GOVERNMENT
New Engineering Centers Expected To Bridge Science and Technology Six research centers will provide facilities for cross-disciplinary research and train graduate engineers for work in industry The National Science Foundation has allocated $10 million this year to fund six new engineering research centers affiliated with major universities (C&EN, April 15, page 8). These centers, the first of 20 or more planned in the U.S., represent a fundamental change in the way the government supports engineering. The centers are expected to fulfill a dual purpose. They will provide the necessary facilities for crossdisciplinary research by engineering students and' faculty working with industry on fundamental problems and, at the same time, train graduate engineers for work in industry. In an effort to get the centers off on the right foot, the National Academy of Sciences sponsored a symposium late last month where nearly 300 representatives of industry, academia, and government attempted to define clearly the purposes, goals, and expectations for the new centers. The engineering research center concept has been around for some time, but its final impetus came in 1983 amid concern about U.S. competitiveness in international markets. With the support of the Administration, particularly White House Science Adviser and head of the Office of Science & Technology Policy George A. Keyworth II, funding of $10 million was provided in fiscal 1985, and $25 million
Keyworth: a major new dimension was requested for 1986. When NSF announced the program, more than 140 proposals were received, from which the final six were chosen. As the keynote speaker at the symposium, Keyworth was enthusiastic. "What you're doing marks what we think will be an important new dimension for science and engineering education and research/' Keyworth said. "And one of the most important products of your research centers will be the students who emerge from them, who will carry the kinds of broad technical skills needed in tomorrow's industrial world." Keyworth called the research centers "real gems," but cautioned that Congress is not in the mood for new programs and that getting funding this year will be the equivalent of running a gauntlet. If the engineering research centers are to be successful, the academic and industrial communities
are going to have to make a number of adjustments in the way they think and act. Engineering research is essentially interdisciplinary. But as Larry W. Sumney, president of Semiconductor Research Corp., noted, most universities are structured around discipline-oriented departments and "a faculty member's stature and rewards are strongly focused on personal achievements as determined by his peers within the discipline." But progress in engineering research often demands strong collaboration among disciplines and "the subordination of individual goals to those of a team," Sumney says. Some faculty members' careers have been affected adversely by giving priority to collaboration. Faculty members need to be motivated to participate in the engineering research centers if the centers are to be successful, he concludes. The need for universities to change to improve engineering research was reinforced by H. Guyford Stever, president of the Universities Research Association, who pointed out the need for changes in the "campus sociology." He cautions that young faculty members will be wary, maybe reluctant to participate because of their fears about unknown (or perhaps too-well-known) threats to their careers. And, if finding funding for those centers ever gets tough, and it might, Stever says, the instinctive response by universities will be retrenchment into the disciplinary fold. Most important, he says, the universities have to become sensitive to the needs of the nation with respect to economics and competitiveness for which engineering is the key. In essence, Stever says, the program will require a lot of commitment and participation from university administrators, facMay 13, 1985 C&EN
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Government ulty members, graduate students, and industry managers. For these research centers to be successful, U.S. industry also will have to make adjustments. James F. Lardner, vice president of the components group of Deere & Co., says industry must bear much of the blame for the current situation in engineering education. It has placidly accepted whatever universities gave it and hired talented faculty away from the universities. Lardner says U.S. industry should try to see manufacturing as a science and support more research on such things as processes and materials. To do that, industry will have to support university programs for recruiting engineering faculty, and it must find "real-world situations in which to conduct research and make available selected, experienced industry representatives to support such research projects," Lardner says. Industry also will have to hire and reward those students w h o graduate through the new research centers, he says. Other problems with industry cited at the symposium include the complaints that too many strings are attached to industry support given to universities and that industry has neither the foresight nor the inclination to put money into areas that are not "in vogue," as one attendee put it. Roland W. Schmitt placed the en-
Schmitt: two-way information flow 16
May 13, 1985 C&EN
gineering centers in perspective by saying they will be bridges between the generation of knowledge and its application to the marketplace. Schmitt, chairman of the National Science Board and senior vice president of corporate research and development at General Electric, pointed out that most engineers become researchers only after years of experience in other jobs in science or conventional engineering. Unlike the situation for scientists, it is rare, he says, for a graduate engineering student to be trained in the type of facilities that he or she will experience in industry. This needs to be changed, he maintains. The engineering centers could therefore narrow this gap between the apprenticeship of engineering researchers and the role they will eventually fill. "The idea," he says, "is not to develop job shops for in-
dustry, but . . . a two-way flow of information. From industry should flow the barrier problems that practice is running up against. From universities should flow the knowledge and talent needed to overcome the fundamental problems." There is a large lag between the generation of knowledge in research and the use of that knowledge; that must be shortened, Schmitt says, and the engineering centers may be the most effective way to do it. If Congress, with its hands firmly grasping the federal pursestrings, allows this program to expand as envisioned, it will double and redouble quickly. OSTP director Keyworth sees the engineering centers rapidly outgrowing NSF and continuing on their own. "The quality of the centers and the interdisciplinary approach are long overdue in this country," Keyworth says. D
Many waste sites lack leak detection systems Neither the Environmental Protection Agency nor state agencies know how much groundwater is being contaminated by leakage from hazardous waste disposal sites. That's because adequate monitoring systems, required by law, have not been installed at nearly 60% of the land disposal facilities regulated under the Resource Conservation & Recovery Act. According to a survey conducted by the staff of the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigation, only 508 of the 1246 facilities subject to RCRA groundwater monitoring requirements have what are described as nominally adequate well systems. Another 317 have inadequate well systems, 188 do not have any wells at all, and EPA's regional offices don't know the adequacy of the well systems at 209 facilities. Such inadequacies exist even though RCRA required that the wells, which are supposed to dectect chemicals leaking from active hazardous waste land disposal sites, be in place by Nov. 19,1981. These active facilities are where the wastes from inactive and abandoned Superfund sites are sent as they are cleaned up. And yet, ac-
cording to the survey, of the 39 sites that have received Superfund waste, 21 have inadequate monitoring systems. In addition, there is evidence that hazardous waste constituents have been released into groundwater at 18 of the sites. Perhaps not coincidentally, 18 sites have supposedly adequate well systems. Also, more than half of the total 508 facilities with adequate wells have reported releases of hazardous constituents into the groundwater. Despite the widespread noncompliance, EPA has taken formal enforcement action against only 242 of the facilities that have no wells or inadequate ones. Subcommittee chairman John D. Dingell (D.-Mich.) calls the data revealed by the survey "shocking." Noting that EPA has called groundwater contamination the most serious potential threat to human health and the environment created by the disposal of hazardous waste, Dingell says he hopes that publishing the results of the survey will cause those with responsibility—both in EPA and the states—to make an all-out effort to bring the facilities into immediate compliance with the groundwater monitoring requirements. D
