everyone at Antioch agrees, however. Science institute director Tom Holyoke, for example, sums up the more moderate interdisciplinarian school of thought from the academic side when he says that the idea is not to discard departments as a convenience but to help both students and faculty to realize the potential of interdisciplinary work. Dr. Holyoke worries about maintaining the integrity of scientific content in course work and notes that the interdisciplinary approach can be superficial in dealing with both problems and solutions. The collaborative approach is not likely to please industry executives, either, many of whom tend to opt for the coRElator—the man trained as a specialist who can use his basic core knowledge to relate his work to the broad range of a company's operations. In the chemical industry it is people with a solid education in the fundamentals of engineering or science Career Opportunities 13A
who are in biggest demand. Any sacrifice of this fundamental grasp of a field of specialization for broader range training may only work to their disadvantage. Du Pont, for example, tries to hire engineers into half of its job openings for new graduates each year and fill another 30% with science majors. The balance of its new recruits are people trained in what it calls "vocational specialties" (such as accounting, law, and medicine) or business administration or liberal arts, who also can carve out their share of successful careers with the company. It's not necessary to talk with many corporation executives to conclude that most of them recognize that business is operating in a changing environment, and that business, too, must change if its place in the economic scheme of things is to remain secure. It must change, too, if it is to maintain its profitability at a healthy level, and thus keep its stockholders happy. Those who champion the coRElator idea see it as the best vehicle for effecting responsible change both at the university and the corporate levels. This approach would rely on traditional curriculums to turn out highly skilled specialists and then educate these individuals further through a variety of interdisciplinary systems engineering courses or projects or through well-planned on-the-job training. "The solutions to today's problems," states a report on urban engineering issued by the American Society for Engineering Education, ' requires teams of individuals each of whom ideally is expert in his own specialty area but also has a broad understanding of the other areas involved in the problem." Traditional specialists, the report notes, have trouble relating their results to those of other team members, whereas the typical generalist now lacks thé ability to extend the state of knowledge in any one area. Broader skills ' The new graduate who expects to continue working in the field in which he wrote his Ph.D. thesis may find himself rapidly becoming obsolete," says one industry research manager. "The days of getting a Ph.D. in classical organic chemistry and going out to make a career of synthesizing new compounds are over," adds another. "Chemistry as a narrow discipline no longer is enough in the industrial world. Industrial research is mission, rather than discipline oriented. But it does provide a firm foundation on which to build a broader career." The point is that industry expects its professional employees to attain the broader skills and understanding 14A C&EN MARCH 9, 1970
they must have, not so much while they are in school, but rather on the job and as the need arises. Strict traditionalists—archdefenders of things as they are—are hard to find, at least for quotation. In numbers, however, they may well be the scientific community's silent majority. They are difficult to locate because almost everyone in the universities will at least pay lip-service to the value of such superdisciplines as chemical physics and biochemistry. Likewise, in the business world praise is sung for such popular concepts as the systems approach, on-the-job broadening, and the like. The resistance to innovation in education, for example, tends to be mild in concept but strong in practice. "Nothing should ever be done for the first time," F. M. Crawford, a turn-of-the-century Cambridge classicist, wryly observed. Summing up what is still a major problem in the U.S.'s pluralistic educational establishment, he added: "Nothing is ever done until everyone is convinced that it ought to be done, and has been convinced for so long that it is now time to do something else." The Hammond curriculum, devised by Caltech's George Hammond, may be one good example of an innovative scheme that will be outmoded before it is ever widely adopted. Currently, Dr. Hammond's fiveyear-old brainchild, which fuses traditional disciplines within chemistry into "core" courses in general chemistry, structural chemistry, and chemical dynamics, has been adopted by only one school, the State University of New York at Albany. One problem with the curriculum, Dr. Hammond admits, is that it places inordinate demands on faculty time, and is therefore both expensive and exhausting. Nevertheless, at least one premise upon which Dr. Hammond based his course design seems as valid as ever: It isn't feasible to insist that all students receive rigorous training in each chemical subdiscipline. The Westheimer Report put it succinctly: "What is important is not to construct curriculums that include "everything," but to teach the student how to acquire the knowledge he needs to solve problems. . . . College faculties must therefore choose a few from among the large number of 'essential' topics, so as to produce the most exciting and provocative, rather than the most inclusive, program." Science curriculums Science pedagogy presents unique problems, however, most of which work against the evolution of slimmeddown, compact curriculums. Science is not taught—at least not at the college level—as a means of passing down our cultural heritage. At best, its philosophical base is merely touched on, with the emphasis being on producing qualified research people. To know science or tv, teach science one must do science. Thus the doers, who are also the teachers, constantly add to the content of curriculums. In recent years biochemistry devolved
down from the research lab to the classroom and such relatively new disciplines as bioinorganic chemistry un doubtedly will too. By contrast, the forces acting to streamline science teaching are feeble indeed. Antioch chemistry professor Jim Corwin, for example, thinks that his school's teacher education center may represent the first case of established science departments becoming actively involved in science education for elementary and secondary schools— the school years that are, of course, all important in both laying the foundation of scientific knowledge and influ encing student attitudes about science. Plans to introduce a graduate degree in science teaching at the doctoral level have become such a sensitive polit ical issue at one large state university that the department head there asked that no mention of the program be made, lest its chances be compromised. The program, which is designed to provide an alternative to the single-track, research-oriented education now available, would hopefully lead to serious and fruitful research into the whole area of science teaching. As matters now stand, outside pressures are forcing some changes in science curriculums. Socially applicable research has become popular with both students and the men in Washington who hold the government purse strings. A group of physics and math students at Cal tech, for example, initiated a summer project wherein they studied the Los Angeles Basin as a sort of photochemical stirred reactor. The school responded by setting up an interdisciplinary environmental institute. Dr. C. J. Pings, who heads Caltech's chemical engi neering unit (within the larger department of chemistry George Hammond, Caltech
Thomas C. Holyoke, Antioch College
" U n t i l recently, we all just did our thing—hired people, built buildings. Now there are institute-wide constraints on growth, and each division must make crucial choices. C. J . Pings, Caltech
ι and chemical engineering), believes the concern for social relevance can't help but breathe new life into his discipline. "Since the war, engineering on campus has been applied science," he says. "It was probably the only thing we could do. Engineering problems didn't seem academic. Students didn 't respect them and we probably didn't respect our colleagues who did them. "Engineering is partly an attitude," Dr. Pings notes. "Social and economic values are peculiar to the problem at hand, they are not universals. Engineers also have to live with the concept that you have got to get an answer. " If students are made aware of what engineering is, Dr. Ping believes they'll come back to it. His depart ment now offers course work involving everything from ore extraction to artificial kidneys, life support systems for satellites, and Los Angeles' smog problems. At Caltech, an elitist institution of some 1500 tech nical students (half of whom are pursuing graduate work) that derives more than 40% of its $35 million annual budget from federal grants and contracts, the problems and pressures of the 1970's are sure to be different in both kind and magnitude from those experienced on most U.S. campuses. Concentric circles Science today, though, has become a circle within circles, no matter whether it's done at liberal arts colleges such as Antioch, technical institutes such as Caltech, or places such as the University of Illinois that are some where in, between on the educational spectrum. ConCareer Opportunities 15A
Justijing
centricity is perhaps the key word. The borders of the subdisciplines, disciplines, individual interests, and broad social concerns never quite meet, but neither can any one area escape from the proximity—or the influence—of all the others. Science education must have an interior relevance, Dr. Hammond notes, a coherency t h a t heightens its appeal, and a freedom from the redundancy t h a t muddles the learning process and wastes time and resources. It must also be, as Cornell biologist Robert S. Morison said in Science (yo\. 165, page 150, 1969), " a fully understandable process, 'justifiable to man' and controllable by h i m . " It must do these things while retaining its capacity for discovery based on the imagination, curiosity, and creative intelligence of its best practitioners. "Lasers are n o w used to operate on the human e y e , " points out Caltech provost R. F. Bâcher, " b u t Townes did not discover the laser by looking at eyes, nor was it conceived of as a means for communicating over long distances, although it can be used for t h a t . " Clearly, "relevant research" has its limitations, just as does "creative research" t h a t is done w i t h o u t regard for any practical considerations. R. F. Bâcher, Caltech
Doug Mason, Caltech
science
Can science be made justifiable to man? Or, to rephrase the question, will U.S. citizens, acting through Congress, continue to support pure science as well as its practically useful offshoots? Public support of science based on " t h e holy image concept" was alright while it worked, George Hammond says, " b u t the idea is running out of g a s . " There is the danger, however, that w i t h the " h o l y i m a g e " gone, "relevance," will be jacked into its place as w h a t Caltech student Stan Parsons calls another "convenient fraud." " T h e real justification for pure science must come from answering the question, are we—through science— making progress in terms of human happiness?" Mr. Parsons says. Doug Mason, another graduate student at Caltech, believes t h a t such reflections should be part of the curriculum. " W e really d o n ' t have t i m e , " he admits, " b u t we should make t i m e . " Pure science, after all, is a matter of esthetics like art or literature. It does not aim at providing implements or potions, but rather at enhancing man's understanding of the nature of things. "Can the subsidy of science be based on this?" Stan Parsons wonders. Probably not, at least until science as Science comes more nearly to reflect the best elements of its traditions. ' Ά great man like Niels B o h r , " Nobel Laureate Felix Bloch says, "could not be characterized in a few words. Nor can one separate the entire personality of such a man from his w o r k as a physicist; his discoveries were a natural o u t g r o w t h of the deep understanding w i t h which he looked at the whole w o r l d . " "If your t h o u g h t is narrow, your work will b e , " Doug Mason says, and so he might have added, will be your base of public support. Educational traditionalists in industry can perhaps be best explained by the nature of the business community itself. As Peter Drucker points out in " T h e Age of Discontinuity," in dealing w i t h change industry alone has a positive, tangible feedback mechanism to judge its success. T h a t mechanism is profit. The success of government and educational programs is more difficult to judge because the measuring sticks t h a t must be used are subject to definition and interpretation by a host of political, philosophical, and sociological viewpoints. In addition, because the profit motive provides near instantaneous feedback, business executives come to think of themselves as masters of change. Technological
change
What kind of change? Technological change. Cor porations, the successful ones, anyway, have learned to live and profit from this; technological change holds no threat to the more adroit. Political change? Here, again, big business has become accustomed to a give-andtake existence in confrontation w i t h big government.
Social change? This, too, is no stranger; business has contended w i t h and adjusted to social demands—factory safety, abolition of child labor, minimum wages, social security and pension costs, and the like—for decades. What at least appears to be different today, however, is the increasing complexity of change itself, as a confused interplay of social, political, and technological pressures impinge more and more on business operations. The pressures themselves may not be so new, but the complexity of their interactions is. These increasing pressures will put new demands on corporate management at all levels, from the project leader to the chief executive in the years ahead. The people w h o will run the chemical industry will have to bring to their jobs a broad grasp reaching beyond traditional administrative skills in research, commercial development, production, and marketing. " T h e person w h o understands this and can relate it to his business world will be the one w h o will put his finger on the g r o w t h opportunities t h a t business will profit from in the future," says Robert A. Magnusson, marketing manager for Celanese's cellulosic products. A premium will be placed on social awareness. "Anyone w h o is going to occupy a management level job has to become a generalist," says Dr. Waldo B. Ligett, vice president and technical director for Celanese. " H e must be in a position to integrate all types of information—political and social as well as technical and economic—into the system in w h i c h he functions. Success no longer comes to a company just because it does something better than any of its competitors; n o w it must do the right thing or make the right product more effectively." " T h e demands on management will be greater in the future," adds Du Pont vice president Joseph A. Dallas. "Everything is more complicated. This may not call for an entirely new breed of manager, but managers will have to have a greater awareness of w h a t is going on in the worfd outside the narrow confines of business enterprise and a greater flexibility in responding to changing conditions. And they will have to be more receptive to differing points of v i e w . " Industry, however, wants specialists before it wants generalists. The initial jobs it has to offer tend to be specialized. " W h a t we need," says Thomas E. Brydon, general manager for polyester film at Celanese Plastics Co., "are people w h o have come up through a specialty route but in doing so have developed a generalist viewpoint derived from a broad exposure to a variety of business problems." " A new man must have specialized knowledge and skills if he is to make an initial contribution," adds David K. Barnes, assistant general manager of Du Pont's electrochemicals department. " W e look for the man w h o is trained to demonstrate his proficiency in a specific field. The fellow w h o only knows a little bit of this and a little bit of t h a t may have difficulty fitting in. We may not k n o w h o w to really use him effectively."
"We need people who have come up through a specialty route but have developed a generalist viewpoint." Thomas E. Brydon, Celanese Plastics
A bias toward technically trained employees is understandable in an industry so oriented toward technology. " I n a company like o u r s , " notes Cecil E. Johnson, director of professional recruiting at Monsanto, " t h e man w i t h a scientific or engineering degree is the one most likely to meet our needs, not only in research and development or in engineering and production but also in marketing, where he must talk the technical language and deal w i t h the technical problems of our customers." "Engineering and science students may seem to have less social involvement than liberal arts graduates," adds Du Pont's Joseph Dallas, " b u t they do develop a certain discipline in their thinking and in the way they analyze problems. Thus they are likely to recognize t h a t most problems are too complicated to be solved just by shouting from a soapbox. And in any event their sense of social problems is likely to be greater than social science students' corresponding sense of technological problems." Most company officiais agree, however, that a little exposure to business economics and the way the business world operates during school years might prove helpful. 4 T o o many professors are primarily interested in teaching their students also to become professors," complains one, "even though t w o thirds to three fourths of them probably will tT.ake a career in industry. As a result, too few students graduate w i t h much feel for w h a t industry is all about. They need a broader understanding of economics, for one thing, so that they will realize that industry is usually not interested in the perfect or most elegant solution to a problem but rather the quickest, most workable, and most profitable solution. They should recognize, too, t h a t it is not technology alone t h a t solves problems, but rather the effective application of technology." Career Opportunities
17A
proficiency in business," argues one. "Our biggest problem with M.B.A. graduates is in getting them to forget what they were taught so that we can start training them for what they are really going to do," adds another. "The M.B.A. syndrome," complains a third, "is all too common : The guy thinks that because he has been through Harvard or Columbia Business School he should be hired as a vice president or into some other policy making position. But most graduates are still pretty immature and lack experience and mature judgment, so we just don't have a place in our organization for this type of individual unless he is willing to take his place at the bottom of the ladder along with our scientists and engineers." "No academic training is a substitute for experience," Celanese's Tom Brydon points out. "Thus the business world itself is really a 20- to 30-year experience in educa tion." Company training
Joseph Α. Dallas, Du Pont
Executives skeptical Surprisingly, though, many chemical company execu tives are skeptical about the advanced degree in business administration. The M.B.A. certainly is increasingly popular. "Students—and their professors, too—ap parently noticed how frequently we give our manage ment people business training, either on the job or by sending them off to a graduate school somewhere," explains B. M. Taylor, manager of Du Pont's personnel division. "So graduates with a bachelor's degree figure that they might get a jump in their career by obtaining an M.B.A. before they look for a job. This may be helpful, especially when combined with a degree in science or engineering. But often, too, this time might have been better spent in getting advanced technical training." Other chemical industry executives are even more critical. "An M.B.A. is not in itself an indication of 18A C&EN MARCH 9, 1970
Du Pont, as do other large companies, provides train ing with a well-developed on-the-job program. About 5 to 10% of the training, in management at least, is of the formal variety. Each year, for example, about 150 Du Pont supervisory employees are given an intensive two-week session focused on the problems of communi cating to, handling, and motivating people. The course, one of several formal company-operated training pro grams, involves university professors and other outside experts ; it is designed to provide a short but eye-opening exposure to the current thinking of the nation's leading behavioral scientists. Other training needs can be met by the great variety of courses, seminars, and conferences —"finance for the marketing executive," "marketing for the finance executive," and the like—sponsored by organizations such as the American Management Asso ciation and the National Industrial Conference Board or by providing tuition and leave time to attend advanced management courses at various business schools. Most training, though, takes place during actual job assignments rather than in the classroom. Du Pont, for one, tries to identify employees with promising potential for management positions during their early years with the company. It then rotates these people through a variety of positions. A capable research scientist, for example, might be moved into manufacturing after three to five years of laboratory work. From there he may be shifted in another three to five years into market ing. Still later he may be transferred from one product department to another or to a different geographical region for still different exposure. Putting him in charge of a task force guiding a new venture is another way to broaden his experience. More and more corporate decisions are being shifted to lower levels in the management ladder by farming out special projects to task forces that may have no formal niche in the established corporate structure. Many top manage-
ment candidates may now spend most of their early career working on one task force or another. In the process, they are exposed to all aspects of the business process (as well as to the scrutiny of top management). They come to recognize that in the business world the object is to get the job done quickly rather than, as in the academic world, doing it yourself. "All this is cross fertilization through job rotation," Du Pont's Bill Taylor points out. "Not only does it broaden the individual's experience and permit him to recharge his batteries every few years in a new assignment, but it gives top management an opportunity to measure his performance in varied tasks in which he has a responsible involvement. In the process, he has a chance to develop talents that he may not even have been aware that he had." The trick, of course, is in the timing of transfers. "A man must stay on a new job long enough to extract all the cream of learning from his assignment but not so long that he is getting only skim milk," says Du Pont's Joseph Dallas. "Some people contend that he should stay long enough to be forced to live with some of his early mistakes. But you can also argue that the time should be no longer than what is necessary to demonstrate that he has the ability to handle the next higher position. If a man is going to reach the upper rungs of the management ladder he should be exposed to a variety of tasks, and the slower his rate of transfer the longer it is likely to take him to be ready for a top job." Another strong advocate of periodic job rotation is Al Brown of Celanese Research. "You need a lot of different experiences to discover what turns you on," he says, "and the fellow who still isn't sure what type of a career he wants at the time he graduates may actually be on the right track. In your first five years out of school you should broaden your base by trying anything that looks interesting. In the future, it probably will be a good idea to consider starting a new career about every 10years." In the process of developing administrators, of course, a person's formal education matters less and less. "The value of an education is in organizing and disciplining your thinking processes and in learning how to learn," says Du Pont's Joseph Dallas. "It doesn't make much difference what a man's formal training has been." "The important thing," stresses Dr. Brown (who during his career has been a bench chemist for a government agency, a research manager, a laboratory manager, the president of a small company, and now president of a large Celanese subsidiary), "is to learn how to manage change. That's why you should not stay too long in any one assignment. The need for people just doing research probably will diminish, and fewer and fewer people will make a lifetime career of research. Ph.D.'s come to us as specialists because the graduate schools are biased toward specialization. It is our job in industry to show them what other options are open to them. ' '
"Managers will have to have a greater awareness of what is going on in the world...and a greater flexibility in responding to changing conditions." Joseph A. Dallas, Du Pont
Managing change The "management of change" presents other options; government and industry aren't the only options open. Another approach is to work in one of the more than 215 independent organizations whose major product is research and development. Variously characterized as "think tanks," research institutes, or research foundations, such organizations and their place in the pastiche of American society is only poorly understood. Indeed, to some they are the very agents of change in society. Others have called them variously "a place where minds of the highest quality can play," and "leasing services for R&D." Generically, research institutes—unique to this century —defy the pigeonholes that society has so neatly established for academia, government, and industry, although the institutes possess certain characteristics of each of these three. The characteristics are blended by a different recipe in each institute, however. The result: No two institutes have the same outlook and orientation. Even on superficial points of comparison—in their financial sources, structures, extent of their affiliations with other organizations, diversity of their programs— research institutes vary greatly. R&D spending in research institutes, for example, varies from $50,000 to more than $100 million a year. Taken as a group, research institutes use only 1.6% of the funds spent on R&D in the U.S., although they account for 4% of the R&D work performed. Some organizations, such as Battelle Memorial Insti, tute with its 10 research sites scattered from GenevaSwitzerland, to Richland, Wash., are well-established (Battelle is 41 years old) and employ literally thousands of people (Battelle : 7000). Other institutes, such as the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., are relatively new and small. Salk has been operating for seven years and employs 231 people, of whom 126 are professionals. Other organizations such as Syracuse University Research Corp. and Stanford Research Institute bear the names of universities with which they are loosely or not at all affiliated. On the other hand, General Electric's TEMPO in Santa Barbara, Calif., was established in 1956 to aid GE, but now does about 80% of its work for outside government and private organizations. Yet for all their diversity, research institutes generally exist to serve the advanced and fast-changing technological and social needs of society. How they accomplish this service hinges on several other characteristics that such institutes share. Career Opportunities 19A
Loose structure One of these is the lack of a rigid management structure and a hierarchy of decision makers. Peter Drucker describes this kind of management in 4 T h e Age of Discontinuity": "There's a willingness on the part of the people at the top to listen, to encourage, and to go to work themselves at converting crude guesses into understanding, the first glimpse into vision, and excitement into results." This kind of management attracts an unusual individual to research institutes. He is almost certainly a specialist, but his interests are often as broad as the institute's. Today's R&D "factories" have another, and perhaps more important, characteristic in common. That is the extent to which interdisciplinary research, spanning virtually all the natural and social sciences, increasingly occupies their time and resources. For the needs of society, the problems of today and tomorrow with which research institutes are involved—the environment, the urban malaise with all its attendant problems, the question of priorities, the catchwords of the sixties and seventies—are not limited by traditional disciplinary boundaries. In an age when research bears directly on almost every human enterprise and research specialists move across the once well-defined boundaries of the various disciplines, Battelle Memorial Institute provides an excellent example of a large interdisciplinary research organization. Interdisciplinary, not only because it has specialists representing many disciplines, but because it tackles large problems that require many specialists from different disciplines to work together. Indeed, Battelle's interests extend well beyond research per se. It is also committed to the support of scientific education and to programs for moving inventions from the laboratory to the market place. Battelle's first laboratories were established in Columbus, Ohio, in 1929 with a staff of 25 and an overriding emphasis on metallurgical research. Total expenditure for research during the first year of operation was $71,000. Today the Columbus labs alone spend more than $48 million a year on research. Their interests range from making economic projections for business and industry to developing materials for Apollo spacecraft. Most of this research is conducted under contract on behalf of industrial firms or government agencies that 20A C&EN MARCH 9, 1970
provide the financial support for specific studies. In 1968 the institute worked on 1300 projects for 2000 sponsors (some projects have more than one sponsor); about 60% of the projects were conceived by the sponsors. If no one brings Battelle a problem, they'll think one up and try to sell it. Battelle's strong dependence on contract work, however, led one Battelle-Northwest division chief to term Battelle "a leasing service for R&D," whereas the Wall Street Journal in a recent article thought the sobriquet "brains for hire" more appropriate. Whatever the description, this is an image that the people at Battelle not only relish but cultivate. Contract research is Battelle's way of life, explains David C. Minton, director of the Columbus laboratories. ' 'People come to us from industry and government with a problem and increasingly these problems are interdisciplinary in nature," says Mr. Minton. "Now it might take our sponsor one or two years to get together enough specialists to tackle this problem—we've already got the specialist, because we get onto things much earlier than other people and we leave them when others are just arriving." Others at Battelle agree with Mr. Minton that a research organization such as Battelle exists to save time and money for its sponsors, which it does by not only having specialists at hand, but by offering a fresher, more objective look at the problem. Battelle is not concerned with the same motivations that industry, government, and, to a lesser extent, universities are concerned with. Industry, for example, is often sensitive to the profit-loss statement. It can't afford to take some of the risks that a place such as Battelle can and does take. One division chief at Battelle relates a story about a friend of his in industry who had a rule, "Never do anything first"—an echo of classicist F. M. Crawford's comment. Battelle takes pride in innovating—in being the first. Perhaps the best example of this is the development of xerography, for which Battelle is responsible. David B. Menzel, Battelle Northwest
In the same vein, government agencies have a myriad of motivations, many political, behind their research programs. In universities, Battelle people maintain, one does not always get the degree of cooperation between disciplines needed to get any program started. Specialists at Battelle are organized into divisions that are often interdisciplinary. Joseph Duncan, the 33-year-old director of Battelle's urban studies program, for example, had a division at one time called Regional Economics, which was comprised of demographers, sociologists, city planners, economists, and systems analysts. Mr. Duncan characterizes Battelle as a collection of "small entrepreneurs" and each division in Battelle as an entrepreneurial unit. Battelle has a vast organiza tion, but quick access to these entrepreneurial skills accounts for its ability to solve the most difficult prob lems, he maintains. Society, too, has a vast organization, but it's orga nized around functional agencies and bureaus that have little contact with each other and no channels of com munication between them. A place such as Battelle, Mr. Duncan suggests, can play a catalytic role in bringing these agencies together to solve their problems. This is the type of project that he's most often involved with. For example, he recently completed a proposal for the development and implementation of an integrated municipal information system for the city of Columbus. Involved in the study were systems analysts, computer engineers, urban planners, political scientists, and behavioral scientists from Battelle; management and business administration specialists from Ohio State University; and all sorts of city government agencies that normally don't work together. Mr. Duncan brought these different entrepreneurial groups together. By getting them to equally understand the problems and to relate to each other, he played the role of a broker, assigning tasks to the various participating groups. If there's a lot of the business world at Battelle, there is also an ambience of the university in the book-filled offices and laboratories where basic research occupies an important part of the time and energies of Battelle people. Battelle is a successful blending of two nor mally disparate worlds: the world of the academic institution concerned primarily with basic research for knowledge's sake and the world of the industrial organ ization concerned with transforming basic research into successful technology. Research components at Battelle-Northwest in Rich land, Wash., suggest this blending of two worlds: Chemistry and Metallurgy; Water and Land Resources; Nutrition and Food Technology; and Aquatic Ecology. Consider, for example, the division of biochemistry and biomedical engineering at the Columbus labora tories. The title alone suggests some of the blending of pure and applied research and the interdisciplinary nature of the work that goes on under the direction of Dr. Richard D. Falb. His division is working on artificial
" T h e kinds of problems t h a t we're talking about in the seventies and eighties are not easy problems. They almost always require 150% effort/' Joseph Duncan, Battelle Columbus
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kidneys and designing irreversible absorbents to remove toxins caused by kidney failure. Under the auspices of the National Heart Institute his division is also en gaged in developing new materials for artificial hearts. A typical "basic" research project—one in which Dr. Falb has a strong interest—is the development of tech niques for the stabilization of enzymes. 'There's a real need for delivery of basic research to the needs of so ciety," says the youthful division chief, and this project has applications to the treatment of enzyme deficiency diseases. A few of the specialists working on these projects in clude a polymer chemist, a physiologist, a biochemist whose specialty is enzyme reactions, and another whose specialty is theoretical studies of drug molecules. This kind of atmosphere appeals strongly to a partic ular kind of person. Dr. Daniel Menzel, who is in charge of Battelle-Northwest's nutrition and food tech nology research, claims that "A research institute like Battelle is an aberrant thing. We don't worry about credentials, we worry about performance." In line with credentials, only 15% of the total pro fessional staff of Battelle Memorial Institute have Ph.D.'s although as many as 25% of the staff in some of the hard science divisions have this degree. For example, 30 out of 120 professionals in the Columbus department of chemistry and biology (comprised of 12 divisions) have Ph.D.'s. Dr. Charles Faust, associate manager of the department, expresses concern about the number of Ph.D.'s being turned out of the universities who lack perspective and can't relate their specialty to a larger field. The potential employee at Battelle, whether or not he has a Ph.D., should be well grounded in the basic facts, Dr. Faust maintains, but not hampered by them. Career Opportunities 21A
Dr. Faust, an internationally known electrochemist who is inventor or coinventor on more than 125 patents, can say this without being accused of sour grapes. "What we need is something more than torsos bearing degrees/' he asserts. "We need people who can identify themselves with whatever assignment they have and assume a personal responsibility for their segment of it. The only reason that I got a Ph.D.," he adds with a slight grin, "is that I couldn't find a job." With the tight job market for chemists and scientists in general today, Dr. Faust's reason is no doubt a primary motivation for many new baccalaureate recipients who go on for higher degrees. People with baccalaureate degrees, however, play an important role in Battelle's organization—more than 50% of the professional staff have B.S. or B.A. degrees. Diligence, dependability, willingness to listen, a research perspective, ability to do peripheral thinking— these are factors that Battelle seeks in potential staff, hardly things one can measure by a yardstick. Because Battelle likes to think of itself as an innovative organization, fresh ideas and "young" blood are a must—more than 50% of the staff is under 35 years of age. For all their stringent requirements, Battelle doesn't appear to suffer from lack of applicants. In recent years, the ratio of professional applications processed to individuals hired has been about 60 to 1. "Unfortunately, [our] kind of person is a rare breed," Joe Duncan says, "because producing him is not a goal of the educational system. Most universities today are geared to disciplines—the human mind and social and scientific problems are not." Distinctly different in its outlook and emphasis from Battelle is the Salk Institute at La Jolla, Calif., where basic research is the primary product and the major discipline is biology. ' There must be a place in society where fundamental basic research can go on without concern, without primary concern, for the immediate product," says John Hunt, executive vice president of Salk. Mr. Hunt, a novelist and classicist, believes that the role of a research institute such as Salk is to focus on producing the kind of knowledge that other segments of society can deal with in terms of products and missions. The problems in society today are not with the production of insights, Mr. Hunt contends, but in organizing those institutions in society that can use those insights in a beneficent way. To cope with these problems he says we must break down the artificial division between science and humanities. 22A
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Jacob Bronowski, Salk Institute
This merging of disciplines is clearly stated in the institute's charter; its primary purpose was creation of an institution as responsive to the social implications of biology as to its laboratory accomplishments—a workshop in which the many fields of knowledge about man can form a single continuum from the behavior of molecules in cells to that of man in society. "The fact of the matter is," asserts Mr. Hunt, "life is a continuum, it's not a matter of disciplines. Salk plans to deal with life as it really is. " To this end, the institute is organized around eight resident fellows, whose interests range from cancer and neurobiology to the questions of what makes man unique. The fellows, who have their own laboratories and staff of technicians, postdoctorals, and research associates, include such noted scientists as Dr. Jacob Bronowski, English mathematician-philosopher; Dr. Robert Holley, Nobel Prize winner in medicine and physiology; and of course, Dr. Jonas Salk, who directs the institute. Latest addition to the staff of fellows is Dr. Roger Guillemin, who was professor of physiology and director of the laboratories of neuroendocrinology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Tex. He will head a new long-term program in reproductive biology that will draw on the institute's existing strong program in immunology. One of the goals of the reproductive biology program is to find a solution to the problem of population growth. In addition to this short list of scientific luminaries, there are also nonresident fellows who spend part of each year at the institute working with the staff. Visiting fellows such as Dr. John Piatt, biophysicist from the University of Michigan's mental health research institute, provide an added dimension to the range of studies at Salk. There are other interesting people at Salk whose status is less well defined, but who nonetheless contribute to the
"There must be a place where minds of the highest quality can play...supported by society on the assumption that this will produce knowledge and insights." John Hunt, Salk Institute
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wide range of talents to be found there. For example, Dr. Michael Crichton, the 26-year-old Harvard medical school graduate who wrote the best selling science fiction thriller "The Andromeda Strain," is a postdoctoral fellow at the institute, but he's not involved in research. He's in the process of designing a freshman biology text while working on several books. More than 30 other postdocs are currently at the institute involved in more traditional science. Except for Dr. Bronowski's work, which is in the area of "human specificity," most of the resident fellows are concerned with biology. Dr. Bronowski points out that one major problem in the seventies will be to establish a relevant philosophy of life. "If we are trying to do that," he says, "we have to realize that it's all going to center on questions about man, not dead nature. And biology is about man and brings into it all the disciplines in the hard and soft sciences." He says, for example, biology is just chemistry in a dynamic state. In fact, Dr. Salk was joined in the initial impetus for the creation of the Salk Institute by physicists Leo Szilard, Robert Oppenheimer, and Niels Bohr. "Salk has hardly scratched the surface in interdisciplinary work," asserts Stuart Ross, staff coordinator of interdisciplinary programs. Recently announced by Salk is The Council for Biology in Human Affairs, an international program created to study the present and future implications of discoveries in the life sciences and to communicate the results of those studies to the public. The council, directed by of Dr. Bronowski, is establishing several high level interdisciplinary study commissions to probe a variety of problems. This program and others like it will be accomplished partially through the expansion of the institute. Pres-
ently the staff of 231 occupies one of twin buildings erected on a 27-acre bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Projected size of the staff is 500, which means that the number of resident fellows will probably be expanded to about 15. Many of the new fellows will undoubtedly have interests in the social sciences. One man who will be intimately connected with the Council is Robert Mang, director of operations of the institute and staff coordinator for the Commission on Ecology, Environment, and Population. He believes science and scientists have a multifold role to play in the area of social concerns in the next decade. "We need to formulate a clear understanding of the philosophical and technological problems and possibilities connected especially with biology," says Mr. Mang. "Scientists should be brought into a more active social role in order to determine what scientific knowledge can usefully be brought to bear on these problems and to define and stimulate new areas of research where we are ignorant or partially informed." Mindful that new knowledge and technology will provoke new problems, Mr. Mang goes on, it will be necessary to integrate this awareness into the assessment of the problems. Finally, scientists should also be called upon to help determine in light of their work, what new social, political, and economic institutional forms will be necessary to help resolve these problems. "Salk has the commitment to deal with social consequences of biological events and innovations," says Michael Crichton. "It has the potential to do things that some other institutes can't do." The large and long-range problems of society that Salk hopes to deal with by its many-pronged attack into broad areas of biology are being dealt with in another manner a few hundred miles up the California coast in Santa Barbara. Home of the University of California, retired artists, and an oily channel, Santa Barbara is also host to TEMPO, General Electric*s center for advanced study. TEMPO was originally established in 1956 to analyze nuclear test data and weapons systems and to assist longrange planning for the Defense Department. As in Battelle's case, it is involved primarily in contract work for outside sponsors. It is also common for TEMPO staff—as it is for Battelle people—to think up problems and go to prospective clients to point out their unrecognized needs. Since 1963, TEMPO has operated as a semiautonomous, self-sustaining organization within GE, with about 80% of its work done for outside government and private organizations. Unlike both Battelle and Salk, TEMPO has no laboratories, although it does have its own multimillion-dollar bank of computers. It also draws Career Opportunities 23A
"Interrelationship of problems causes us to need the kinds of people we're talking about—call him a corelator or a T - m a n , he's a man of action." John McKee, TEMPO
on data from GE's large research center and other laboratories on occasion. The lack of labs, however, has led many people to term TEMPO a think tank. The trend at TEMPO today is toward a balance of defense and nondefense work in the U.S. and overseas. Areas of current major interest include attainment and maintenance of optimum U.S. defense, technology forecasting and management planning, overseas economic development, world urbanization, and the information revolution. Because of the breadth and complexity of these problems, TEMPO'S professional staff of 211 inincludes an extremely diverse cross section of skills: economics, nuclear physics, management systems, mathematics, engineering, computer modeling, operations research, accounting, cost analysis, geophysics, political science, systems analysis, psychology, and many others. Professional backgrounds are divided into mathematics, statistics, and operations research (17%); hard science (46%); and soft science (37%). TEMPO organizes interdisciplinary project teams from these three basic discipline areas. The systems approach plays a large role at TEMPO, which is understandable in terms of the broad spectrum of problems it tackles. Because TEMPO is indeed geared to problems of the future, the people there constantly have on their minds not only their immediate task but what the problems of the future will be. "The major problem of the seventies," says Dr. John McKee, a member of the nuclear weapons analysis professional staff, "will be to maintain our fundamental values—like representative government and quality of 24A C&EN MARCH 9, 1970
life." He sees as other problems pollution of the environment, racial crises, over population, and nuclear war. The interrelationships and interactions of all these problems are what TEMPO is all about, maintains Saadia M. Schorr, TEMPO'S manager. The problems that Saadia Schorr and John McKee talk about are large ones and scary ones at best. One has only to open any magazine (including Sports Illustrated) to read that in 10 years (some say five) we had better solve all our problems or the human race will cease to exist. Somehow, TEMPO people refuse to be taken in by such doomsayers. Perhaps because to do so would be to admit that their long-range forecasts (some are geared to the eighties and beyond) are foolishness. Perhaps the youthfulness of the staff also contributes to what may be an unwarranted optimism that these problems will be solved and that TEMPO can contribute something unique in solving them: Many of the 211 people at TEMPO are under 30. Its people, more so than those at Salk or Battelle, seem extremely socially involved and motivated toward solving some of society's big problems. Whatever the reason for their optimism and constructive outlook, TEMPO staff members believe that if the human race were doomed "we'd all live a whole lot differently." Perhaps one other reason for confidence at TEMPO is its management philosophy. "There is little or no verbalizing on the part of management as to what a person's responsibilities are," explains Dr. McKee, who is trained as a biologist and a physicist. "Each person here makes a personal commitment as to what his goal is and within what time he wants to accomplish it." Thus no matter how difficult the problem a team member at TEMPO faces, his personal commitment is an important factor in getting the job done. TEMPO, along with Salk and Battelle, is a research institute with a vital blend of ideas and interdisciplinary teams, of people, and of problems to be solved. Some of these people at TEMPO, Salk, and Battelle can tell you why they think their research institute exists, what function it serves, or how it can contribute uniquely to solving some of society's ills. Mostly, though, research institute people are a rare breed—they're too caught up in solving problems to think about their raison d'etre. Perhaps, after all, that is it. Whether graduate scientists move into jobs in the universities, government, or "think tanks" such as TEMPO, their reason for being is going to depend on the problems they solve. Increasingly, in the 1970's their role will be to use the core knowledge they possess in the service of a new, humanistic, and holistic technology.
