Albert Louis Bridgewater, Jr.,
PhD
Albert Bridgewater is a retired member of the senior executive service at
the National Science Foundation (NSF), and a PhD in physics. During the Reagan
Administration, he was responsible for the Global Geosciences initiative that
provided the first large-scale NSF funding for study of the environmental consequences
of global warming.
Albert Bridgewater also played a leading role in many of NSF’s initiatives to improve minority participation in science, engineering, and mathematics. In "Learning to Thrive in a Changing World: A Memoir" and "A Resource for Young Scholars", he provides collections of stories and thoughts that showcase what he learned during a long career in science. Organized by different life lessons, he uses his real-life experiences to explain how minority students can overcome challenges and pursue career opportunities in science. The life lessons include tips on how to recognize and take advantage of potential mentors and opportunities that present themselves. He also explains the importance of building networks and relationships, relating his own experiences with Nobel Prize winners and other prominent scientists. He provides examples that underscore the value of reading, reasoning, and understanding yourself.
Having written the books that he
wishes he had read as a young minority scholar, this website is dedicated to
offering the next generations of young minority scholars the opportunity to
read his life lessons for free. He hopes that his life lessons will help them
as they navigate their paths toward success through undergraduate school,
graduate school, and into their careers.
Please follow Albert Bridgewater on Facebook. His Facebook page is devoted to issues surrounding climate change, and governance at the national level. He welcomes followers, and he may be contacted at albert@albertbridgewater.com.
“Thank you for all that you have done for us.” – María Elena Zavala, Professor of Biology, California State University at Northridge
“I love it!.. You have an incredible ability to be concise, poignant, entertaining, and impactful – at the same time – while not being “preachy”. I think young people will find your memoir helpful. At least it will give them something to think about.” – Carrie L. Billy, President & CEO, American Indian Higher Education Consortium
“Your varied experiences as expressed simply by your headings which provide a statement of the times, coupled with your photos, pushed me to look further and I found the reading delightful.” – William A. Lester, Jr., Professor of the Graduate School, Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley
Last updated: August 21, 2018
Learning to Thrive in a Changing World: A Memoir
Albert Bridgewater, Ph.D.
Copyright 2012 by Albert Bridgewater
All rights reserved. No part of
this document may be used or reproduced in any form whatsoever without written
permission from the author.
Acknowledgments
This memoir would not have been possible without the encouragement and assistance of a number of people: William A. Lester, Jr., Bernard Charles, Michael D. Baker, Barbara Bridgewater, Virginia Smyly, Danger F. Riley, Jason Jungsun Kim, Tom Shortbull, Olga Vargas, Akin Joshua Bridgewater, and Ramesi Bridgewater.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Albert Louis Bridgewater, Jr., PhD
Learning
to Thrive in a Changing World: A Memoir
You
Have the Right to Remain Silent
Look
in the Gift Horse’s Mouth
It is
not You. It is Your Budget.
ADVICE
FOR THE NEXT GENERATION
Mentors,
Protectors and Personal Success
Academic
Success – Inconvenient Truths.
Reading,
Reasoning, and Relationships
Lessons Learned
Introduction
My twenty-eight year career at the National Science Foundation (NSF) largely was spent writing tightly reasoned justifications for starting new research/education programs, developing and implementing strategies to ensure that the President’s Budget to Congress would include funding for those programs, and overseeing the resultant granting or contracting process.
It was a unique and highly rewarding career, and over the years friends occasionally encouraged me to write about it. Such suggestions always triggered memory of an event that occurred at one of my significant crossroads.
I had applied for a vice president position at a university. One year later, they called me, apologized for not having understood my position at NSF, and asked whether I still was interested in the position. Of course, by then my thinking had moved on, and I had settled into finishing my career at NSF.
So, why would the memoirs of someone who has held positions that have no parallel in industry or academia be of general interest? My friend, William Lester, made a convincing argument.
Yes, it is virtually impossible now for any young person to be promoted from an entry level position to the penultimate level a Federal career executive can hold (Senior Executive Service-IV) in a decade. Yes, it is virtually impossible now for any young person to have the influence I had over research priorities and infrastructure development in astronomy, atmospheric, earth, and ocean sciences, polar programs, and the United States’ Antarctic program. The memoir should be about the situations faced, and lessons learned.
With that advice, he had given me the structure for the memoir.
One of my earliest memories is listening to my father, and my uncle, tell Old Man Stories after holiday dinners. Uncle Phillip Lebeau’s stories were particularly memorable for his theatrical presentations. It truly was the best of pre-television entertainment. So, I hope that you enjoy my Old Man Stories. I also hope that those of you who are just embarking on the road to success find these stories useful in guiding you through the pitfalls.
Now, no memoir is complete without some background information.
My father was in the Navy during World War II. He mustered out in San Francisco, took the train down to Houston, Texas, and promptly moved the family to Berkeley, California. The move let us escape segregation. The move gave us access to an education that would not have been available, if we had remained in Houston.
Certainly, no father could have made a better decision. For his children, educational success was expected. Only anything less than complete success was deemed worthy of comment. His attitude toward education made this memoir possible.
Thanks to my Father’s action, this is the life story of a poor but privileged Black man who was born in Houston and raised in Berkeley. It largely is told in the form of a collection of stories/lessons that shaped my life.
I say poor, because no one in West Berkeley, California, had real money. In writing about out backyard neighbor, baseball player Billy Martin, Life Magazine described our area as a tough waterfront district.
I like to think all members of our White, Mexican American and Black neighborhood were equally rich in opportunity, but that really was not true. Mexican Americans clearly were at the bottom of the totem pole in Berkeley, in terms of police and media attention.
None of my Mexican American classmates made it into the college preparation track. Perhaps, it was because they were not expected to go to college.
I say privileged, because my three sisters (Elizabeth, Doris, and Barbara) preceded me in the Berkeley School System. By the time it was my turn to be enrolled in the college preparation track, Berkeley was tired of doing battle with the Bridgewater family. I got the education Berkeley had designed for the sons and daughters of University of California at Berkeley faculty members.
With Doris, Elizabeth, and Barbara
Education
My mother was raised in New Iberia, Louisiana. She daily read the newspaper, or so I thought. I was in junior high school, before I realized that she could not read – only because she enrolled in an adult literacy class. Not being able to read did not prevent her being able to clip all the sales coupons.
My father was raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He managed to get through the eighth grade, before family circumstances took him out of school. Dad had an eclectic collection of books and records. All young boys of my generation learned to appreciate National Geographic Magazine. I even learned to love his collection of master works records.
Education must have been a priority in our household, because my education obviously started at home. I remember being taken out of a first grade classroom and placed in a second grade classroom at the beginning of the school year. Success was expected, and only underperformance deserved comment. That might imply that there was a lot pressure to get high grades. Frankly, my parents were too busy trying to survive economically to play the dominating parent role. Dad even had to move to Los Angeles for three years in order to get a job.
By normal standards, I never was a model student. I would read the textbook (taking notes on important points), do the homework, and take the tests. However, my real loves were dad’s book and magazines collection and the Berkeley public library. By the time I finished high school, I had plowed through virtually all of the library’s mystery, science fiction, mathematics, and oceanography books.
My attitude toward grades somewhat changed, when the tenth grade physics teacher (Henry Nelson) asked me why I was not in the honor society. It seemed to be an interesting challenge. So, I added studying to my normal routine. The result was four A’s and one B that semester. The next semester, I learned how to limit the required amount of studying – so that it would not interfere with my other learning. Still, the good grades continued.
As an aside, I obviously cannot write down a set of ways to work smarter not harder that would work for you. Of example, if you accurately remember what you hear, going to classes would be a great use of your time. Only a very few truly malevolent teachers set exam questions that they do not discuss in class. It is up to you to discover how your memory works. It is up to you to discover what aides your problem solving abilities.
In those days, anyone having a certain high school grade point average automatically was admitted to the University of California at Berkeley. You just had to submit your transcript. Practically all of my high school college preparation track classmates went to the University of California at Berkeley.
Dad’s Navy Log
Mom
Finally Taller
Henry Nelson
Mind
I long ago figured out that my mind had two active components: a conscious mind that controls movement and speech, and a subconscious mind that provides situational awareness and problem solving. This division is most evident when I have to read speeches written for me – such as a speech the Reagan Administration prepared for me to read before a congressional committee in defense of the administration’s environmental policies. I actually had no problem with the substance of the speech. The Reagan Administration had given my organization substantial additional funding to conduct long-term research on global warming. I had a problem with reading the speech without being noticeably distracted by my subconscious mind. Imagine trying to read something out loud while someone is whispering in your ear: “that could have been better said”; “you should have left that out”; or “this audience really does not want to hear that.” Fortunately, the committee chairman’s opening remarks had covered essentially all of the points in my speech. So, I was able to use that as an excuse for not reading the whole text.
Having an active subconscious mind is not a disadvantage as long as you learn how to release it to manage the situations that it is best equipped to handle. When my conscious mind gets bogged down trying to talk its way through the solution to a problem, I just need to distract it – vocalize something, roll my eyes, take a walk, take a nap, or get a good night’s sleep (all depending on the difficulty of the problem). The solution, when it comes, comes complete and only needing to written down or announced to the audience. The solution comes without any explanation of why it is the right choice or the thought process used to reach it. The solution just feels right.
If I do not at least write down the key words in the solution, I will forget it – which brings me to the other key aspect of my mind. I do not have a photographic memory, but I do have a visual memory. I went to classes to see, not to hear. I remember things I see, not what I hear. In order to remember names, I have to write them down.
Reading is my primary learning tool, and a speed reading course was one of two courses that had the biggest positive impact in terms of making my life easier – the other course being typing.
Learning to relax and let my subconscious mind take care of important business had the biggest positive impact in terms of easing the conduct of business.
The Game
In this memoir, I occasionally will mention “The Game.” There is a branch of mathematics called game theory. Game theory essentially involves study of the probability of reward or loss from pursuing alternative strategies for playing a game. As a simple example, game theory tells one that the person who makes the first move in tic-tac-toe always should mark the central square, because doing so guarantees at least a draw.
Applying game theory to developing Federal programs is not as mathematically rigorous, but it does enable one to identify the elements of a successful strategy. Success depends on support, organization, and monitoring. One is a full participant in The Game, if one is aware of (and has the support of) the other participants. Therefore, one should avoid becoming identified with any game in which there are unknown or unreliable participants. One should avoid becoming identified with any game for which positive results cannot be verified. One should avoid becoming identified with any game that does not have a detailed work plan for accomplishing its objectives.
Depending on your employer, there
are a number of words that you can substitute for “game.” However, the basic facts
remain the same. I will use Federal programs to illustrate the principles.
How You Can Learn to Love Some Federal Programs
In my opinion, words have no inherent meaning. Words are a collection of sounds that trigger learned responses. The word “welfare” has entirely different meanings to liberals and conservatives. Political discussion has degenerated to having two talking heads on television shouting at each other, while making certain that they do not agree on anything. What could be worse for a talking head than losing the job by agreeing to something said by the talking head for the opposite side?
What is a member of the public to do? Who can be trusted to provide truthful advice about whether an individual should learn to love a Federal program?
The answer is obvious, you are the
only person who can determine whether you should support or be involved in
creating any given Federal program. All you need to do is to apply a few simple
tests.
Federal versus State
Every Federal program should address a national need that cannot be addressed by the states acting individually.
That used to be a relatively short
list. However, given the increased mobility of U.S. citizens, it has become
increasingly difficult for individual states to invest in developing human
resources. People move. Rivers and roads do not move. So, your first test is
whether the Federal program supports an effort that cannot be adequately
supported at the state level.
Community
Your second test for determining the worthiness of a Federal program is to identify the community it would support.
Sometimes, this can be quite
difficult, because the authors of the legislation may go to great lengths to
obscure who really will benefit from the funding. In some cases, you may need
to read the details of the award mechanism to determine whether funding
actually will reach the organizations or people you believe should benefit. If
you cannot clearly identify the beneficiaries, you should not support the
program!
Management Plan
Your third test is to determine whether there is an effective management plan.
Do the involved organizations have
a track record of success working with the supported community? Do the involved
organizations have a track record of success managing similar programs?
Obtaining this kind of information may require reading the relevant program
announcements, but such information is essential to determining whether or not
the funds might be wasted.
Evaluation Plan
The fourth test is to determine whether there is an effective evaluation plan.
Do the involved organizations
understand how to measure the success of their efforts? Do the involved
organizations have the ability to collect the information needed to determine
the success of their efforts? Nothing is easier than to after-the-fact claim
that you were successful. If the relevant program announcements do not, in
advance, contain definitive measures of success, you should not support the
program!
Reality Check
Do I expect the average citizen to apply the following rules? Not really. However, I would love to see a world in which the media made at least some attempt to objectively apply the above tests. Instead, we live in a world in which Federal programs are praised or condemned based on one word political tests.
Tracking
Eugene Yokoyama and I represent the two entirely different paths then offered by the Berkeley School System. Everyone was grouped together at Franklin Elementary School, but Burbank Junior High School was divided into vocational and college preparation tracks. Vocational track students even spent part of their high school day working for local firms. When we were at Burbank Junior High, Eugene and I were too young to know the consequences of our different tracks.
We both weighed about ninety-five pounds. We just love competing against each other. The endless hours of board games we played were a sideshow to the heart of our relationship – which was our one-on-one tackle football games. I was faster. He was stronger. We would run over and around each other for what seemed like hours. I guess it will not come as any surprise that Eugene is the last person I have fought. The fight started on the basketball court, and ended as quickly as it started with us still being friends.
In retrospect, essentially all of my life decisions placed me on a path that inevitably would take me away from Berkeley.
Eugene remained in Berkeley. He went on to retire from a career in the Berkeley public works department. When we gather for our reunions, Eugene stands out as one who is thoroughly happy with his life. His love for his grandchildren warms my heart.
I cannot even imagine what my life would have been like, if I had remained in Berkeley.
With Eugene Yokoyama in Eighth Grade
Fitting In
Eugene and I were two of the three shortest boys in our class at Franklin Elementary School. For long forgotten reasons, the third was nicknamed Can Opener.
My strategy for survival was to know the names of all the thugs, and always to certain to say hello to them. Otherwise, we went our separate ways.
Can Opener apparently wanted to be accepted by the thugs. Their response was to repeatedly abuse him.
Can Opener was a good object lesson in how not to get along with others.
Diplomacy – One
One day, Wayne McConnell and I were walking home from Burbank Junior High School. Someone I had previously seen at Burbank, but never spoken to, came up behind us and started a conversation with me. Wayne drifted a few steps ahead of us as this character who, dressed as though his aspiration in life was to become a gangster, offered to stab Wayne for me. I informed him that I did not need to have Wayne stabbed, but that did not end the conversation. Over the next couple of blocks, we debated the merits of stabbing Wayne – all while this character was opening and closing his switchblade knife.
He finally either tired of the discussion, or decided that I really did not need to have Wayne stabbed, and walked away.
I rejoined Wayne, thinking that he had to be the coolest dude in the world to listen to that conversation and not panic. Many years later, I learned that Wayne had not heard the conversation.
Reasoning with crazy people may not always works, but it is a good first option.
Wayne McConnell
You Have the Right to Remain Silent
One evening, a policeman came to our door and asked to see one of my sisters. As soon as she replied to his question, I saw from his expression that he had realized that he was at the wrong door and talking to the wrong person. What would you do, if you were in his place, in that situation?
After an embarrassing pause, the policeman told a lie.
Anyone who has ever watched "Don't
Talk to the Police" by Professor James Duane (in which he explains why
innocent people should never talk to the police), or who has watched a reality
video featuring someone who (after years in prison) has had his conviction
overturned based on police misconduct understands the risk involve in talking
to the police.
Social Media
“You have the right to remain silent” also applies to use of social media.
Since potential employers can and
do use your social commentary as a factor in their decision making, you always
should remember that it is easier to talk your way into trouble that to talk
your way out of trouble.
War Zones - One
If you find yourself being marched off at gun point in a war zone, you probably are a dumb American.
I was returning by train from Yaoundé in what as then called East Cameroon. The occasional sight of a severed head on a pole outside a market should have been sufficient reminder that a civil war was taking place, and civil war does mean that there will be check points. Being a dumb American, I had placed my ticket stub in my bag. When the gendarmes in Douala asked me to produce my ticket stub as I was exiting the train, I could not find the stub. I was marched off at gun point to an interrogation room.
If you find yourself in this situation, the proper behavior is to forget that you understand or speak any language other than English. The proper response to any question is that you do not understand why you are being held. You are just a dumb American who accidentally fell into their hands. At least that worked for me. They soon tired of examining my passport and asking me questions that I could not answer.
The next day, I found the ticket
stub buried in my clothes.
War Zones – Two
Normally, the Peace Corps flew us from Bamenda to Buea in what then was called West Cameroon. This time, I had to take the Cameroonian version of a taxi. Every seat was filled. We got off to a late start. The fellow in the right front seat was a talkative and interesting character, who obviously frequently made that trip.
Inevitably, the taxi approached a checkpoint shortly after dark at the border between East and West Cameroon. It was manned by one AK-47 armed soldier who seemed to be no more than eighteen years old. As we neared the checkpoint, the talkative fellow became more and more excited. He must have been smuggling something, because he was desperate to avoid having the taxi searched.
His solution to his problem was to promote me. He pointed me out to the young soldier and told the soldier that I was an important Cameroonian government official on my way down to a meeting in Buea. I practically could see the wheels turning in the soldier’s mind.
Now, I have to interject here that when I walked down bush roads, and was passed by a Mami Wagon, I had become used to someone leaning out the window and calling me “Whiteman.” So, I knew that the soldier could tell that I was different from the average suspect he encountered at his checkpoint.
He was trying to decide which course of action would get him in the least trouble. I was not going to help him make that decision. I put on my best “I am important” twenty two year old face and looked directly into his eyes, without saying a word. He blinked first. He let us pass through the checkpoint.
Identify – One
My Japanese American childhood friends have well established religious and ethnic identities – forged in the hardship of the internment camps, and nurtured by athletic leagues and their church. My experience was quite different.
Mrs. Ramirez was our next door neighbor and my mother’s friend. Her son Bobby was my annoying “little brother.” I did not mind Bobby so much, because I loved Mrs. Ramirez’s tortillas, refried beans, barbequed goat, and beef tamales. Bobby’s presence was a small price to pay for what still is my gold standard in Mexican cooking.
I remember Mrs. Ramirez taking me and my mother to mass at the Salvation Army store. Her friends greeted my mother in Spanish, which neither of us understood. The mass was in Spanish, and the friendship of the communicants felt good. It had a quite different feel from the church mom regularly attended. Frankly, my only memory of mass in that other church was not being able to escape the overwhelming smell of talcum powder coming from the girdles of the women passing by me.
When I was in junior high school, mom decided that I should be confirmed. She enrolled me in an after-school confirmation training class at her church. That class was my first prolonged exposure to children I knew to be catholic. The most polite thing I can say about them is that I found them to have incredibly poor behavior. The class confirmed me in not wanting to have any more exposure to them. One week before the confirmation ceremony, one of the nuns called my mother in for a meeting. The nun gave my mother a document to sign. The document committed by mother to continue to send me to catholic instruction after the confirmation ceremony. One look at my mother’s face was all I needed to realize that she would sign the document, and I would not have to go back for further classes.
One week after the confirmation ceremony, I told my mother that I was quitting the church. She did not object. Since then, I only have entered a catholic church for weddings or funerals.
In 1965, Bishop Harold R. Perry as named Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of New Orleans becoming the first African American Catholic Bishop of the 20th century. Bishop Perry was one of my mother’s relatives. Learning of his elevation gave me renewed respect for my mother’s decision to let me be me.
One day, my mother announced that a relative would be visiting us that day. In mid-afternoon, a “white woman” entered the house. A couple of hours later, I asked when the relative would arrive. That was my first exposure to the fact that my relatives come in all colors. I am one of thirty-two grandchildren from a marriage that took place in 1896. We have a German great-grandfather. Our Narcisse family reunions are a celebration of all aspects of Louisiana food and culture – a culture that still is new to me.
Counselors
The University of California at Berkeley then assigned each incoming student a faculty counselor. Mine was in the mathematics department, because I had declared a major in mathematics. To say that the session did not go well is an understatement. I looked at the schedule he recommended, and knew that I needed advice from my sister Barbara – a then recent UCB graduate. She confirmed my suspicion that the recommended schedule was a recipe for failure. The schedule was not followed.
Needless to say, that was the last time I sought advice from a UCB faculty member.
Of course, that does not mean that I would recommend that a freshman college student avoid talking to the counselors. Just be certain to check their advice with someone you trust. In particular, you should be concerned about two things:
1. Are the recommended courses required and appropriate for your intended major; and
2. Will the resultant workload be a burden?
There is nothing worse than flunking out from trying to do too much.
Judging Yourself
One advantage of being a member of a tracked school group was that it created strong group identity, across all racial and ethnic lines. As probably is normal for teenagers, it was us against the teachers. Fifty plus years later, we still tell stories about the pranks we pulled on them way back when.
That all changed at the University of California at Berkeley (UCB).
For the first time, seeing old friends was a rarity. We had scattered to different majors and different schedules.
Being the only Black face in the class was less important than learning how to play The Game – that took one semester. In the meantime, there was the issue of finding new avenues for continuing my out of the classroom education. I found the gym, and worked tirelessly on my three-on-three basketball game. I found the pool hall, and devoted many hours to developing my billiards and snooker skills.
Since getting A’s was not one of my priorities, my challenge was getting B’s in courses I cared about while devoting as much time as possible to the gym and pool hall. In my third semester, by which time I had changed my major to physics, I finally slipped over the line and got a C in an important course.
Realizing that a new system was need, I decided to actually go to classes frequently enough to determine how well the other students understood the material. Comfort was found in hearing them ask dumb questions. Realization of the need to devote more effort to the course was found in being surprised by them asking smart questions. Occasionally, a course would be so interesting that I could not help wanting to learn so much that the result was an A.
As you can imagine, this system did not produce a high grade point average. It did give me plenty of practice in judging my own abilities relative to others, and it left me full of confidence that I could compete with anyone – but to what end?
Understanding your position relative to others is one of the most important survival skills you can cultivate.
Why Physics
I never could have majored in chemistry – too much memorizing of facts. High school physics was too easy. That left mathematics as my major for my first year at UCB. In my second semester, I was placed in an honor mathematics class. Have you ever met someone and concluded that you do not want to be like them? Well, that was my feeling about the mathematics faculty member who taught that honor class.
My new major was physics. A modern physics course soon let me see how little real physics was taught in high school physics.
Studying modern physics expanded my vision of how physics feeds into science fiction.
Then, it was an open question whether this universe would suffer a cold or a warm death.
A warm death meant that this universe contained enough mass to enable gravity to collapse the universe back to its starting point – a little dot in space. I was intrigued by the question of how whatever intelligent life remained in the universe would response to the coming disaster? Intelligent life would have enough energy available to live comfortably until the very end of all life. Would they attempt to escape this universe? Would they be content that they were part of an endless chain of destruction and recreation of the universe?
A cold death meant that this universe contains so little mass that it will continue to expand, as it gradually runs out of energy. How would intelligent life’s societies adapt to ration the diminishing energy resources? Before too little energy was available, would they attempt to create the conditions for similar intelligent life to develop in a universe of their creation?
It now is known that this universe will suffer a cold death. Ten billion years from now, whatever intelligent life remains in this universe will have to decide whether to seed another universe. And, that raises the question of whether this universe was created by intelligent life in an earlier universe. What if the Big Bang was seeded to create us?
As you can tell, I love mysteries and science fiction, and there is no greater mystery than the physics of this universe.
Problem Solving
I do not solve problems by consciously working through them. Instead, I try to empty by conscious mind and let my subconscious mind reveal the solution. For example, if a student asked a question that required some thought while I was in the classroom, that process consisted of me rolling my eyes toward the ceiling and then rolling them back down toward the class. By the time that process was completed, I would have an answer to the student’s question. In problem solving or test taking, the solution comes to me whole and only needing to be written down.
Obviously, this only works, if the problem’s solution requires a limited number of steps that easily can be visualized – which explains why I was lousy at statistical mechanics. I never managed to be able to visualize the flow of solutions of statistical mechanics problems. Therefore, I was not able to recognize errors in my solutions.
Basically, my problem solving technique considers of distracting my conscious mind from the problem. Difficult problems may require a nap or even a night of sleep. Unfortunately, if I wake up for any reason during the night, my subconscious mind will not let me go back to sleep until I have written down clues to the solution.
Loss – One
Of all of my childhood friends, I undoubtedly spent the most time with Tony Borgia. Dad had a man-cave in the backyard shed. It was our hangout. It seemed as though we always would be spending time there talking and playing a Mexican version of dominoes, but then it stopped – and then Tony no longer could be found.
There is no doubt that I was to blame for losing contact with Tony. I went along doing the things that each day needed doing, and not thinking that someday he and his family would not be in their home.
There is a saying that you are not really dead as long as someone remembers you. A parallel saying probably should be that you lose a little bit of yourself every time you lose contact with a friend who shares your memories.
If you have a Tony in your life, you should go the extra mile to stay in contact.
Loss – Two
World War II shaped my life and that of many other African Americans who left the South for better social and economic opportunities in California. It also influenced the lives of my Chinese and Japanese American peers. The families of my Chinese peers mainly had fled China to avoid the civil war. The families of my Japanese peers, although having deep roots in America, had been confined in internment camps during the war.
For my Chinese peers, the losses tended to be direct – such as a father killed in the fighting. For my Japanese American peers, the stories still greatly vary. When we gather for reunions, some only remember the many activities organized to keep the children busy and provide daily entertainment in the internment camps. Some had parents embittered by their financial losses during the confinement. Some tell stories of African American neighbors saving Japanese owned businesses by running them until their Japanese neighbors returned from the camps.
Harry Lim was older than the rest of us, because he first had to learn English. Harry naturally fell into the older brother role. He even put together a team of rejects that miraculously managed to win a tournament to represent Burbank Junior High School. He went on to have a successful career as an architect and a human being, before many years later tragically drowning attempting to rescue the woman he loved.
Ken Nakamura is motivated. There is no other word for him. He cares deeply about injustice, and he is committed to correcting it wherever he finds it.
Glenn Takagi was quiet. His family apparently was greatly impacted by their internment.
One evening, Harry, Ken, and Glenn taught me that I do not have a poker face. After taking all of my money, they took me to a Chinese restaurant – where I learned how to use chop sticks. In retrospect, the cost of the lesson was reasonable.
When I was at Columbia University, Glenn called me. Glenn told me stories about all the wonderful things that were happening in his life. I truly felt good for him at the end of the call. One week later, Harry called me to report that Glenn had committed suicide. What a loss! There probably was nothing that I could have done to prevent Glenn’s suicide, but I do regret not having properly said how much he would be missed.
While they still are here, let your friends know that you appreciate them.
Glenn Takagi
With Harry Lim and Ken Nakamura
Stiles Hall
Until the 11th grade, I was one of the runts in my class with all of the associated female relationship issues. My sudden growth spurt did little to solve that problem. Enrolling at the University of California at Berkeley further complicated matters. Officially, there were supposed to be a couple of hundred Black students at UCB. Unofficially, seeing one was a rare event. I had gone from an environment that routinely offered the pleasure of friendship with girls like Lynn Farris and Katherine Takefugi to a desert. However, one can get used to anything.
By the beginning of my junior year in college the course had become interesting enough warrant spending more time studying than playing pool or basketball. I became well settled into a regular routine or rut without female friends. For days, I would go to the library at the same time and sit in the same seat. Not surprisingly, others shared the same rut, and certain familiar faces frequently appeared. I always saw myself as an individual in that sea of faces. One day, I realized that others saw me as a Black boy in a room of white boys and girls.
I had no interest in the white girl who regularly had sat next to me that week, and, at first, I wondered why the fellow across the table had started laughing when she that day had introduced me to her boy friend. It then occurred to me that I was the competition, even when I was not competing. I felt insulted, because my idea of beauty long had been Tamara Taylor, the chocolate brown two year older girlfriend of Donald Warden.
This incident was my first recognition that being Black would be the first filter others would apply to me. Talk about being privileged! I had made it to my junior year in college, before realizing that discrimination and segregation were issues that I would need to understand at a time when lynching still was common in the South.
Stiles Hall became my vehicle for exploring social and racial issues. I joined a group of students involved in diverse activities. In order to determine the residents’ attitude toward problems they had with the San Francisco city government and police, we conducted a survey of residents of the Hunters Point district. We organized a School Resource Volunteers Program to place UCB student in Bay Area classrooms to serve as teacher aides and student mentors. This program enabled any Bay Area teacher to request a volunteer, and we then would recruit someone to provide the needed service. Subsequently, Bill Somerville requested that I head the Retreat Program, which offered weekend group dynamics sessions on race relations to diverse groups of UCB students. What a privilege it was to work with such an outstanding group of people, including Herman Blake (whose distinguished academic career is much too long to be summarized here), and to meet memorable people, including Malcolm X (who graciously answered our many questions).
Frances Linsley’s book “What Is This Place?” captures the spirit of Stiles Hall. Stiles Hall was, and undoubtedly still is, an off campus refuge for anyone wanting to explore new ideas. Stiles Hall offered me a graduate education on the world and my place in it. Everyone needs something like Stiles Hall in their lives.
My work at Stiles Hall was my ticket to admission to the Order of the Golden Bear, which then was a secret all male senor honor society. Unfortunately, my first and only meeting of the order was a long discussion of whether or not the wrestling team should get a big “C”, or a small “c”, on their jersey. Well, the world is not perfect.
Lynn & Katherine
Tamara Taylor
Bill Somerville
Herman Blake
Retreat Group
Identify – Two
Since physics was considered a liberal arts curriculum at UC Berkeley, I had to satisfy the liberal arts requirements. One of those requirements then involved selected a course in the athletics department. I chose badminton. Do not laugh. Competitive badminton is an entirely different sport than backyard badminton. Chuc Kray was the only member of the class to play a match with me that semester.
The first pillar of our relationship was competition. Neither of us was into losing. Years later we still would disagree over whether or not I ever had to pay for any of the after match ice cream bars. I still claim that whenever we bet on the outcome of the match I won. I will admit that we did not bet on the outcome enough times to make our total won-lost record essentially even – although I think that I was one match up over the semester. Neither of us could stand losing to the other in anything. Chuc even took up with my ex-girlfriend, when I left Berkeley for serve in the Peace Corps.
The second pillar of our relationship was race. Chuc said he was black. I did not understand what difference that should make in how we related to each other. Chuc apparently felt that I did not sufficiently respect his blackness. I had no idea what he was talking about.
My theory is that white people felt free to say racist things in Chuc’s presence, simply because they did not know that he was black. Hearing demons, he knew that they existed. Therefore, his strong black identity was essential to him surviving living in a world populated by demons.
Chuc and I stayed in touch for decades, before my competitive urges waned and we finally drifting apart.
Peace Corps
During my senior year at UCB, Steve Lenton regularly sent letters to Stiles Hall describing his experiences teaching in the Peace Corps in the Philippines. The Peace Corps clearly was an attractive alternative to being drafted for service in the Vietnam War. Following two months of training at Ohio University, my group traveled to Cameroon. I suddenly was a teacher at the West Cameroon College and Arts, Sciences, and Technology (CAST). CAST had been opened only one year earlier to give West Cameroon its first higher education institution.
My first thought, on that first day in the classroom, was – “What am I doing here? I do not know how to teach.”
In my second year, CAST had a shortage of teachers. So, my course load included: physics, logic, applied mathematics, and economics – all at the junior college level (British Sixth Form). That year set the record for the highest workload in my life! Nevertheless, I enjoyed teaching in Cameroon, with one exception.
I do not think that I ever could get used to students not understanding the material. The rational part of me understands that that always will be the case. The obsessive compulsive perfectionist in me cannot stand the thought of not having all of them learn the material. Since Cameroonians are extremely generous people, no one complained about my teaching skills.
At that time, Cameroon was experiencing a civil war that quite frankly still continues at a very low level. Perhaps that is why student questioning about America’s segregation and Vietnam War issues was gentle. The many divisions in Cameroonian society would have been equally difficult to explain.
Opportunities to learn more about Cameroonian society were limited, because CAST was a mini-closed-society set on an abandoned German built compound well away from the nearest village. However, I did have the opportunity to conduct a village survey on the Ndop Plain. Imagine being given an old hand-drawn World War One German map, a set of questions to be answered, and the instruction to see if I could update the map and answer the questions. Suppressing the urge to write the mission off as being impossible, John Ndeh and I set off for the Ndop Plain.
The plan was for me to survey the entire area by walking all over it’s roughly ten by twenty mile extent, while John took care of the living arrangements. Being too naïve to even think about the baboons and leopards known to be in the area, I set out on my trek across the grasslands.
When you are riding in a jeep on the Ring Road through the Ndop Plain, the clusters of thatched roof huts seem to be a lot closer together than when you are walking far away from the road. There was lots of time to think about what I was doing and wonder how I was going to get anything done. So, when I finally spotted a very small girl walking toward me, my mind was in overload analysis mode. The first problem was language. Cameroon must have one hundred local languages. So, Pidgin English is the language of the market place. I decided to use Pidgin to request direction to the nearest village. She answered me in perfect school girl English. How embarrassing!
Finding the village, I saw a group of men sitting in a thatched shelter. Joining them, as required by my instructions, I asked to speak to the village leader. One of them indicated that he was the “Fon” of the village. I began to direct my questions to him. He did not answer any of them. Instead, each question about crops, water, transportation, etc. was answered by a different member of the gathered group. I had stumbled upon his cabinet meeting.
My eyes open, not literally, but figuratively.
I had read Simon and Phoebe Ottenberg’s “Cultures and Societies of Africa.” Intellectually, I understood that secret societies form an ancient learning and governance system. However, I had not understood how little of the trappings of education and governance would be visible to an outside observer.
Even now, I remain skeptical of efforts that use first world models to solve third world problems. Third world education and governance is not buildings and documents, it is relationships.
Those two years probably changed my life. Teaching physics meant that I really had to learn it, and that got me an extraordinarily high score on the Graduate Record Examination. Also, teaching physics got me a teaching assistantship at Columbia University. I never could have afforded to pay for a graduate education.
John Ndeh
Teaching
My Logic Class
Identity – Three
Let us face it; my life in Cameroon was one of isolation. I did not belong to any age group. I was not a member of any secret society. I did not understand how to respond to the approach of a masker dancer representing a juju spirit. I was not prepared to defend the Vietnam War, or explain away segregation in the South.
In Cameroon, I only knew that I was not African. The cries of “Whiteman” told me that I was seen to be different.
The “Whiteman”
Welcome Back
My flight back from Cameroon to the United States took me to New York City. I decided to take a bus back to Berkeley, stopping to visit friends in Buffalo, New York and Chicago, Illinois. I had picked up a book entitled “The Theory of the Electron” for reading material during the trip.
Somewhere, in one of those mountain states, I decided to get off the bus to buy a glass of orange juice. While I was reading my book and waiting at the counter for the waitress to bring me my orange juice, one the locals walked up to me and said “You look like you must be one of those smart ones. If you knew what was good for you, you would not be in here.”
I smiled.
To understand why I smiled, you need to know that West Cameroon split from Nigeria in part to obtain political separation from Igbos. After traveling to Nigeria, I had enough negative experiences to understand why Igbos were unwelcome in West Cameroon. As an African American, I at least was not an Igbo, and therefore was not subjected to discrimination. I had grown used to not automatically being at the bottom of the pile, and none of my experiences in New York or Illinois had reminded me that racism was alive in American society.
The good old boy had reminded me that I really had returned to the United States.
Mentors - One
Having enjoyed teaching in Cameroon, going to graduate school seemed to be a good idea. It might even make me a better teacher. Being a teacher probably made me a better standardized test taker, because I got the highest possible score on the physics graduate record examination. Faced with a choice of admissions between the University of Washington, the University of Chicago, and Columbia University, I resorted to one definitive tie breaker. Columbia was near Harlem. I would have a great time! And I did.
Gary Mitchell was my first mentor at Columbia. He was a gruff southerner, working in my first choice field of nuclear physics. It turned out the Gary had rescued me from having to be a teaching assistant for non-science majors.
I quickly figured this out, when a future Nobel Prize winner practically ran into my classroom as I was teaching my first class of science majors. Screeching to a halt, hearing me lecture to the class, he considered his options. He opted to approach me and request that I remind the class of something I already had covered.
Gary must have noticed my teaching experience and changed my teaching assignment without informing the future Nobel Prize winner.
I will be forever grateful for that change for two reasons. First, my students actually wanted to take the classes. Second, it meant that Ruth Howes and I both could be Preceptor of our respective group of teaching assistants in our second year of graduate school. Ruth went on to become Professor Emerita of Physics and Astronomy at Ball State University. She would have been tough competition.
Unfortunately for my career in nuclear physics, Gary did not make tenure and had to leave Columbia.
Fortunately for my future career, Gary made me realized that mentors can come in unexpected forms.
Identity – Four
Given a choice of three universities for graduate school, the choice was easy. Columbia University was near Harlem. I would have a good time!
1965-70 was a great time to be in Harlem. Could anything be better than having James Brown dancing next to you on the Small’s Paradise dance floor, or having Sidney Poitier come over to your table to shake hands? Where else could you see the future Kareem Abdul Jabbar walking the streets; or, Adam Clayton Powell wearing a white suit, getting out of a white Cadillac to enter the Red Rooster, to drink scotch with milk?
I loved the endless procession of Black stars at the Apollo Theater. I loved the classic elegance of Harlem’s old brownstones. I loved Harlem’s gritty side – even the con men trying to trick me into giving them my money. I had discovered the enormous variety that characterizes Black life in American. It was a paradise for someone looking for identify.
I found my identity in a love for Black culture.
Graduate School Days
Impossible Problems – One
As a teaching assistant in the physics department at Columbia University, I occasionally was assigned the task of grading exam papers. The task involved writing up a solution that would be posted on the bulletin board, as well as grading the papers. On this occasion, the same future Nobel Prize winner who had rushed into my classroom gave his students a problem that, as stated, could not be solved.
I figured that the proctor of the exam would have noticed the error, and given the students the needed correction. Well, that did not happen. Surprisingly, some of the students figured out the error, and were able to solve the problem. The solution I posted corrected the error, without blaming the professor.
How many more students would have received credit for that problem, if only they had been given a problem that as stated could be solved? Why did the students who figured out the error not report it to the proctor?
Do not be so respectful of authority that you suffer because you cannot solve an impossible problem.
Open Door
By my second year in graduate school at Columbia University, I was well used to not being recognized by physics faculty members (with the notable exception of Gary Mitchell). In order to get to the office I shared with a number of other teaching assistants I had to pass Nobel Prize winner Polykarp Kusch’s office. Needless to say, we never spoke to each other, until one day…
In order to understand the significance of that day, you need to know that in those days Columbia’s physics department required all physics graduate students to take the Qualifying Exam at the beginning of their second year. If you passed the exam, you eventually would get a PhD.
One week after I took the Qualifying Exam, Polykarp and I happened to approach the elevator at the same time, and Polykarp said hello. My initial shock quickly was replaced by realization that I must have passed the Qualifying Exam. I had become a member of what I later would affectionately call the Physics Mafia.
All those years of studying on my own, and teaching in Cameroon, had opened an unknown world of opportunity. It turned out to be a world in which physicists still were enjoying the benefits from having developed the atomic bomb, and consequently still had significant influence in Washington, DC – particularly at the National Science Foundation. I just needed to walk through The Door.
When your door opens, walk through it.
The Door
When I was young, The Door was a metaphor for a coming revolution.
Now, the revolution has come, and it is being televised. You just need to watch the competing commercial for new fields of study to see how rapidly the image, if not the substance, of this society is evolving. You need to remind yourself that someone learned on their own each new field of study. That someone might as well be you. That someone will be you, if you want to be gainfully employed for the rest of your life.
Learning is the key to periodically reinventing yourself and creating or finding new doors to open.
Since the concept of a career has become obsolete, you will have to make your own arrangements to provide those benefits that used to be associated with a career. In lieu of a pension, you will need your own financial plan. What lifestyle do you want to maintain? How much will it cost to maintain that life style? How much do you have to save? Does your current employment pay enough to enable you to meet your financial goals? What skills do you have to acquire to enable you to meet your financial goals?
The future belongs to those who are mobile and opportunistic.
How do you recognize your door? Perhaps these questions will help:
· Does the opportunity increase your range of options for productive work?
· Does the opportunity increase your ability to create your own job?
· Does the opportunity decrease the risk of impediments being placed in your path?
· Does the opportunity enable you to support your personal causes?
· Does entering free you?
· Does remaining where you are limit you?
Atmosphere
Columbia’s physics department then suffered from a corrosive atmosphere that made it difficult to enjoy being there. Here are a few examples:
· At a meeting to prepare students for presentations at an upcoming American Physical Society meeting, faculty members followed the unwritten rule against criticizing other faculty members and instead took it out their grievance on the graduate students.
· One Nobel Prize winner apparently delighted in telling his theory class that none of the students were smart enough to be in his class.
· A junior faculty member decided to have a fun seminar for graduate students. (Yes, some physics problems can be fun.) The above Nobel Prize winner was one of the few faculty members to attend this special seminar. He astonished everyone by interrupting the seminar and announcing that he had done a calculation and did not consider the problem to be significant.
Well, I was used to tough games. After all, I had talked a nut case out of stabbing my friend. However, this was new territory for me. Did I really have to be that blood thirsty to survive in physics?
At a minimum, the atmosphere made it very difficult for me to have kindly thoughts about Columbia’s physics department. The result, much to my regret, was that my thesis advisor (Charles Baltay) never received appropriate thanks from me for his support.
Even in a bad situation, there probably are people on your side. Find them and thank them.
Daughter
Talk about life changing events! The first sight of that little face changes you. You now have a real reason for living.
Ramesi and Mom
Being the Only One
I was told that I was the first African American to get a PhD in Physics from Columbia University. I have no way of knowing whether or not that is true.
I do know that being the only Black person in the class, department, section, division, or directorate always was a more significant issue for them than it was for me.
You must be so much in charge of your game that no one can afford to ignore you.
If I had to do it all over again, would I again play The Game? The answer obviously is yes. You either use the rules of The Game to your advantage, or you are disadvantaged by the rules of The Game.
Was I seeking greatness? Unlike in the academic world, greatness normally belongs to the whole and not the individual. The individual normally receives rewards only if the whole is rewarded. Whatever credits and rewards I received stemmed from the success of the whole.
Was I lucky? If lucky is preparation meeting opportunity, then I was lucky. You too can be that lucky.
What was my favorite “business” moment? Without doubt, it was created by a very little Native American young lady. She was fascinated by the microphone cord leading to the hands of Tom Shortbull – President of Oglala Lakota College. True to Native American tradition, Tom continued his remarks and let her be her. That annual Model Institutions for Excellence meeting at Oglala Lakota College long will live in many memories, but that was the highlight for me. We all should have the freedom to be who we are.
Do I cry? Romantic comedies get me every time.
Was I a good husband? No. Two divorces proved that to me. I simply was too distracted by The Game to satisfy all of my wives’ emotional needs.
Am I a good father? You will have to ask my children. I can say that we have created great memories together.
Do I have diversions? Yes. Fishing is my excuse for watching nature, sunrises, and sunsets. Reading satisfies my curiosity. Travel, particularly with my children, creates great memories.
Mentors - Two
Columbia University’s Nevis Laboratories was the home base for my PhD research. If you entered the building and immediately turned left, you would reach the office I shared with five other research assistants. If you entered the building and did not turn, you would reach Marcel’s office. Occasionally, over the following decades of our friendship, Marcel and I would debate whether or not he ever said hello to me during the three years I was at Nevis. I say no. He said yes.
I do know that I was greatly surprised when Marcel called me at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. My initial thought that the call must be some kind of joke was replaced by the thought that I at least should listen to him, and so another door opened.
Marcel invited me to apply for the position of staff assistant in the Physics Section of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Division of the Research Directorate of the National Science Foundation. It was an entry level position. It seemed to be an interesting way to spend a couple of years. It eliminated any pressing need for thought about a career. Why not do it?
That is how I ended up in Washington, DC, being interviewed for a position at the National Science Foundation.
Impossible Problems – Two
Part of the interview process for the position of Staff Assistant in the National Science Foundation’s Physics Section was a series of individual interviews with program officers. One program officer seemed to be especially eager for his opportunity to question me. He seemed to be bubbling over with anticipated as he closed the door, and he immediately launched into his question.
I carefully listened to his statement of the problem, and quickly pointed out why (as stated) the problem could not be solved.
Oops! Realizing his mistake, he had no choice but to explain the beautiful trap he would have laid for me if only he had not been so excited. I must admit, that I might not have solved a correctly stated version of the problem. It involved one of those extremely sophisticated and not obvious points that all physicists love.
Do not be so respectful of authority that you suffer as a result of not letting authority know that it has posed an impossible problem.
Sit by the Door
Less than a month on the job as staff assistant to Marcel Bardon, Marcel requested that I accompany him to a meeting of the National Science Board (NSB). The NSB is the governing body of the National Science Foundation.
I was slightly in front of Marcel, as we walked into the NSB conference room. As soon as I entered the room, the NSB Executive Secretary left her seat and walked toward me. Before she could say anything, Marcel said “He is with me.”
In that moment, I understood my mission in life. I would sit by The Door and learn to use their system to benefit causes that otherwise never would be supported.
If you do not understand the reference to Sam Greenlee’s novel, try to find a copy of the book. I prefer the book to the movie.
Mentors - Three
Marcel took care of my practical training for survival at the National Science Foundation. One of his first and most useful suggestions was to always include at least one mistake in any document I wrote, such as a minor spelling or punctuation error. He went on to explain that the higher ups would catch the mistake and miss what we really were trying to do. It works, because it gives the higher ups the impression that they have made a contribution without requiring that they actually understand what you are trying to do.
My executive training began after I drafted a response to a nut-letter for the signature of Guyford Stever, then NSF Director. The short story is that, if the nut-letter writer’s suggestion for collecting energy from neutrinos were possible, this world long ago would have been incinerated. My draft reply did not focus on the science. Instead, I took the high road and suggested that history would have to be the judge of who was right. Evidently, I hit just the right tone, because Jerry Fregeau asked me how I had managed to write it just the way Guy would have written it. That was the beginning of a long series of conversations and tasks that in retrospect constituted my executive training.
Jerry would give me a biography. A couple of weeks later, he would pop into my office for a conversation about that biography. These were not biographies of shy retiring people. They all had careers along the lines of General Joseph W. Stilwell, who struggled against many obstacles to do what he thought was right for World War II China; General George Catlett Marshall, who developed the Marshall Plan; and President Harry Truman, who dropped the atom bomb.
And then there were the non-physics writing assignments.
In my life, I only wrote one document that I wish I had kept a copy. That document is the approval memorandum that was sent to the National Science Board to authorize starting the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) program. In the memorandum, I made some predictions about possible results of the program. It would be nice to know whether my predictions were fulfilled.
Mentors - Four
Edward Todd was Director of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Division, and Jerry Fregeau’s boss. When the National Science Foundation’s one Research Directorate was split into several research directorates, Ed became the Acting Assistant Director of the Directorate for Astronomical, Atmospheric, Earth, and Ocean Sciences (AAEO). In creating AAEO, the National and International Directorate was eliminated and incorporated into AAEO’s research divisions: Astronomy, Atmospheric Sciences, Earth Sciences, Ocean Sciences, and Polar Programs – which included the U.S. Antarctic Research Program.
I was brought into AAEO’s directorate office as the special assistant for science planning and budgeting. I figure that I was the perfect choice, because I had never had a formal course in any the disciplines and the major task of the new directorate was creating one functioning unit out of prior competitors. I was not biased in favor of anyone.
My executive training took a new form. If Ed and I were sitting in a meeting, at its end Ed would ask me what I would do. After my reply, Ed would say that is what we are going to do.
You can imagine how popular a thirty-something year old Black man must have been in the sea of white faces determining who would stay and who would go and deciding who would get the funding they requested.
Over the next few years, all of the people between me and the top position moved on to other jobs, and I moved up to take their places. I soon had over one hundred and sixty people reporting to me.
You just have to believe that you are doing the right thing and make certain that the documentation supports your case.
Listening
Once you become responsible for science planning and budgeting, the key measure of your success becomes how effective you are at getting projects included in the President’s Budget to Congress document.
Obviously, the President’s Budget is not going to mention small funding amounts. So, a project had to require significant resources. My personal minimum was five million dollars per year.
In addition, a project had to:
Be recognized as addressing the needs of a significant community of scientists. If necessary, we would commission a study to determine the need.
Have detailed plans for accomplishing the community’s objectives. If necessary, as a precursor to submission of the project, we would fund development of those plans.
Have clearly defined evaluation standards.
There were no complaints about my ability to raise funds for a lot of extremely expensive scientific hardware (telescopes, ships, etc.), and to see the projects through to completion.
Listening was the key to our success. On a rotating schedule, the divisions offered monthly briefings on their latest scientific results. Weekly senior staff meetings were devoted to consensus building on issues facing the directorate. Budget decisions were made in open consultation with the division directors.
In short, we did our best to make certain that everyone in the directorate understood why we were doing what we were doing.
Mentors - Five
After a few years, Astronomical Atmospheric, Earth, and Ocean Sciences’ front office staff was reduced to me and Dan Hunt – with the exception of support staff. I had become used to moving on to a new position roughly every year, and Dan had given me the opportunity to learn-by-doing all of the front office activities. Looking for a new challenge, I walked into Dan’s office for my most embarrassing moment in life.
I told Dan that I felt that I had pretty much learned everything there was to learn in AAEO’s front office and it was time for me to look for another job. Dan’s immediate reply was “Do not do that. I will retire.”
Shocked and speechless, my mind must have stopped working, because I have no memory of the rest of the meeting.
Two weeks later, we held Dan’s retirement party.
Someone asked me whether I had other embarrassing moments. My answer was yes, but the others all involved women.
In order for me to feel embarrassed in a business situation, there would have to be conclusive evidence that I had totally misread the situation. The system I used in AAEO was one of inclusion. Everyone provided input. Everyone participated, directly or indirectly, in the discussion of priorities. Consensus was reached. Everyone, directly or indirectly, had the opportunity to object to the consensus action. Anyone trying to embarrass me by claiming that I in some manner had failed AAEO would have exposed themselves and not me.
The same system also eliminated doubt. I was not the only one who was right. The more than one hundred and sixty people in AAEO were right. I just needed to remember our collective decisions.
In retrospect, I probably should have realized that Dan might retire, but that thought simply did not occur to me before the faithful meeting.
Son
My poor son! His grandfather let him know early in life that he was expected to produce another Bridgewater male and that that was just the beginning of the expectations. I just want him to enjoy his life.
Akin Joshua in the middle of three generations of Bridgewaters
Job Interviews
I probably hold the record for the two shortest interviews for executive positions at the National Science Foundation. They both consisted of one question and one answer.
Then NSF Director Richard Atkinson opened his interview by stating that his staff office that said that I was very hard on them. I agreed that I had been, and explained that staffing in AAEO’s front office had been reduced from five people to two people (me and Dan Hunt). So, whenever his staff proposed to do something we did not have time to do, I told them why we were not going to do it. End of interview, promotion received.
Donald Langenberg was in the Director’s Office, when I came up for another promotion. Donald started by saying that some people considered me to be too young for the job. My counter was that that meant that they did not understand the consensus management system we used in AAEO. End of interview, promotion received.
Do not avoid the stones others are certain to throw at you. Make them your strength.
Hire Smart People
I usually was one of the first people to arrive for any meeting. In this case, I was a little late for a meeting of a working group that was preparing the U.S. negotiating strategy for the Antarctic treaty negotiations. The meeting included National Science Foundation, Navy, and State Department representatives.
When I entered, a lively debate was in progress and the one female voice was dominating the conversation with her command of the issues. From where I was sitting, I could not see who she was until people began to leave the room at the end of the meeting. I immediately approached her and asked – “Are you Ann Hollick from Berkeley High School?” Once again, the Berkeley college preparation track had done its job well.
My strategy for hiring was to hire smart people and let them be creative in doing their job. Your goal always should be to hire people who will produce products that are more creative and effective than you imagined being produced.
Since female faces were in short supply, I also hoped that the smart women I hired would inspire others in the organization to hire women. Adair Montgomery and Barbara Patala never failed me.
One other young lady came to me via a different path. NSF’s division of personnel management forwarded to me the then new Reagan Administration’s request that I hire Nancy Brewster. Nancy was a conservative Republican from California. The job was her reward for her service to the Reagan campaign. It did not take me long to conclude that I should accept the offer.
You see, NSF had these formal rules that said that the directorates should not directly do business with the Office of Management and Budget, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Congress. However, AAEO frequently directly received requests for information or assistance from those organizations, and we frequently directly met their needs. Nancy was great protection and the perfect activist, when action was required.
Adair, Barbara, Nancy and the other one hundred and sixty plus AAEO staff members did all of the real work. My job just was to orchestrate their efforts.
If the people you hire for key positions are not as smart as you, you will end up doing their work.
Some of My AAEO Crew
Impossible Situation
Frank Johnson was Assistant Director for Astronomical Atmospheric, Earth, and Ocean Sciences, and I held the number two position of Deputy Assistant Director for AAEO, when one day Frank got it into his head that he wanted the division directors to collect and send to him certain information. I immediately explained to him just how much the division directors were going to dislike any such request. He instructed me to issue the request.
Well, one of the division directors (who in a senior staff meeting held when John Slaughter was AAEO Assistant Director had accused me of lying) saw this request as his opportunity to finally get rid of me. He convinced the other division directors to demand a special meeting with Frank Johnson and without me being present. At the meeting, he demanded my scalp for issuing the outrageous request. Frank Johnson’s reply that he had instructed me to issue the request ended the meeting. Ed Todd thoroughly enjoyed telling me about the meeting.
When someone presents you with an impossible situation, do not hesitate to let them know that you understanding the position in which they have placed you.
Look in the Gift Horse’s Mouth
While John Slaughter was Assistant Director for Astronomical, Atmospheric, Earth, and Ocean Sciences, he was offered the Glomar Explorer to use as a scientific research drilling ship. At the time, even to me, this seemed to be a great idea. Certainly the cost of converting the Glomar Explorer to a drilling vessel had to be less than the cost of building a new ship.
John consulted Frank Press, who was the President’s Science Advisor. Frank sent a memorandum to President Carter. President Carter approved the National Science Foundation acquiring the Glomar Explorer for conversion to drilling.
John left NSF for a while. By the time John came back as NSF Director, Frank Johnson was AAEO Assistant Director, and the situation had changed.
You see, the Glomar Explorer was designed to lift an intact Soviet nuclear submarine into its moon pool. When Frank and I finally had the opportunity to inspect the ship, it quickly was apparent that the cost of renovating it would be much higher than anyone had anticipated. I had anticipated more open space for positioning drilling equipment and supplies. Instead, every bit of space seemed to be occupied by heavy gauge steel support members.
Frank and I concluded that the best strategy for dealing with this project that had been approved by the President was to let it slowly die.
Unfortunately, Frank apparently did not inform John of our plans.
One of John’s staff members was able to use the argument that we were killing the project to justify John taking the project away from AAEO and into the Director’s Office.
President Reagan came into office. John and Frank left NSF, and I became Acting Assistant Director for AAEO.
Now, you must understand that I have the bad habit of telling the truth, as I understand it, whenever people ask me a question. So, whenever anyone asked me what I thought about the Glomar Explorer my reply would result in Ed, the new NSF Director, having Richard Nicholson invite me into his office for a little chat. Fortunately, by the time the stories reach Richard they always had evolved to the point of not being recognizable as anything I had said. I learned to appreciate the visits with Richard, because they gave me a vehicle for letting Ed know what I would do if the program were returned to me.
Finally, they reached a tipping point and decided to see whether my plan would work. Within months, an oil exploration vessel was acquired and subsequently converted to become the Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling (JOIDES) resolution. Ed thanked me for being right.
Timing is everything. In this case, the initial decision really did seem to be a cost effective solution. However, as times changed, and the cost of commercial drilling ships fell, there clearly was a need to bury the horse.
Keep checking the horse’s mouth for signs of death.
Ed Knapp’s Executive Council
Upward communication
The Glomar Explorer disaster was a classic example of the failure of two-level upward communication. Since such communication tends to be informal, you have difficulty confirming that you are protected.
To ensure that you have protection on a controversial project, I recommend that you invent excuses for written assessments that would be submitted to higher level officials.
Unfortunately, the Presidential label prevented use of this option in the case of the Glomar Explorer.
Carrot and Stick
The Division of Earth Sciences had some unusual practices. The members of their peer review panel elected their successors. Every award was the same size. In my first year, I gave them an extra one million dollars. The following year, I asked them whether they had used the funds in the manner they had proposed. They said no. They did not think that I had been serious. Needless to say, by the time Robin Brett became the new division director, I was ready for drastic action.
Robin and I decided to play the good guy, bad guy routine. We met with the division’s program officers, and I promised them that they would never get another budget increase from me unless they changed their way of doing business. I then promised to double their budget in three years, if they made the changes I thought were needed. I also promised to fund a National Academy of Sciences study that would justify their funding increase. Robin stepped in to say that perhaps I was a bit harsh but maybe the program officers should think about what I was saying.
The next week, Robin and I met with the program officers for them to vent. They did not think they were as bad as I had said, but they were willing to cooperate.
The Academy study cost me eighty thousand dollars, but it was well worth it. Robin did a great job of selling the needed increases to the other division directors, and we were able to double the budget in the promised three years.
There are times when you have to use the carrot and the stick.
Don’t Get Mad. Get Even.
John Slaughter was Assistant Director, and I was in charge of program planning and budgeting, for Astronomical, Atmospheric, Earth, and Ocean Sciences, when (during a senior staff meeting) one of the division directors accused me of lying about some matter. I did not react during or after the meeting, but after the meeting Ed Todd could not help commenting on my lack of response. Ed was famous for his temper. He could get mad enough to make you think that he was going to have heart attack one minute, and be his usual calm charming self the next minute. That was not my way, because the angry Black man image is not a recipe for success.
As an aside, in this society, the angry White man is a picture of strength, and the angry Black or Hispanic man is a poor embittered creature. We will know that truly equality has been reached, when Black and Hispanic men can freely express their anger.
In this case, the offending division director could not resist his errant ways. Every time someone on his staff came to me with some new complaint about him, I would tell them that all they needed to do to get rid of him was to report his actions to the assistant director. No one did, until the division director made a fatal mistake.
If I had planned the circumstances, I could not have done a better job. It was well known that the division director had made several illegal attempts to hire his Australian buddy for the position of deputy division director. Each time, I had used the advice of the division of personnel management to block the hire. Finally realizing that his buddy never would get hired, he hired someone who knew what working with him would be like. He selected one of his program officers to be his deputy division director. That program officer soon had second thoughts about taking the job. So, he visited me to seek advice.
I gave him my usual talk about the many problems people in that division had reported to me, and ended with my usual advice that all they needed to do to get rid of the division director was to tell the assistant director (Frank Johnson) what was going on within the division. Almost to my surprise he followed my advice, and the division director soon was out of the building.
I am a firm believer that people who are so lacking in judgment just are advertising their lack of ability to take care of business. You just need to be patient and exploit their weaknesses, but make certain that it is others and not you who document the offender’s errors.
Of course, it did not hurt the case for his removal that this division director had recently convinced Frank Johnson to commit Frank’s prestige to making a 25 meter millimeter wave telescope the top priority of the directorate, only to withdraw his own support from the project when the three of us met with NSF’s Director to settle the final financial details.
Diplomacy – Two
By the time I became Deputy Assistant Director for Astronomical, Atmospheric, Earth, and Ocean Sciences, I had listened to several years’ worth of U.S. Antarctic Program and State Department complaints about the newly developing Peoples Republic of China Antarctic program. The lack of Chinese experience with cold-weather technology was obvious and damaging to the environment around their station. The lack of Chinese interest in receiving technical assistance from the other Antarctic programs was puzzling, because all of the other Antarctic programs really were a close knitted group.
Soon, the chancellor of the Atlanta University Center, Charles W. Merideth gave me the opportunity to travel to China as co-leader of a delegation of Black Chemists. (The co-leader position, and the honorary chemist title, solely reflected the size of my NSF budget.)
The trip was a study in contrasts. All of the early meetings with Chinese university faculty members were like homecomings. Most had attended American universities. We inevitably would open each meeting by discussing the current activities of the surprisingly large number of people we knew in common.
When I walked into the meeting with Chinese Antarctic personnel in Beijing, it immediately was clear that something was wrong. First, the meeting was held in a large room with dozens of people in attendance. Second, their leader began to give a speech!
I pulled my mind trick, to release my subconscious mind to work through the possible sources of the problem. I soon got a report back that there was only one thing that the U.S. State Department would not consider to be important enough to discuss with China.
Probably two minutes into the leader’s speech, I stopped him and stated that there must be a misunderstanding. I told him that it must not have been explained to him that the United States would not charge China for providing technical assistance. The room broke out in smiles. Two months later, the first Chinese delegation was in Washington, DC for a technical assistance meeting.
Ed Todd then was the Division Director for Polar Programs. He told me that the State Department was trying to figure out why China had finally agreed to receive technical assistance. I refrained from telling him that the State Department should have given China a complete explanation of the offer.
When there is a problem, it probably is due to something not having been explained. You just have to identify the missing piece of the puzzle.
Honorary Chemist
With Charles Merideth in the Great Hall of the People
The Delegation of Black Chemists
Out Yourself
As noted earlier, any project worth doing must have the support of a significant community of scientists. When I joined the Astronomical, Atmospheric, Earth, and Oceans Directorate, it had an interesting relationship with the National Academy of Sciences. The organizations that were grouped into AAEO had a history of letting Academy committees determine their own priorities, and then send in a bill for conducting whatever studies the Academy wanted to conduct.
That hardly seemed reasonable to me, because the heart of my system for developing funding projects was AAEO control of the development of projects, to ensure that they would fit into AAEO’s funding priorities. I saw no need to fund study of projects that we were not considering funding.
When I became Acting Assistant Director for AAEO, I figured that it was time to solve the Academy problem. So, I announced that I no longer would approve funding for any Academy project that had not been initiated by AAEO staff in response to AAEO priorities. It did not take long for one of the Academy’s elder statesmen to appear in my office.
I explained to him and his junior colleague in no uncertain terms why there was a new day. He announced that he did not have to listen to me and stomped out of my office.
At that afternoon’s Executive Council meeting, I informed the Director that he could expect to hear from the Academy’s elder statesman and gave him my version of events. I heard no more about the incident.
If you anticipate incoming flack, be the first to get out your story.
Describe Yourself
It was my first visit to a university that years later would receive tens of millions of dollars from one of my programs.
They had proposed picking me up at 6pm outside my hotel for dinner the evening before the meetings started. Shortly before 6pm, a couple engaged in a lively conversation walked past me into the hotel. Well after 6pm, one of the hotel staff members came out and asked me whether I was Dr. Bridgewater.
Describing you before those first meetings helps avoid those awkward moments.
Top Secrets
I had only one opportunity to make use of my Top Secret clearance. There had been months, if not years, of meetings to develop the United States’ negotiating strategy for the Antarctic Treaty negotiations. Finally, the document arrived on my desk for my concurring signature. After a careful reading, I concluded that there was not a single thing in the document that had not already been printed in the newspapers. I signed, but I still wonder how many other Top Secret documents really contain nothing more than public knowledge.
Women and Minorities
Throughout my decade in the Astronomical, Atmospheric, Earth, and Ocean Sciences Directorate, I collected an annual tax of one million dollars to be redistributed back to those divisions willing to fund projects that would increase the participation of women or minorities in AAEO’s disciplines. I even arranged the bookkeeping so that those who participated benefitted not just in that fiscal year but in future fiscal years. If you expect that every division “got it,” you would be wrong. However, those who understood the need did some much needed things.
AAEO build the marine sciences building at Hampton University, computer centers at Jackson State University and the Atlanta University Center, and funded a host of smaller scale projects.
In my opinion, the greatest measure of the success of those days can be found in the changes in the faces displayed in the American Geophysical Union’s EOS publication over the years. No one can doubt that the participation of women in the geophysical sciences has greatly increased.
Congress
Exaggerated politeness!
For a decade I attended NSF’s congressional budget hearings and wondered at the extraordinarily polite dance of the republican and democratic committee members.
You had to like them, even when the giver of the Golden Fleece Award asked me a detailed question about that morning’s New York Times article on a project that supported by another agency. I was not about to get on the congressional record as criticizing another agency!
I miss those days. You had to be careful not to inadvertently be political. However, you never had to deal with political issues.
Politics of Global Warming
When the Reagan Administration entered office, one of its first acts was to get rid of the Carter Administration political appointees. At that time, I was the Deputy Assistant Director for Astronomical, Atmospheric, Earth, and Ocean Sciences, and I therefore “temporarily” also acquired the job of Acting Assistant Director. “Temporarily” turned out to be almost three years.
Our practice was to have monthly briefing on the latest scientific issues, and well before Reagan entered office growing carbon dioxide concentrations over Hawaii had become an obvious source of potential climate change. With Reagan in office, we were able to shift the focus from carbon dioxide as a scientific issue to carbon dioxide as a security issue. After all, at that time, it was felt that only the Soviet Union and Canada would benefit from global warming. We were able to convince the Reagan Administration to give us twenty million dollars a year to monitor the impacts of climate change, in the form of an initiative entitled Global Geosciences. They bought the argument that change creates opportunities as well as consequences, and that the United States needed to have the scientific understanding necessary to exploiting opportunities and mitigating consequences. Thus, the Reagan Administration became the first of many succeeding administrations to support long-term research on global warming.
When I see global warming now being cast as a Republican versus Democrat issue, I miss those days. Then I truly thought that it did not make much difference who was President. Campaign promises quickly disappeared, and the business of government continued – perhaps solely because the public did not get to see how well Republicans and Democrats worked together behind closed doors.
There is a real need to return to discussing climate change as a national security issue. Climate change is redistributing heat and water. Redistributed heat and water is changing where food crops can be grown. If people cannot grow alternative food crops, they will have to move to new areas. If those new areas are occupied, there will be conflict.
Oil fields typically are productive for fifty years. In self-defense, oil producing nations are attempting to develop advanced economies that inevitably use more oil – making a smaller share available for oil consuming nations and sowing the seeds for conflict. Developing alternative energy sources will be an important form of self-defense.
Change does create opportunity. In this case, we should seize the opportunity to develop a national security strategy that minimizes the danger to the U.S. from global water, food, and energy problems.
Humor
I was a member of a panel of U.S. government officials called before a U.S. Senate subcommittee to testify in defense of the Reagan Administration’s environmental policies. I had managed to avoid having to read the full speech that had been prepared for me by complementing the subcommittee chair on how closely his opening remarks paralleled by prepared remarks. So, I was pretty relaxed when the question and answer round started.
The questions were those normally asked until the subcommittee chair asked a question that had no good answer. Regardless of the answer, whoever responded would be in trouble with either the Reagan Administration or the environmentalists. Given that dilemma, the panel fell silent. After a long pause, I spoke up to say “Well, I can see that no one wants to answer that question.”
Even the subcommittee chairman laughed at that remark. I then went on to give a reasonable non-answer to the question. My colleague from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration backed me up with an equally obscure non-answer, and the subcommittee chairman moved on to his next question.
Used judiciously, humor can diffuse a difficult situation – as long as you back it up with some substance.
It is not You. It is Your Budget.
When you control a budget of almost one-half billion dollars, you receive a lot of phone calls and invitations. The temptation to think that you might be special could be powerful. Fortunately, I had some help in keeping my ego in check.
I had met one ocean scientist several times. Each times, we exchanged greetings as though we never before had met.
This time, he was on the list of oceanographic institution representatives I would be visiting to discuss AAEO’s evolving support for ocean sciences. I was visiting him in my role of the guy who controlled a very large budget.
As soon as I walked into his office, he said “Hello Al. It is so nice to see you again.”
It is not you! It is your budget!
Time to Sit by the Door
After a decade on the fast track to the penultimate position in the Federal Senior Executive Service, I found myself at a crossroads. I held two positions (Deputy Assistant Director, and Acting Assistant Director), and I was a single parent with a 16 year old girl and 6 year old boy at home. It was clear to me that that was not a sustainable situation.
Fortunately, I was able to use my program development skills to create a new role for myself. I became an advocate for the underrepresented in science. The first step was to conduct a policy analysis, to determine what would be the basis for my future efforts. It did not take long to discover that I had not previously appreciated the implications of one number that should have rung an alarm bell.
At that time, each year more than one hundred thousand underrepresented minority students enrolled in a U.S. college or university and declared that they intended to major in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology (SMET). At the end of the PhD pipeline, each year roughly two hundred underrepresented minority students received doctorates.
Given those numbers, it really is difficult to credit lack of student interest in SMET as being the source of the shortage of minority PhDs that so many pundits and organizations decry.
Why is retention so low? Should we blame the students or blame the faculty? What would happen, if student retention increased? If you examine the implication of the last question, it soon becomes clear that low retention is not just a minority issue. SMET department staffing is based on high dropout rates, and without incentives those high dropout rates will apply to minority students as well as majority students.
The choice of incentive to be offered was obvious. The National Science Foundation would offer to any college or university faculty member the cost of supporting underrepresented minority students, plus the incremental faculty costs of involving those students in funded research programs – from the freshman year through graduation. In 1996, “What Works: Encouraging Diversity in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology through Effective Mentoring!” (NSF 96-70) reported that 56.7% of former Research Careers for Minority Scholars were in graduate school, and 31% employed.
Imagine a world in which 56.7% of incoming freshmen went on to graduate school in their chosen field, instead of a world in which incoming freshmen are told that half of them will not survive their freshman year.
My time sitting by The Door would be devoted to institutional development and retention programs. Those elements became central features of my design of what now is known as the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation Program.
NSF’s Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) Program still supports sustained and comprehensive approaches to broadening participation at the baccalaureate level. These approaches are intended to facilitate the production of historically-underrepresented students (e.g., African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders) who are well prepared in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and motivated to pursue graduate education. The LSAMP program was congressionally mandated in 1991. The National Science Foundation currently supports forty (40) alliances nation-wide.
Building teams
It might seem that giving up a big staff would be a significant change in my life at NSF. In fact, it meant that the side activities that I always had enjoyed became my main activities. Before the change, others got to handle the details. After the change, I managed details of the entire process.
For each new program, the first detail always was team building. In those days, and perhaps even now, anyone with an idea could solicit contributions from other NSF program officers.
In my case, I restricted my efforts to the directorate level. I would ask each NSF research directorate to appoint a representative to service on a program management group. All of the business of the program management group was conducted through review of formal planning documents. Everyone was kept informed. Everyone had all of the material they would need to justify obtaining the funding contribution from their directorate. Each directorate managed the projects funded in their disciplines.
In short, each directorate received cover to do something that they should have been doing but which did not fit within the usual boxes.
Perhaps, there are opportunities in your organization to build teams capable of addressing issues that are important to you.
At the National Science Foundation, this process produced Model Institutions for Excellence, and Collaboratives to Integrate Research and Education (which continues in the form of “Partnerships”), and required outside technical assistance from expert consultants like Michael D. Baker, Bernard C. Charles, and Jason Jungsun Kim.
If you are challenging the recipients of public funds to reach beyond their normal operations, the recipients of those funds undoubtedly will need technical assistance in meeting program requirements.
With Michael Baker and Bernard Charles
Public Funds
When you work for the Federal government, you cannot afford to forget that you will be responsible for the expenditure of public funds. Basically, that means that the program design must include all appropriate accountability measures, and that all program applicants are well aware of the standards against which their success will be measured.
Model Institutions for Excellence was developed at the request of Walter Massey, then Director of the National Science Foundation. Walter wanted to leave a legacy at NSF, based on replicating his undergraduate experience at Morehouse College. His faculty mentors gave him individual research projects to substitute for coursework that might have been available at research institutions. He wanted to strengthen the STEM baccalaureate degree producing capacity of a small number of minority institutions. Selected institutions were characterized by a productive track record of awarding STEM baccalaureate degrees, a strong commitment to STEM education and undergraduate research, and an existing infrastructure appropriate for launching a major enhancement of current efforts. Together with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NSF developed MIE to provide an opportunity to define methods for improving minority institutions in STEM education and undergraduate research; target a small number of minority institutions that were poised to make a substantial contribution to the goal of increasing the number of minorities who earn STEM baccalaureate degrees and go on to enter graduate-level STEM degree programs or STEM-related careers; and produce minority institutions that would serve as models for the successful recruitment, education and production of quality-trained STEM baccalaureate degree recipients.
Michael D. Baker, Bernard C. Charles, and Jason Jungsun Kim were the key members of the team that provided technical assistance to the MIE institutions.
In 2005 speech NSF Director, Arden L. Bement said that NSF needed new metrics to document its achievements. His remarks are excellent advice to anyone designing Federal programs.
“We know that our investments are paying dividends, but we don’t have any hard data to support that assertion… The Model Institutions for Excellence, or MIE, program in EHR captures the type of data that I have in mind. MIE was launched in 1995 as a partnership between NSF and NASA, with a mission to improve the quality of science, math and engineering education for underrepresented minorities.
“The success of MIE is quantifiable. Between 1992 and 2000, the nationwide undergraduate enrollment in STEM increased by a meager nine percent. Undergraduate enrollment at MIE institutions increased by thirty-one percent over the same time period1.
“A comparison of MIE and nationwide undergraduate STEM degrees shows that the number of degrees awarded by MIE institutions increased by 46% from 1993 through 2004. Conversely, the number of STEM degrees awarded, nationwide, increased by only 19% during the same time2.
“This is the type of hard data that we need for all of our awards. The specific metrics will vary from division to division, but we must start gathering quantifiable evidence that our broadening participation efforts are successful.
“I am relying on you to help identify the metrics, and to inform your awardees that they should consider accountability for broader impacts from the inception of their research projects.”
Oglala Lakota College
Public officials are not supposed to have favorites, but I do have a favorite.
As an undergraduate, I was part of a group of University at California at Berkeley students who spent a week at a Native American Rancheria outside Bakersfield, California. We lived as they lived, except we did not have beds. I loved the food. It was almost as good as that of Mrs. Ramirez. I did not love the reception we got when we traveled off the Rancheria with some of Native American colleagues. Fortunately, our reception was more disheartening than threatening. The week was a good first step in my education on Native American affairs.
I was lucky enough to be seated next to Lakota Elder, Gerald One Feather on the flight to Rapid City, South Dakota for the review of Oglala Lakota College’s Model Institutions for Excellence proposal. I could not resist the opportunity to get his opinion. So, I asked him to read the proposal. Gerald’s highly restrained praise for the proposal, which sharply contrasted with the highly positive comments of the proposal review team, told me much about what working with OLC (http://www.olc.edu/) would be like.
Then, the average OLC student was a twenty nine year old woman with two children. Then, classes were taught in trailers left over from World War II. Now, young high school graduates have the option of remaining on the reservation to acquire a college degree. Now, as a result of their MIE award, OLC has the modern facilities and equipment required to meet the health care, education, human services, and environmental needs of the Pine Ridge Reservation. Rarely does anyone have the opportunity to so clearly see that their activities have made such a difference in the lives of people.
With John Haas, then of Oglala Lakota College
ADVICE FOR THE NEXT GENERATION
Every old man suffers to some extent from undelivered speech. In fact, for much of my career (as required) I faithfully represented the administration’s point of view, whether that administration was headed by a democrat or a republican, and whether I agreed or disagreed with the administration’s program.
Is there anything more frustrating than having to remain silence as others are voicing concepts that are at odds with your gut feelings? I certainly could not pass up this opportunity to address some issues that certainly deserve broader discussion.
Therefore, the following Old Man Stories are not stories about my past. Rather, they are stories about issues that will impact your future.
I hope that these stories will help you attain health, wealth, and happiness.
Service
Your service to the communities that matter to you will give you pleasure throughout your life. There is only one thing more gratifying than helping people who cannot help themselves, and that one thing is empowering them to help themselves.
Document, Document, Document
It did not take me long to learn that my friend Gwen Adams could word-by-word remember every conversation we ever had, and was more than willing to correct my faulty memory. Of course, the worse-case scenario would be someone falsely reporting your actions.
After Walter Massey requested that I start the Model Institutions for Excellence program, I quickly realized that my biggest problem would be ensuring that all of the participants (NSF program officers, and award principal investigators) received the same information. So, my first act was to ban telephone calls and require that all business be conducted via email.
You may not be able to ban telephone calls, but you can write a summary of every meeting (including your proposed actions as result of the meeting) and distribute it to the participants for their concurrence.
Do not let others be able to say that you did not keep them informed.
Innovation in Education
Working with Bill Somerville and a group of fellow students in the early ‘60’s to start the School Resource Volunteers Program may have been my most satisfying time. We recruited volunteers to provide whatever services Bay Area teachers needed: a beekeeper, a teacher’s aide, afterschool tutors, etc. Perhaps, that is why claims of innovation in education fail to impress me.
To me, one can learn on one’s own, but education is a process involving at least two people: a teacher, and a student. Does anyone really believe that there is anything in teacher/student education that has not been tried before? If you believe that it has not been tried, it undoubtedly is because those who previously tried it discovered that it did not work.
In principle there is nothing wrong with individuals or organizations claiming that their approach to education is innovative. However, what happens when those who fund education require that their funded projects be innovative?
In my opinion, responsible funding programs should address clearly defined needs of an identified community, and have an effective evaluation plan. Why is an effective evaluation plan needed? It serves two important purposes. It gives those who receive funding the standards against which their success or failure will be measured, and it enable the funder to determine whether or not its objectives are being met.
What happens when one of the selection criteria for an education project is that the project must be innovative? Let us first discuss what happens if we do not require innovation.
Imagine a world in which organizations that fund education projects required that all funded projects be based on principles and practices known to be effective. In such a world, great effort would be devoted to validating and replicating educational principles and practices. Is that not what the world needs? It seems logical to conclude that our major educational effort should be devoted to replicating what we know works. Who gains from educational innovation for the sake of innovation? Certainly, it is not the students.
When Walter Massey requested that I develop the Model Institutions for Excellence program, he knew what had worked for him. He wanted me to replicate that process for many more students. The many students who benefited, and continue to benefit from the opportunities Walter created, do not know our names, but we are proud of having contributed to their wellbeing.
If you have the opportunity to give others the benefit of educational principles or practices that worked for you, be confident that what worked for you should work for them.
Gatekeeper Courses
Wayne McConnell early in life had an interest in printing. That interest resulted in Wayne being placed in the Berkeley School System’s vocational track. Later, he learned from a placement test that becoming a lawyer was his recommended career path. Fortunately, Wayne has no regrets in his life. However, his story illustrates my concern about gatekeeper courses.
Not all students are equal in their abilities. Not all students bloom early. Is it possible for an educational system to be flexible enough to accommodate those whose interests and abilities develop late?
Perhaps, the question should be turned around. Should an educational system be so inflexible that it prevents late bloomers from receiving appropriate instruction?
My concern about gatekeeper courses is that those who do not enter each gate on time find themselves penalizes at the next level by lack of exposure to the concepts covered in the gatekeeper courses. Falling further behind their peers is the inevitable result.
If you are a precollege student, take as many challenging courses as possible. In my opinion, a lower grade in a gatekeeper course is better than a high grade in a less challenging course. You will be hired based on your ability to face and manage challenges. It never is too early to begin demonstrating your willingness to do so.
Standardized Tests
Tom Sanford told me that he got a 57 percentile on the Physics Graduate Record Examination, versus my then highest possible percentile – either 98 or 99. It was evident to me that Tom would go on to have a successful career in physics, after seeing his lengthy and elegant solution to a quantum mechanics problem.
In my opinion, a great standardized test taker is one who is good at solving problems that only involves a small number of reasoning steps, and does not become bogged down by a problem that does not appear to have an immediate solution. Such a person can go through the test three or four times, each time finding that their subconscious mind has produced solutions to a few more problems that previously could not be solved. Tom undoubtedly plowed through each problem to reach each solution, and simply ran out of time to complete the test.
Fortunately, there is a place for every type of brain. Unfortunately, the non-test-takers all too often are denied the opportunity to show their real talent.
Standardized test taking is a skill that you can develop. Standardized test taking is not a measure of your ability to be successful in your chosen discipline, because it requires skills that are not related to the patience and creativity needed to be a successful scientist or manager.
Education for All
How much education funding is enough?
Sue Kemnitzer told me about a conversation she had with her sister. Her sister had been watching a news program about social security when she realized that the next generation of students would be paying for her social security. Her sister finally could appreciate the programs Sue managed at NSF, because those programs would contribute to ensuring that the U.S. economy continued to have productive, highly paid workers contributing to social security.
Let us consider two scenarios.
In the first scenario funding for educating the next generation is zeroed. The resultant uneducated generation would not be able to sustain U.S. economic prosperity, and the generation that made the decision to eliminate support for education would lose its safety net as the U.S. economy stagnated.
In the second scenario, a combination of state and federal programs that would ensure that any student who is willing to do the work could receive a college degree and have their student debts forgiven.
Does the latter sound excess? What if student debts only were forgiven for those who entered military services, taught in public schools, or performed other types of public service for a certain period of time?
Proponents of this scenario would argue that the cost is reasonable for the provision of essential public services, and for protection of future U.S. economic competitiveness.
Funding of Education
My generation paid seventy three dollars a semester to attend the University of California at Berkeley. California had decided to invest in educating its citizen, in order to provide the educated workforce needed for economic growth. Now, the California State Government provides only twelve percent of the University of California System (UCS) budget, and people wonder whether it still is appropriate to call it a state university system.
What happened to make defunding UCS a rational decision? Education imposes pressure on people to move to locations that have jobs that require their qualifications. California’s graduates found that many of the desired jobs were not in the California, and they moved out. Legislators realized that they were subsidizing other states, as well as the world, by providing inexpensive college graduates. Would not you then, as a member of the state legislature, reduce state funding of education programs at state colleges? Would you care that an unintended consequence of your action would be to make higher education unaffordable for lower income residents?
Perhaps, the process was not that simple and clear cut. However, the choice remains clear. No state can expect to obtain a reasonable return on investment by providing, upfront, an essentially free college education to its citizens. The mobility of U.S. citizens is too high for that every again to produce clear benefits to the state.
The dilemma is how best to solve each state’s need for college graduates, without unfairly favoring certain states. Any one state that offered college loan forgiveness to those filling essential service positions would have its pick of college graduates. Would that be fair? Is this a case in which the Federal government should offer student loan forgiveness to any college graduate who fills an essential service position in any state?
To me, the answer is clear. U.S. future economic competitiveness depends of the availability of an educated workforce. Colleges and universities acting as businesses have priced a large fraction of the U.S. students out of a college education. Without a systematic Federal effort targeted at reducing the financial burden of a college education, U.S. economic competitiveness is certain to slip.
Driver’s License
Degrees or certificates are like a driver’s license. If you have the appropriate degree or certificate, people will not be able to tell you that you are unqualified for that particular job.
Try to obtain the highest degree or certificate available in the field you enjoy. You do not ever want anyone to be able to tell you that you are not qualified to have a job that you know you can do.
Mentoring
Mentors do not always know that they are being a mentor. Certainly, Henry Nelson just was wondering why anyone who could get an A+ on his physics exam was not in the honor society.
Whenever you learn from others, you are being mentored. Learning from others just requires careful observation and sometimes a little research on their background. After all, it is hard to follow in someone else’s footsteps, if you do not know the path they followed.
Individual Development Plan
Preparing an individual development plan (IDP) apparently has become the latest must have for postdoctoral researchers.
An IDP that listed the skill sets a postdoctoral researcher might need for any conceivable future employment opportunity might be useful, but the list might be very short.
An employer wants someone who can read, write, plot, and communicate.
Of all my formal education, two classes made the biggest contributors to my success: seventh grade typing, and General Service Administration speed reading. Everything else had to be learned on the job.
Still, preparing an individual development plan is a good idea. Just be certain that you do not so narrowly define your skill set that you fail to consider, or be considered for, unanticipated opportunities.
Any development plan should address skills in terms of:
· Reading – your familiarity with the relevant literature;
· Writing – documents that illustrate your understanding of the current status of your field;
· Plotting – your ability to develop a detailed plan of action; and
· Communicating – your ability to involve others in carrying out a plan of action.
Any development plan should answer questions such as:
· Are you improving your skill set?
· Are you meeting people who are doing interesting things?
· Do you have skills that can contribute to their success?
· Are you willing to work with them?
· Are they willing to work with you?
· Are you capable of raising the resources needed to work on your own?
Image
Your personality will determine whether you want to be the head of an organization, or whether you want to do the work in an organization. It is an important decision. Sometimes it will be determined by circumstances that are not under your control.
No matter the circumstances, you should prepare yourself for success, wealth, and fame. If they arrive, you will be ready. Until they arrive, you can console yourself in knowing that you are ready. Limits are not for you.
Hopefully, someone soon will recognize your talent and give you the opportunity you deserve.
Pain
No collection of Old Man Stories would be complete without a discussion of the effects of pain.
Our minds tell us that we can continue to do things long after our body begins to send signals that perhaps we should quit. It is very difficult to choose the right balance between continuing to enjoy challenging activities and saving your body to ensure that you will have full range of motion and flexibility in our old age. Therefore, life is a process of learning when to give up the things that no longer can be seen as being good for us.
Dad put a basketball backboard on the side of our garage. Inevitably, a ball would end up on top of the garage. Being very young, and indestructible, it seemed reasonable to jump off the garage after retrieving a ball rather than climbing down. Of course that led to the search for other challenges, and my elementary school classmate, Wayne McConnell, was a willing participant in the search. One of us had the bright idea to pile up mulch under the crossbar of a tall swing-set. Things went well, until Wayne missed the mulch, and injured his ankle. That was the end of my jumping off things career.
Next to go was smoking. It happened as a result of a play on the Berkeley High School basketball courts. I went up to block a shot, just as the shooter inexplicably moved under me. One rib came down on his shoulder. It felt as though my rib was pressing on my lung. My paranoia soon kicked in, and I began to imagine being old and not being able to breath. That was the end of thinking about ever smoking anything.
But, then I discovered endorphins.
Frankly, I sometimes thought that my UC Berkeley friend, George Phillips, was more than a little bit crazy. He was a gym rat. He walked with a limp. He had had several hip operations. Each time they would tell him not to play basketball for six months, and each time he would be back on the court in a few weeks. I truly did not understand the power of endorphins.
I gave up basketball at age thirty-five. It was an easy decision. When your knees no longer allow you to jump, it is time to quit the game. Since I still could run, soccer became new love – bad knees and all.
Imagine sitting through morning meetings in pain. Imagine walking in pain down to the field behind the White House for the lunchtime game. Imagine playing soccer for forty-five minutes on an endorphin high without pain. Imagine sitting through an afternoon of meetings in pain.
Was the forty-five minute endorphin high worth all the pain? For another twenty years, the answer was yes. Basically, I quit soccer, when my knees became so bad that I no longer could run hard enough to trigger the endorphin high.
Red wine was the latest to go. Doctors say that you immediately should give up anything you ingest that causes tingling in your mouth. I believe them.
What will be next?
The same thought process undoubtedly applies when the stimulation of your job begins to pale compared to its aggravations.
Are you preparing yourself to be able move away from the things that are making your life miserable?
Closing Comments
I have lived a life of the mind. Practically all of my real education has taken place outside of formal setting.
For those who say the luck is preparation meeting opportunities, I have been the luckiest person alive. Practically all of my opportunities never could have been anticipated, but I was ready for them.
I hope that everyone has the opportunity to be as lucky as I have been.
School Resource Volunteers
Cameroon College of Arts and Science and Technology
Peace Corps
Thank you note
Senior Executive Service
U.S. OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT
The Senior Executive Service (SES) is comprised of the men and women charged with leading the continuing transformation of government. These leaders possess well-honed executive skills and share a broad perspective of government and a public service commitment which is grounded in the Constitution. The keystone of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, the SES was designed to be a corps of executives selected for their leadership qualifications.
Members of the SES serve in the key positions just below the top Presidential appointees. SES members are the major link between these appointees and the rest of the Federal work force. They operate and oversee nearly every government activity in approximately 75 Federal agencies.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) manages the overall Federal executive personnel program. OPM staff provides the day-to-day oversight of and assistance to agencies as they develop, select, and manage their Federal executives.
A RESOURCE FOR YOUNG SCHOLARS
By Albert Bridgewater, Ph.D.
A Resource for Young scholars has three sections. On Success, On Change, and On Service.
On Success would not have been possible without the encouragement and assistance of Michael D. Baker and Tara Failey.
On Change would not have been possible without the encouragement and assistance of Kwasi Ansong, Danger Riley, Virginia Smyly, and Barbara Bridgewater.
Comment on “On Success”:
· “...if the young people you work with and mentor come away with a real understanding of root causes and societal factors influencing success and the hurdles they need to overcome to achieve it (however they define it) it will give them not only inner strength, but the ability to recognize opportunities when they do present themselves and to take advantage of those opportunities....you will have done a great "service".” - June Paci
ON SUCCESS
In my memoir “Learning to Thrive in a Changing World,” I shared a collection of stories about events that happened during my career. Several friends suggested that some of the topics discussed could have been covered in greater depth – especially as those topics related to success. I have taken their comments to heart.
In this short essay, I will walk you through how my view on success has evolved based upon a series of life experiences, dating from elementary school to my time working at the National Science Foundation.
Neighbors
Before I entered the third grade, my father moved the family to a house in Berkeley, California. The next-door neighbors were Mexican American, and they soon became an important part of our lives.
My mother and Mrs. Ramirez became best friends. I remember Mrs. Ramirez taking us to the Spanish-language Catholic mass at the Salvation Army Center – to introduce us to the Mexican American community. The other ladies tested my mother's non-existent Spanish, and Mrs. Ramirez patiently explained that mom did not speak Spanish.
If the timing of a morning visit to her house was right, I would get a snack of a freshly made tortilla covered with a layer of frijoles. If it truly was a great year, Mrs. Ramirez would have leftover meat sauce after making the tamales for her New Year's Eve birthday celebration, and I would get to eat the leftovers sauce. A close second to the sauce was the goat Mr. Ramirez would slowly cook all day in a special underground pit.
In part due to these early cultural experiences, Spanish language class in junior high school was a bit of a struggle for me. I already knew all the curse words, thanks to Bobby Ramirez – who became sort of my annoying little brother. However, I could not get rid of the accent I had acquired listening to records at the Ramirez household. After one presentation, the teacher told the class that my accent reminded her of a laborer from Southern Spain and proceeded to do something with my face that today would have her charged with sexual harassment – much to the delight of my classmates. It was a different time...
One day, Mrs. Ramirez took a bath before visiting a doctor, developed pneumonia, and quickly died. That was the only time I ever saw my mother cry.
I tell you the above so that you will understand that what I saw happening to Mexican Americans in Berkeley, California was personal to me.
In those days, it was difficult not to notice the bias against Mexican Americans in police attitudes or in the media. The media all too often used language that today would be considered racially biased, and unpublishable. However, the most noticeable personal impact stemmed from tracking.
Tracking
I first noticed the impacts of tracking in junior high school. For some reason, none of my Mexican American friends made it into the college-preparation track. I was not of the opinion that it was due to lack of ability, and I felt that I had ample evidence to back that case. For years, my parents had battled with the Berkeley school system to get my three older sisters into college-preparation classes. By the time my turn arrived, the school system was tired of fighting and there was no difficulty getting me into the right courses.
Unfortunately, my Mexican American friends did not share my advantage of having parents prepared to do battle with the Berkeley school system.
There is a noticeable difference between some and none. Since my classes had a number of African American, Chinese, and Japanese students, the composition of my classes may well have represented the overall student ethnic population. I later came to believe that the separation did not well serve those who were excluded – regardless of ethnicity.
To give you some perspective on Berkeley's then tracking system, I eventually discovered there were almost 250 students in my high school graduating class. In my college-preparation classes, I probably had met 30 of them. The suggestion in these numbers is that the school system had decided that roughly 90 percent of my class did not need to be prepared for further learning. It shocks me now that the post-World War II school system administrators apparently thought that 90 percent of their graduates did not need to be prepared for further learning. This was, after all, the time of the G.I. Bill, which stimulated a surge in U.S. education and productivity.
Of more concern than the numbers was the impact on individual lives. The star basketball player had multiple college offers that he was not qualified to accept, due to lack of course preparation. (Ironically, his two daughters are now academic super-stars.) Non-college-preparation students were given vocational training in careers that before too long became obsolete, due to changing technology. As an example of the system's failure to tap student potential, a friend in the non-college preparation track student eventually was given an aptitude test – showing that he would have excelled as a lawyer.
Times have changed, and I doubt that any of the excesses of the old tracking system would be possible today. I truly hope that its vision of what constitutes success no longer is acceptable.
Paths to Success
Perhaps now you will understand my reaction, when María Elena Zavala recently sent me a copy of “Paths to Discovery: Autobiographies from Chicanas with Careers in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering.” Her inscription – “Thank you for all that you do for all of us” – was heartwarming, in part because it spoke so directly to the important issue of defining success. Since María Elena thanked me, perhaps I had learned something from my childhood and did have some success addressing the needs of a community that was part of my early identity.
Undoubtedly, the major perk of my 28-year career at the National Science Foundation was the opportunity to meet and become friends with truly amazing and dedicated people. Three of my favorite Chicana scientists are featured in “Paths to Discovery”: Elma González, María Elena Zavala, and Diana Marinez. There are obvious parallels between their stories and mine: love of reading, curiosity about the world, and time to develop their interests. However, there is one major difference. Somehow, I never imagined myself having to become something, or even having to work for a living. I consider them to be clear success stories, because they had visions they systematically sought to achieve – and did achieve.
I know that my directionless nature frustrated my father. He never said so directly, but it eventually became clear his ideal job for me would have been a faculty position at the University of California in Berkeley – I have never applied for a faculty position at any university. Whether my father approved of it, or not, a different life course was waiting for me.
Teaching and Success
Upon graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, my options were: being drafted for service in Vietnam, or teaching in the Peace Corps. I preferred books to bullets, so I chose to go to West Cameroon in West Africa to participate in the development of the Cameroon College of Arts, Science, and Technology (the equivalent of a junior college). My confidence immediately encountered many challenges.
My first thought upon entering my first class was: “What am I doing here? I do not know how to teach.” I had received no teaching training during the Peace Corps training program. My closest previous experience was tutoring individual students in the School Resources Volunteer Program that I participated in founding through Stiles Hall – the university YMCA in Berkeley.
However, the students in my class were among the best of the best in West Cameroon, which worked in my favor. They ranged in age from 18 to 45, were highly motivated, and would excel in any environment. Over the years, a number of them graduated from U.S. colleges and universities. In fact, the University of Washington sent me a letter congratulating me on how well I had prepared one of my students in mathematics. Decades later, I was told that the same student had gone on to perform the first open-heart surgery in Cameroon.
Serving as a teacher in this capacity was exhausting. You have to understand that, after leaving Cameroon, I never again had to work quite as hard. In my second year in Cameroon, I had 20 contact hours of new material per week teaching physics, logic, applied mathematics, and economics. I survived the year only because my students took pity on me and adjusted to the accommodations that needed to be made.
In retrospect, I would say that I was a good teacher, largely because I showed up and was fully present for my students. Is that not the most important aspect of all educational relationships? You cannot do the learning for someone, but you can give them the opportunity to learn – whether you are a teacher, or a mentor.
All things considered, I enjoyed teaching in Cameroon, and the experience was pivotal in shaping my future goals. I reasoned that if I went to graduate school, I might become a better teacher.
Research and Success
I applied to graduate school near the end of 2-years in Cameroon. I did not really know what to expect upon my return to the U.S. I had had no one with whom to discuss graduate schools, and Newsweek was my only source of information about events in the U.S. I arrived in Manhattan to learn that new Ph.D. physicists allegedly were going to work as taxicab drivers, or (as one of my friends did) applying their talents to developing Wall Street computer systems. I discovered a competitive side to the research establishment that did not fit well with my “just-let-me-learn-all-that-I-can-learn” attitude. My key problem was that my choice of thesis area greatly limited my opportunities for personal success (by greatly limiting my independence), and the number of places where future employment might be sought. Since teaching and research assistant positions paid my way through my PhD, I did not consider quitting – learning was still fun (perhaps, fun should be part of the definition of success). I did not know what I would do with my Ph.D. I just assumed that it would not be anything dealing with physics.
I was wrong about that.
Mentors and Classic Success
The Chicanas in “Paths to Discovery” all rightly give credit to their mentors who guided their research/career development. Marcel Bardon helped me get a foot in the door at NSF where I initially took an entry-level position as staff assistant in the Physics Section. Over time, I worked with a number of individuals who made certain I had the opportunity and resources needed to accomplish my objectives. Some of these people included: H. Guyford Stever, Edward Todd, Jerry Fregeau, Richard C. Atkinson, Donald N. Langenberg, Edward A. Knapp, Walter E. Massey, Neal F. Lane, and Nathaniel Pitts.
Although many of my mentors included physicists and NSF directors, my first big promotion placed me in charge of science planning and program development for astronomy, atmospheric sciences, earth sciences, ocean sciences, and Arctic and Antarctic programs (AAEO).
In one respect, it was a dream job. Imagine being paid to listen to the best scientists in all those fields, as they visited NSF to describe their research and make the case for funding their future activities. As the one black face in the place, I noticed I was often ignored. However, I did not mind it. It allowed me to listen carefully for any tell-tale signs that their future plans might not be as realistic as presented.
In another respect, it was a high-pressure job. It would have been disastrous to recommend funding some activity that turned out to be a dud.
However, the main issue was that my new directorate had been created by combining organizations that represented two different operational cultures. On one hand, this made the program development system I put into place more likely to be accepted, because everyone had to adapt to the new system. On the other hand, combining the organizations meant that we had excess personnel. Since I was the person responsible for recommending any needed changes and staff reductions, I was certain to remain in place after the excess staff members were gone.
The situation was not a recipe for popularity. I needed to get results rapidly and consistently.
More importantly, I needed to listen to the staff. We instituted a variety of mechanisms to make certain that every staff member, including support staff, had an opportunity to participate in the discussion of all proposed development in the directorate. We did not allow anyone to be in the position of being able to say that they did not understand why we were doing what we were doing. Although we called it consensus management, it inevitably only worked because (by listening) I was able to get a good handle on the general consensus before presenting it to them – thereby minimizing inevitable infighting. Validation came through a rapid series of promotions.
For ten years, I was on the classic path to success that many career civil servants crave. My protectors smoothed the way to positions in which success meant rapid increase in responsibility and rapid promotion. At the end of that period, I held the penultimate ranking a career civil servant can hold, a staff of 170 people, a budget of almost $500,000,000, two children at home, and I was a single-parent. I was a success with all the trimming, but it was not satisfying. Perhaps, having my children with me helped me to realize that the only part of my job that I highly valued was the opportunity to help young people who otherwise might not be able to pursue a career in science. I jumped off the career train.
My protectors had paved the way to success in the tradition sense, but it left me feeling unfulfilled. Now, it was time to find my own version of success.
Mentors, Protectors and Personal
Success
Part of my first job in AAEO was reading every award jacket. I could not help noticing the salaries being paid to the supported faculty members. All too frequently, their salaries were so low that you had to assume their measure of success was not financial. They must have been motivated by their mentoring relationships with their students. I decided to base my new career phase on mentoring. But first, I needed to build the case for NSF organizations to give me funding to support my efforts.
Fortunately, it did not take long for me to effectively build this case.
NSF long had lamented the small number of minority students receiving PhDs. When I looked at the statistics, it became clear that most minority students intending to major in science were lost at the end of their first year in college.
Thus, I proposed that NSF conduct an experiment by funding the Research Careers for Minority Scholars Program (RCMS). It offered any NSF-funded research project supplemental funding to cover the costs, including stipends, tuition, and expenses for mentoring minority students from freshman year through graduation. According to data collect by the RCMS institutions, 56.7 percent of the RCMS scholars went on to graduate school, 3.8 percent went on to medical school, and 31 percent entered employment (Source: “What Works – Encouraging Diversity in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology Through Effective Mentoring” – NSF 96-70). Our “experiment” was clearly a significant success! Imagine a world in which U.S. colleges and universities had the funding needed to fully engage freshman students in research. How different would it be?
RCMS confirmed my belief that some NSF program officers recognized that there were limitations in the competitive granting process that prevented NSF from addressing the perceived racial imbalance. These program officers just needed a protective cover to justify what they knew otherwise could not be done. I had become a protector. Other programs eventually followed: Alliances for Minority Participation, Model Institutions for Excellence, and Collaboratives to Integrate Research and Education.
There is no greater satisfaction in life than seeing the fruits of your labor in the form of bright young people who clearly are on their way to doing great things. That is why I truly enjoyed my site visits to the institutions we funded over this 16 year phase of my career.
How
Young People View Success
It should be clear by now that I regard people-to-people interactions to be a critical facet of success. “Paths to Discovery” highlights the importance of faculty/student researcher/mentor relationships. My greatest concern is that young people will read about the careers of individuals like the Chicanas in “Paths to Discovery,” and conclude that they cannot follow in the Chicanas' footsteps due to a perceived inability to live up to the Chicanas' high standards. It is fundamentally important to empower young people so that they are not bound by fear of an inability to achieve high standards, or hampered by internalizing negative stereotypes.
From my point of view, young people need to be guided to live their professional lives in an impactful way, so that at the end of their careers they may perceive that:
· Of many possible paths, they chose the best career path
· They had a positive influence on the lives of others
· They tried new things until getting them right
· They regard failure as a learning experience.
Academic Success – Inconvenient
Truths
Occasionally, I am reminded of the challenges young people face, when I am asked to provide advice to young people considering entering graduate school. Whether or not entering graduate school adds value to a career has become a controversial topic. In my opinion, that is due to universities being unprepared to openly discuss certain inconvenient truths that I will describe below.
If you read the letters to the editors of the major science magazines, you might get the impression that the sole purpose of PhD science departments at research universities is research intended to produce future tenured faculty members. The truth is that science departments at research universities must also service a purpose that necessarily increases the required number of teaching and research assistants, and non-tenured faculty members above that needed to produce future tenured faculty members. That purpose is to produce a stream of undergraduates who graduate with a basic understanding of that field of science. In other words, science departments must fulfill two functions: research, and service.
Why is service provided by university science departments an inconvenient truth?
Let me approach my answer to that question by covering the advice I give to those considering enrolling in a science graduate school.
I first ask them about their level of interest in learning more about that science. I then ask them about their career objectives. Finally, I counsel them on how to find a faculty member who will pay for an appropriate graduate education. During this discussion, my main concern is whether the individual will acquire skills that further achievement of their career objectives.
I try to talk to them about service.
In my opinion, all economic transactions are based on an exchange of services – whether material, physical, or intellectual. The teaching and research assistant, and non-tenured faculty member participants in the delivery of service at science departments should benefit from providing that service, and the benefit necessarily has to be more than just the hope of achieving tenured faculty status.
Graduate students should understand that while providing service, they are acquiring communication, management, and leadership skills that will serve them well in any future job. There is a world full of opportunities that cannot be anticipated waiting for those who have those skills. I feel most comfortable about their future, when they see their graduate school experience as giving them skills needed to provide services to other individuals or organizations.
How did I come to have this attitude? My graduate school advice to others is based on my own experience – described in my memoir “Learning to Thrive in a Changing World,” and briefly mentioned above.
After spending two years in West Cameroon, I arrived at Columbia University's Physics Department only to learn that new Ph.D. physicists were highly unlikely to get any sort of faculty position. That did not disturb me, because: (1) I enjoyed learning physics; (2) Columbia was paying me to go to graduate school; and (3) I had no fixed career objectives. Perhaps, I was naive in believing that good things eventually would happen, if I just continued on the path of pursuing learning. To me learning was more than content, I was learning skills that had to be useful in situations other than just a tenured faculty position. Each of the jobs I subsequently took at the National Science Foundation (NSF), was taken because I would either learn or do interesting things.
I later received flattering confirmation that at least one Columbia University faculty member shared my belief that I had taken the correct career path, when Nobel prize winner Leon Lederman told me that he had followed my career at NSF.
I do not believe that everyone interested in science should pursue graduate school. In fact, I would advise anyone who is unable to fund their science graduate education through scholarship, teaching, or research assistance not to use their own money to pay for graduate school. You do not want to enroll in a science graduate program that does not value you enough to provide financial support!
I do believe that everyone who can find someone willing to fund their graduate education should go to graduate school. You should not limit your ability to compete for future job opportunities by passing up a golden opportunity. As one commenter on “Doctorates Up, Career Prospects Not” (Inside Higher Ed; December 8, 2014 By Doug Lederman) noted:
“My extensive nationwide search for a job has shown me that the notion of "degree inflation" is well and very much alive. That is, in order to narrow the applicant pool, HR departments require ever higher degrees for jobs that an undergrad could successfully fill.”
I do not believe that anyone should enter a science graduate program with the thought in mind that the only acceptable career outcome is to become a tenured faculty member. There are many reasons why such a narrow career objective is undesirable. Fortunately, there seems to be a growing phenomenon of candid discussion of non-academic careers for PhD recipients. Below are some data from two relevant articles. The data clearly show the importance of PhD recipients being willing to change fields or consider non-academic careers.
UC Berkeley News Center: “Ph.D. students rethink the tenure track, scope out non-academic jobs”; By Yasmin Anwar, March 20, 2013:
· A study published last year in the journal Science suggests only 20 percent of U.S. graduate students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics will land a tenure-track position within four to six years of completing a Ph.D.
· Between 2005 and 2009, American universities conferred 100,000 doctoral degrees, but only 16,000 new professorships.
· A survey by UC Berkeley’s Career Center of students who graduated with Ph.Ds. between 2007 and 2009 shows that 56 percent got jobs in academia, with 34 percent of them in tenure-track positions, 45 percent in post-doctoral appointments and 10 percent in non-tenure track faculty posts.
Inside Higher Ed – “Doctorates Up, Career Prospects Not”; December 8, 2014 by Doug Lederman:
· Just 62.7 of doctorate recipients in 2013 had what the survey defines as a "definite commitment" of employment or further study, down sharply from the usual rate over the last 20 years...
· 2013's doctorate recipients in the life sciences and engineering didn't fare much better, as only 58.5 percent of the former and 59.3 percent of the latter had definite commitments for either employment or further study upon graduation.
· About two-thirds of Ph.D. recipients in the physical sciences (65.9 percent), social sciences (69.3 percent) and education (65.8 percent) had a next step clearly defined at graduation.
Society and Success
Please let me end my discussion of success by expressing my hope that young scholars not let themselves be misguided by how society recognizes success.
The above statistics clearly indicate the importance of them viewing life and graduate school as a path opening onto opportunities for success – opportunities that cannot be anticipated.
They need the courage of their convictions. They need the fortitude to pursue their passions. They need to know that their vision of success is within their reach.
ON CHANGE
In my memoir “Learning to Thrive in a Changing World,” I shared a collection of stories about events that happened during my career. Several friends suggested that some of the topics discussed could have been covered in greater depth – especially as those topics related to change. I have taken their comments to heart.
This work is a collection of stories and thoughts exploring change as critical moments in a person's life.
It does so from the perspective of an observer from an older generation – an observer who believes that there is a close relationship between pain and change.
Pain is a sign that you need to change something is your life.
Change is the release of pain, although the change process inevitably involves pain or fear.
Rebirth
Change all too often feels like death followed by rebirth.
Fortunately, I become calm when death is a real possibility.
The gendarmes in West Cameroon had a habit of posting the heads of those they had killed overnight outside the entry to the local market. The practice was an effective reminder of the hazards of traveling at night.
One day in 1964, I had to travel from the highlands in Bamenda to Buea on the coast to attend a Peace Corps volunteers meeting. Normally, we were flown down to the coast, but this time I had to find my own transportation. It was my first and last taxi trip in Cameroon.
The taxi left once all the seats were filled with passengers. After sunset, we approached a checkpoint manned by a solitary teenaged soldier armed with an AK-47. One of the passengers became nervous. He told the soldier that I was a high ranking government official headed down to the coast for an important meeting. As I calmly looked into the soldier's eyes, it was evident that he was considering which would get him in the most trouble – stopping the taxi, or letting us go. He let us go. I did not end up in an interrogation room that time.
Standing still and accepting the moment was the right strategy that night. Normally, standing still is not an option, because living while dead and in pain rarely is a viable option.
Pain is not changing. Relief comes through change. Everything becomes possible, but nothing is practical without preparation. My brain constantly searches every path and every permutation of every path. Preparation is a beautiful dance through the possibilities.
Prelude to Change
Based on my earliest memories, I believe that I always have been an observer – observing and predicting. Whether it was clouds, waves, or a ball in flight, there always seemed to be more to learn and a library full of useful books to study. Even then, I had the habit of reading every available book on my latest interest. I built a career on reading. In retrospect, it seems strange that being curious enough to read about a great many things would lead to traditional success. But now, I have been rethinking my priorities.
I am a single-parent. My daughter is 16, and my son is 6. I hold two senior executive service positions. I testify in support of the Reagan Administration's environmental policies before the Senate. I am tired. I have no life of my own. The satisfaction from building telescopes and ships, and being at the national center of support for environmental sciences research has worn off. I fondly remember those rare moments when I had the opportunity to hear from students I had supported.
It has taken ten short years to rise from an entry-level position to what others would consider to be their ultimate ambition. The price has been having to: deal with a large staff concerned about administrative issues; be polite with people I know we will not support; and be the public face – even when my heart is not connected to the issue. There must be some better way of living. There must be some better place to be.
Perhaps, it might be time to test the academic world. I apply for a university vice presidency that evidently requires someone with my skill sets. A year later, I finally hear from them. They apologize for not having understood my accomplishments, and they want to know whether I still am interested in the position. The answer is no.
I have had a year in which to think about my life and make the needed changes. Despite there being thousands of people in my database, there are not very many people who have seen me in action – advising on structuring national projects for inclusion in the President's budget to Congress and carrying those projects through to completion. I could do other things, but I am a fish is water at the National Science Foundation. I can continue to do the things I enjoy, without holding on to the trappings of bureaucratic power.
Hope versus Faith
I belong to the generation that was going to save the world. The Kennedy Administration sent thousands of young Americans across the globe, to give others the benefits of our skills. We may have had skills, but could we understand the needs of the people we were sent to help. I can only say that I was there for my students. Their hope exceeded anything that I could possibly have given them. Their faith in themselves took them on to accomplishments for which I could take little credit. Is their world better today, because I was there? Perhaps...
Frankly, in retrospect, I give my former students all the credit for their success. They were the best of the best in West Cameroon. They were eager to take advantage of what was the first opportunity to complete the equivalent of an associate degree in West Cameroon. I even was told that one of them went on to perform the first open-heart surgery in Cameroon. Their world undoubtedly is a better place, because they had hope and determination.
I have lived through too many wars and conflicts to believe that the fulfillment of hope inevitably leads to a better life.
Sometimes, I think that social interactions are subject to their own law of entropy. In the physical world, entropy tells us that the ultimate state of the universe is an absence of ordered states – a cold death. In the social world, it seems that states based on evil eventually collapse from their own internal contradictions, and states based on good eventually collapse because their citizens become complacent. Collapse is a form of death. Are states constantly reincarnating themselves, cycling through the various stages of rebirth and death?
Kwasi Ansong argues that constantly monitoring, evaluating, and changing are paramount to the very survival of ordered states. “You cannot rest on your laurels or let your guard down or else you become irrelevant in this context.” I have to agree with him.
Unfortunately, the required monitoring, evaluating, and changing apparently has produced a world that all too often does not appear to be savable. I have been forced to retreat to my inner core. My prayer is that the world shares my inner core values. Number one on that list is that I must live each day to do what I can to help others.
It is my hope that the masses working in some collective sense of what is right for the world individually will do enough of the right thing to prevent the world's climate from crossing the tipping point that would lead to mass extinction.
My faith tells me that some form of intelligent life will evolve after a mass extinct, and perhaps that new life form will do a better job of protecting the planet.
Transition
Change is difficult. Those who benefit from the old way of doing things see their advantages disappearing. They naturally make use of any available tools to postpone the day when no one will want to buy their product/idea, or believe that they represent the best interests of society. Since we live in the disinformation age – an age in which there is an audience for every idea, no matter how discredited it might be – delay until a crisis point is reached seems inevitable.
So, the issue in your transition is not that of winners versus losers. The issue is whether you can teach your losers how to become winners.
Change Agent
In retrospect, I believe that one of my primary strengths during my time in charge of budget and planning for astronomy, atmospheric, earth, and ocean sciences was that I had never had a formal course in any of those disciplines. I was a neutral, who could judge them without bias.
Since the five divisions never before had had all of their research and logistics capabilities under one organizational umbrella, my first task was to design a system to ensure transparency in the flow of information upward from the division (in terms of scientific input) and downward to the divisions (in terms of policy and budgetary recommendations). Since it was a closed universe, it was possible to enlist all of the divisions in promoting the organization's objectives. I may have become the lightning rod for those whose ambitions exceeded their arguments, but no one could say that they had not fully participated in the process that led to the collective decision.
Unfortunately, for society as a whole, disinformation is as likely to triumph as information, and there always are parties outside the loop – ready to criticize any result.
Image
I have an office that seemingly no one wants. Am I being punished? It might be a space for a secretary, but it leads to an even smaller space occupied by another person. Is she also being punished? Her only exit from her space is pass my desk. The two of us apparently are in exile, but I do not care about the appearances. The Director of the National Science Foundation has given me the authority to put together a significant program, and that is all that I need. However, I later learn that he felt insulted that others had given me such a space. I then get an office with a window.
None of it really matters. I have a system that works.
I have ten years of experience putting together packages appropriate for inclusion in the President's budget to Congress. People trust me to help them spend their funds. I know what the system does not allow them to do, if the normal course of business is followed. I know what I, they, and the system needs to be able to do to ensure that it is responsive to national needs – in other words, what we finally have gotten around to doing – that we long ago should have been doing.
Reading,
Reasoning, and Relationships
Reading, Reasoning, and Relationships works for me.
Reading has been the core of any success I have had. After all, you cannot learn, if you cannot read. My one edge consistently has been being as well informed as those with whom I am dealing. I do not intend to be the expert. I do intend to be the person who can make use of the information experts have discovered. I spend practically all of my work day maintaining my edge by reading.
Reasoning is the path you follow to achieve your objectives. Reasoning is as elusive as the meaning of words. Words are just sounds that elicit reactions, based on the background of the listener. Therefore, you cannot assume that your audience understands your reasoning. I must give them the opportunity to prove that they understand my objectives.
Relationships based on mutual interest work well, as long as there is no opportunity for misunderstanding about the mutual interest – which brings me to writing, which cycles back to reading.
I do not trust the spoken word.
I trust that, if I have told you in writing the results of a meeting we have had, and the actions I plan to take as a result of the meeting, you have been given an opportunity to object. If you do not object, you have no basis for later changing your mind.
Document, document, document is my motto.
I have decided to make reading, reasoning and relationships the basis for my new professional life. No more large staff. No more half-billion dollar budget. No more administrative responsibilities. I can become an organization with only one full-time staff member, me.
I know people who trust me to help them properly spend their money. I have a self-documenting process that ensures my effectiveness and security. I have a nationwide community of scholars who share my vision. What more could I want?
There is so much room for improvement in this world, but not everybody is ready. Money is not always the solution. When money leaves, progress all too often goes with it. When leadership changes, what works all too often must be learned anew. Nevertheless, change is as inevitable as the passing of leaders.
I need to keep these points in mind, as I continue to do whatever I can to make the world a better place for the people I can reach. When I leave, will someone else care as much?
Multiple Universes
My first introduction to the concept of multiple universes occurred in an introduction to modern physics class. One way of viewing antiparticles is as physical manifestations in this universe of particles moving backwards in time in a parallel universe. Over the many years since that class, the concept has expanded to include the possibility that an infinite number of universes can exist and that we happen to be in a “multiverse” in which our life form is possible.
I like to think that we all live in our own “multiverse” – one in which we daily have an opportunity to do the right thing and make this universe a better place. To me, doing the right thing does not encompass harming others in pursuit of some greater good.
Perhaps, that is why I most enjoyed the opportunities I had at the National Science Foundation to change the lives of people who came to me with ideas and passion, but little concept of how to actually reach their goals. My job was to give them a practical education on the funding process. My greatest pleasure was seeing the eyes of those who got it light up with understanding that for them change was possible.
Postscript
When I was 55, I had to give up playing soccer. My knee and hip pain had become so bad that I no longer could run. The many years since then have been filled with periods of pain that I attributed to an injured hip flexor and studiously ignored. Finally, one day last year, the pain stopped. My left hip evidently had been partially disjointed for almost two decades. The bone slipping back into place had relieved the pain. If only I early had thought that that pain meant that something in my body needed changing.
ON SERVICE
“One who is kind to others is certain to be rewarded” – Japanese saying.
Two paths toward earning enough money for a comfortable life are: (1) finding a service that others are willing to pay you to provide; and (2) finding a product that others are willing to pay you significantly more than it cost you to make. In my opinion, the first path (service) should be the path of choice for the majority of people. Very few of us will be fortunate enough to participate in the development of a product that has long-term success.
Perhaps, in your mind, the thought of providing service is tainted by a perceived association with the words servant or slave. Let me directly address that issue.
You should see service as being the basis for any healthy transaction. The person receiving a service presumably benefits from the service, because they accept the service. The person providing a service presumably benefits from providing the service, because they see themselves as receiving some reward – whether it is spiritual/educational or material/financial. By participating in the act, both parties benefit.
To me, life is a long series of transactions, in which one does not want to have to look back and realize that one has cheated others to achieve success.
State Education
I was privileged to be educated in California, immediately after World War II. California, and the United States, had made a pact to produce a well-educated population. The GI Bill provided for veterans, and any California high school graduate with a grade point average above a certain level in college preparation courses automatically was admitted to the University of California for an essentially free education – roughly one hundred dollars per semester, including books. Growing up in Berkeley, in the college preparation track, meant that there no doubt about which college I would attend and that I could afford it. That kind of certainty no longer is possible.
The justification for state funded college education does require a significant leap of faith. The state has to believe that the economic benefits from the careers of those college graduates who remain in the state will exceed the cost of educating those who leave the state. That kind of belief easily is maintained, when shared by the nation. That kind of belief is severely challenged, when evidently other states have decided to skimp on educating their own citizens in favor of hiring college graduates from other states and countries – thereby apparently stimulating a race see which state can provide the least funding for college education. Nationwide, the increasingly smaller percentages of state funding of college education tell me that the post-World War II pact irreparably has been broken.
Nevertheless, for you, there is no practical alternative to getting a good education. You just have to find some way to get others to help you pay your college expenses.
Community Service
I am a great believer in community service.
First and foremost, your own development begins in your own community. There is no better place for you to contemplate the contributions you might be able to make to this world. There is no better place for you to find a community that can use your assistance.
In my memoir, I tell the story of how at the beginning of my junior year I stumbled upon Stiles Hall – the YMCA associated with the University of California at Berkeley (UCB).
My first task there was participating in a survey of the attitudes of residents of the Hunters Point District toward the San Francisco police department – not good. A group of us then started the School Resource Volunteers Program (SRVP). Any San Francisco Bay Area teacher could submit a request for classroom or tutorial assistance to SRVP, and we would find a volunteer to assist them. I then was selected to run the Retreat Program – which brought together diverse groups of UCB students for weekend discussions of race relations.
Fortunately, I did not need monetary compensation from these activities. Fortunately, I gained much more than I was able to understand at that moment. In retrospect, during those two unpaid years at Stiles Hall I learned most of the communications and management skills that I would use during the thirty paid years of the rest of my career.
National Service
As someone who “has extensive experience in community organizing” (according to my bio in the Peace Corps training brochure), I considered myself to be a doer and not a leader and never imagined myself being the public face of an organization – that occurred decades later. National service in the Peace Corps was an opportunity to do something challenging and interesting. It certainly stretched my capabilities, because I had to learn how to teach while teaching.
Some of us are blessed with a clear vision of what we want to do in life, and the capability to achieve that vision. Perhaps, most of us need to keep doing things until we hopefully find a potentially rewarding path. The Peace Corps put me on a rewarding path.
They say that if you want to learn a subject, you should teach it. Well, after two years of teaching physics in West Cameroon, I took the physics graduate records examination and received the highest possible score. For the first time in my life, going to graduate school was a real possibility.
University Service
I paid for my graduate education in physics, by providing services – first as a teaching assistant, and finally as a research assistant. In “On Success”, I go so far as to state that no one should use their own money to attend graduate school in a technical field. Receiving a scholarship, or being a teaching/research assistant is a sign that the university is invested in your success. You will be given the opportunity to develop skills that the university values, and those same skills undoubtedly later will be valuable to you.
At some point you will realize that your technical skills only are marketable for a few years after graduation. That does not negate the importance of acquiring technical training, because technical training normally is a required qualification of advancement to management positions. If you obtain a management position, you will find that your acquired communications, management, and organizational skills become the foundation for your career success.
Public Service
Marcel Bardon requested that I apply for a staff associate job in what then was the National Science Foundation's Physics Section. At the time, my options seemed to be very limited, because physicists were in very low demand. Since my postdoc at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory was running out, I could not ignore the request.
I have to admit some disagreement with the ancient Chinese curse – “May you live in interesting times.” Interesting times can create movement and opportunities. NSF's one research directorate was fragmented, and I was placed in charge of budgeting and program development in the largest new directorate. In two years, my role at NSF had changed from providing staff support to developing projects that potentially might be included in the President's budget to congress. Despite Watergate, Washington politics was united by the common bond of having to provide constituent services. I was in the business of giving members of Congress information on how they could better serve their constituents.
The first step in the process involved listening. I cannot count the number of times I have heard individuals complain about philanthropic foundations that offer a “solution” that disregards the reality seen by those who might request funding.
I had the privilege of receiving regular briefings on the most promising scientific opportunities in astronomy, atmospheric, earth, and ocean sciences. It then was my task to select the projects that we would develop by funding feasibility studies. The projects that demonstrates technically feasible, fiscally responsible, and service to a national constituency were submitted for possible inclusion in the President's Budget to Congress.
For ten straight years, I attended every NSF budget hearing and never failed to be amazed by how well Republicans and Democrats worked together. I doubt that those days ever will return, because it seems that elections now are decided by campaign contributions and not by constituent service.
Nevertheless, there still are public service positions that need to be filled. Ask yourself, who would you rather see fill them?
Your Role
We live in an age in which politicians feel that they always must appear to be supportive of a particular ideology, no matter how much they must twist logic to maintain that appearance. One California politician even went so far as to claim that water level would be higher in California's reservoir, if only California had built more reservoirs. Such politicians are playing roles that they obviously believe they need to play to ensure their political survival. Does such role playing benefit their constituents? I doubt it.
At some point in your career, you are likely to be asked to play a role that is not in your comfort zone. The decision can be difficult, particularly when the new opportunity is a promotion to a higher status job. In my memoir, I talk about the satisfaction I gained in my role as a deputy assistant director at NSF, and my dissatisfaction with the limitation that came with having to play the role of an assistant director at NSF.
Let me end this essay with a story about extremely unfortunate role playing.
In 1963, Malcolm X was invited to speak on the UC Berkeley campus. At first, the UC administration approved the speech, but then the politicians became involved and the speech was canceled. Malcolm decided to meet with a small group of students at Stiles Hall for a conversation. No speech. No rhetoric. Just calm, logical responses to questions – backed by historical perspective. I was impressed by his demeanor, and by the vast gap between his public and private image.
In 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated.
No matter which version of the
stories of his last years you choose to believe, in retrospect, it was clear to
me that in 1963 he was playing a public role that he could not maintain.
Albert Bridgewater, Ph.D.
Resume of Albert Bridgewater
Albert Bridgewater is Senior Education and Research Programs Adviser with MDB, Inc., and a retired member of the Senior Executive Service, National Science Foundation (NSF). His experience at NSF included managerial, budget and science policy/planning responsibilities for hundreds of millions of dollars of national and international physics, astronomy, atmospheric sciences, earth sciences, oceanography, Arctic and Antarctic research and human resources program development. He served NSF in a number of positions, including Executive Assistant, Acting Program Manager, Deputy Assistant Director, and Acting Assistant Director. He has extensive experience developing and applying screening criteria for environmental research programs, as well as implementing Federal regulations and policies, coordinating with concerned Federal agencies, and testifying before Congress about Administration environmental policies. During his service as Acting Assistant Director for Astronomical, Atmospheric, Earth, and Ocean Sciences, he obtained funding for Global Geosciences – NSF’s first large-scale funding of climate change research. He is a member of the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Dr. Bridgewater has extensive experience
addressing increasing minority participation in science, engineering and
mathematics. For example, he was a member of the Advisory Board of the Ana G.
Mendéz Educational Foundation, Jackson State University and Lawrence Berkeley
Laboratory Science Consortium; has used across-agency program management groups
to develop and manage the Research Careers for Minority Scholars (RCMS),
Alliances for Minority Participation, Model Institutions for Excellence (MIE),
and Collaborative to Integrate Research and Education (CIRE) programs; and
obtained across-federal agency funding to develop “Together We Can Make It
Work: An Action Plan to Provide Quality Education for Minorities in
Mathematics, Science and Engineering.” He was also the recipient of an NSF
grant for October 2003 and October 2004 workshops to prepare Tribal Colleges
and Universities to submit Major Research Instrumentation proposals. Dr.
Bridgewater further has experience as an organizer of student volunteers in
Berkeley, a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon, and the developer of many
special projects supporting minority participation in science, engineering and
mathematics.
Program Development Experience
Dr. Bridgewater’s twenty-eight year career at the National Science Foundation had two distinct phases. The first twelve-year phase was marked by rapid promotion from an entry-level general services position to the second-highest level of the Senior Executive Service – a senior Federal executive corps established to have solid executive expertise, public service values, and a broad perspective of government. During this phase, he was accountable for all of the traditional executive responsibilities associated with managing the then largest directorate in the National Science Foundation. The second sixteen-year phase provided an opportunity to bring together diverse directorates of the National Science Foundation to address important public policy issues impacting the health of science, engineering and mathematics programs at minority-serving institutions. Undertaking each of the following activities typically involved assembling a cross-directorate working group to develop NSF-wide understanding of the nature and importance of the need for the activities.
Research Careers for Minority Scholars (RCMS) developed from data indicating that each year over one hundred thousand minority students entered U.S. colleges and universities intending to major in science, engineering and mathematics, but only two hundred annually received doctoral degrees. This suggested that the problem was not lack of minority student interest in science, engineering and mathematics. Rather, the problem was lack of a network supporting the science, engineering and mathematics development of the most talented minority students. RCMS provided mentoring, research experience and support for select minority students throughout their undergraduate years. According to data collect by the RCMS institutions, 56.7 percent of the RCMS scholars went on to graduate school, 3.8 percent went on to medical school, and 31 percent entered employment (Source: “What Works – Encouraging Diversity in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology Through Effective Mentoring” – NSF 96-70).
Alliances for Minority Participation developed from discussions with minority-serving institution faculty members. They expressed the need for greater access to science, engineering and mathematics resources at their own and other institutions, in order to provide their students enhanced exposure to science, engineering and mathematics research, and a pipeline to doctoral granting institutions. Now called the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program, LSAMP program supports sustained and comprehensive approaches to broadening participation at the baccalaureate level. These approaches facilitate the production of students who are well prepared in STEM and motivated to pursue graduate education. Projects place emphasis on aggregate baccalaureate production; attention to individual student retention and progression to baccalaureate degrees; aggregation of student progression to graduate school entry and institutionalizing, disseminating and promoting the replication of strategies and collaborative approaches proven successful to transition undergraduate STEM students to graduate STEM programs. LSAMP alliances are based on programmatic approaches known to be successful in meeting well-defined needs, and involving undergraduates in faculty research.
Model Institutions for Excellence was developed at the request of the then NSF Director, Dr. Walter Massey. Dr. Massey wanted to leave a legacy at NSF, based on replicating his undergraduate experience at Morehouse College. His faculty mentors gave him individual research projects to substitute for coursework that might have been available at research institutions. He wanted to strengthen the STEM baccalaureate degree producing capacity of a small number of minority institutions. Selected institutions were characterized by a productive track record of awarding STEM baccalaureate degrees, a strong commitment to STEM education and undergraduate research, and an existing infrastructure appropriate for launching a major enhancement of current efforts. Together with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NSF developed MIE to provide an opportunity to define methods for improving minority institutions in STEM education and undergraduate research; target a small number of minority institutions that were poised to make a substantial contribution to the goal of increasing the number of minorities who earn STEM baccalaureate degrees and go on to enter graduate-level STEM degree programs or STEM-related careers; and produce minority institutions that are serving as models for the successful recruitment, education and production of quality-trained STEM baccalaureate degree recipients. MIE included a third phase of providing funding for the institutionalization of these models.
Collaboratives to Integrate Research and Education (CIRE) was designed to improve and strengthen education infrastructure in STEM and increase recruitment, retention and degree attainment by members of groups underrepresented in STEM. Traditionally, minority institutions are leading sources of STEM degrees awarded to underrepresented minorities. CIRE activity was intended to enhance the quantity and quality of STEM opportunities for students and faculty members at participating minority-serving institutions by developing models for developing long-term STEM education and research relationships between minority-serving institutions and NSF-supported facilities and centers.
While on an Intergovernmental Personnel Act assignment at the Quality Education for Minorities Network, Dr. Bridgewater received a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)/National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop the Quality Education for Minorities (QEM) Mathematics, Science, and Engineering (MSE) Network. Since 1991, the QEM/MSE Network, an institutional membership organization hosted by QEM, has conducted annual national conferences to address major issues and barriers affecting the STEM education of underrepresented minorities; to identify potential strategies for addressing these issues and barriers; to highlight effective programs and interventions; and to recognize outstanding STEM-related achievements of students, faculty, and institutions. Since its beginning, QEM has utilized an extensive networking and coalition building approach, with faculty from QEM/MSE Network members as well as from other colleges and universities serving as catalysts for change. With support from these institutions as well as federal and philanthropic support, QEM has been able to design and implement a range of initiatives to enhance STEM programs at minority-serving institutions and to provide leadership development opportunities for students, parents, and K-16 faculty.