Nov 26, 2006 - Claremont, Calif. -

It's not everyday that a college student can ask the incoming president of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) where he sees the technological workforce going in the next decade, or that a professor casually queries the Director of the House Committee on Science to talk a bit about the politics of the American scientific enterprise.

But unique opportunities like this are becoming more common at Harvey Mudd College, thanks to a new state-of-the-art videoconference room and economics course designed to connect the HMC community with national and international experts.

"This seminar—Economics 197: Science, Technology, and U.S. Economic Progress—uses the new room to bring our students, faculty and staff virtually face-to-face with leading scientists, engineers, economists and policy makers," said HMC Dean of the Faculty Daniel Goroff, who hosts the biweekly interactive webcasts.

The videoconference room—one of three new HMC facilities recently built with a $500,000 grant for the Department of Engineering from The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation—has the capacity to simultaneously tie in four video conference locations with cutting-edge equipment, including three LCD screens, a digital smart board, sound system and two cameras.

The lecture series, which also includes audience participants at the National Science Foundation (NSF) outside Washington, D.C., and at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., kicked off in September with Richard Freeman, one of the country's top labor economists, who spoke on what globalization of the scientific and engineering workforce means for American economic leadership.

In October, Charles Vest, NAE's president-elect and former president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, opened up his lecture with a look at the ebb and flow of the country's scientific and technological institutions since the 1940s.

Speaking from Cambridge, Vest went on to discuss a recent report issued by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)—"Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future"—that recommends steps the federal government should take to bolster our economy by investing in scientists and engineers.

These recommendations, which have received much attention in Washington, form the basis for the American Competitiveness Initiative announced by President Bush in his most recent State of the Union address. Vest worked on the committee that wrote the report.

"Did you address investments in undergraduate science and engineering research?" asked Anthony Bright, director of HMC's Global Clinic Program and chair of the Department of Engineering. "Over the years, 300 companies have invested $200 million to enhance education through our Clinic Program. I think we need to actively encourage partnerships like this between industry and universities."

Vest said the NAS team had not addressed the issue directly, but that "Harvey Mudd College has been a leader in this type of education" and that Bright's suggestion "is a really great idea moving forward."

HMC senior Christopher "Topper" Kain, a computer science and politics and international relations major taking the one-credit seminar course, was especially inspired by the early November lecture with David Goldston, staff director of the House Committee on Science, who spoke from Harvard and shared his thoughts on public policy and the U.S. scientific enterprise from Harvard.

As Goroff noted in his introduction, since 2001, Goldston has overseen the Congressional committee with jurisdiction over most of the federal civilian research and development budget, including the programs run by NASA, the NSF, Department of Energy, Department of Commerce and the Environmental Protection Agency.

"Since the mid-1950s, there's been a consensus that science funding is good," said Goldston. "But the debate is usually over how much funding levels should increase or decrease. It's rarely over the actual science at hand."

Kain, who is concerned about the image of scientists and engineers in America, asked how policy affects societal issues like K-12 education. "Since the end of the space race and then the Cold War, science appears to have taken a serious public relations hit," he said. "There are precious few scientific heroes these days."

"There's a universal agreement that we have to do more," Goldston said. "While the No Child Left Behind Act has been controversial, it has brought more attention back to education."

Other speakers this term have included physicist Lee Smolin, author of The Trouble with Physics, who spoke about reorganizing academic research; engineer Neil Gershenfeld, director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, who discussed Fab Labs and the challenges of institutionalizing innovations; and economist Pawan Agarwal of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, who spoke about global trends in the education and employment of scientists and engineers.

With each diverse topic of discussion, students, faculty and officials on both coasts are simultaneously taking active roles in dialogues they may not otherwise have an opportunity to participate in.

"These types of lectures are amazing," said Kain. "It offers a chance to hear what policymakers are thinking and how Washington, D.C., really works."

HMC's new lecture series is sponsored by the Sloan Foundation's Scientific and Engineering Workforce Project, co-directed by Dean Goroff and based at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge .