Day 11 Reflection

Barry Lawrence

5-19-10

Day 11 Reflection

Gavin Fulmer, University of Redlands Alumni, class of ’99, spoke today on his experience with the National Science Foundation. A government agency often overlooked, the NSF has a budget of nearly 7 billion dollars to promote scientific discovery and education in America. While most Americans do not even know it exists, the NSF plays an incredibly important role in ensuring America is and continues to be a competitive global player, be it in technology, medicine, fire power, and everything else; an argument can be made that all stems from the sciences and a focus on scientific methodology and thinking in everyday life. Despite frequent opposition to “big government” and government programs that exist for the sole purpose of handing out government money, especially without any contractual direct end product that the government can use, there is little, if any opposition to the NSF because of its overarching importance to our country’s economic and social superiority, even survival.

Founded in 1950 by a congressional vote, the NSF was established to “promote the progress of science” in America. The primary means by which the NSF achieves these goals is through the admission of grants and fellowships that directly support educational and research in hard and social sciences. Out of some 40k grant and fellowship proposals per year, the NSF approves around ten thousand. Even so, the foundation is responsible for dishing out somewhere around $261k per day. One interesting point that Dr. Thorson brought up during class regarded the public’s access to data and information obtained through research conducted under federal grants and fellowships. In other words, since the taxpayer is financing almost seven billion dollars worth of science related research, shouldn’t we as taxpayers have access to the information obtained through the testing and research WE funded? Interestingly enough, there did seem to be a reasonable amount of publications with data from federally funded programs, but it was by no means representative of what could be called transparent, and I believe a substantial effort should be put forth to gather non-personal data information and assemble it on a government website where every taxpayer can have access to it in order to promote a more transparent system.