How Big Science Gets Funded — An Introduction for Students to the Politics of Space Science Funding

by Richard Thompson, Jr.
McMurry University
Posted: 08/04/03

The Astronomy Education Review, Issue 1, Volume 2:144-149, 2003

© 2003, Richard Thompson, Jr.. Copyright assigned to the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc.

Download PDF version of this article

1. INTRODUCTION

Every spring semester at McMurry University (a private liberal arts university with an enrollment of 1,200 students), I offer Introduction to Astronomy, a laboratory science course for non-science majors. Because this class satisfies the general education science course requirement and, possibly more importantly to the students, does not have the words "Physics," "Chemistry," or "Biology" in the title, it always fills to capacity quickly, usually on the first day of early registration. The enrollment of this course is capped at 36 students, limited by the size and number of laboratory sections we are able to offer. Thus it is possible to try more innovative projects than might be possible in the standard courses at the large research universities.

My focus in this course has, for some time, been on the process of science: addressing the questions What do we know? How did we come to know it? and How did we convince ourselves that we were right? all within the context of astronomy. During the spring 2003 semester, I decided to pursue in a little more detail the actual mechanics of how "Big Science" gets done. After attending a mock congressional hearing on science funding at the U.S. Capitol as part of a Project Kaleidoscope (http://www.pkal.org) conference during the fall 2002 semester, I decided to introduce my students to this facet of science. I wanted my students to learn how their tax dollars are apportioned for big science, while also learning about several current high-profile space science missions.

2. THE PROJECT

The project was designed as follows: the students were given the opportunity to join one of six space mission teams or to be a congressional staffer. Each mission team consisted of five students, with the remaining six student slots assigned to the staffer group. The missions were chosen so that each was paired in competition with another. The missions were: Mission to Europa vs. Mission to Pluto; Unmanned Mission to Mars vs. Manned Mission to Mars; and the Next Generation Space Telescope vs. the Terrestrial Planet Finder. The students understood that only one mission of each pair would receive funding from the congressional panel. The panel was composed of six faculty volunteers from areas outside the sciences: three from English and one each from political science, history, and communication. Each of the students playing the roles of staffers was assigned to one of these faculty members. The staffers were responsible for bringing the panel members "up to speed" on each of the missions; thus, even though the staffers did not have to go into as much research on a particular mission as the mission teams did, they did have to become conversant on all six missions.

The ultimate assignment of the mission teams was to make a fifteen-minute presentation to the congressional committee in which they would argue for funding for their mission (and, either implicitly or explicitly, against funding for their competing mission). Along the way, students would have to learn as much about their chosen mission as possible and enough about their competing mission to enable them to argue one mission versus the other. Each mission team was required to give two progress reports to me during the semester, at the one-third and two-thirds points of the term. During the progress reports, I would answer their questions regarding the details of the missions and offer advice on strategy, suggest areas they might have overlooked, and so on. The mission teams also were required to submit a written report on their project on the day of their presentation.

The ultimate assignment of the staffers was to give a one-on-one briefing to their congressperson (with me present) on all six missions. The staffers were to cover the primary goals of the missions, provide questions that the congressperson might ask of the mission teams during the presentations, and suggest to the congresspersons how they might vote on each of the missions (with justification for these voting suggestions). The staffers also were required to meet with me for a progress report and to submit a written briefing report to me and to their congressperson.

The project grades for the mission teams were calculated as follows: two progress reports (20%), one presentation (40%), and one written report (40%). The project grades for the staffers were calculated as follows: progress report (10%), briefing (40%), written report (40%), and congressperson performance review, a grade assigned by each congressperson reflecting how well his or her staffer prepared him or her for the presentations (10%).

3. EVALUATION—WHAT WORKED AND WHAT DIDN'T

3.1 Mission Teams

Overall, the mission teams worked well. Although some took a little bit longer to get organized and start working than others, all six teams got under way relatively quickly. There were some real differences in their approaches, with some teams outlining the important areas of their projects and assigning different topics to different members, and other teams working more as independent researchers who ultimately pooled their results and prepared their presentations. I was pleased to learn that some of the mission teams actually sought out the staffers during the semester in an effort to lobby for their mission. This showed initiative and a better understanding of just how the process works.

As is common with any group activities, maintaining equality of work effort among all group members was a problem for the mission teams. In addition to the age-old problems of human nature, the extremely busy schedule of today's college students played a role in hampering group progress. However, the tools of email and cell phones did allow the groups to maintain a modicum of communication between all their members. In an effort to perhaps spur the less hard-working members of the groups to meet their responsibilities, I made it an assignment for each student to evaluate the work efforts of his or her group members (with these evaluations influencing my assigning of individual grades). However, in only one case did I give one student a different (higher) grade than the rest of her group due to her significantly higher work output.

Overall, the mission teams' presentations were what I had hoped for. The groups seemed to understand the basic goals of their missions and recognized which points should be stressed during their presentations to the congressional panel. How effectively they got their points across, however, varied. Some presentations were quite short (five to six minutes) and consisted of one or two team members reading their parts, while others took nearly the entire fifteen minutes, flowed smoothly, and involved all members of the group. How well the groups responded to the questions from the panel (some asked "in character" as particular congresspersons) varied among the groups, as was expected. While some could give in depth answers, others could do no more than repeat what had already been presented. Five of the six groups made use of the Microsoft PowerPoint software in their presentations, with varying degrees of successes. Figures 1 and 2 show some selected slides from the various presentations.

Figure 1. A PowerPoint slide from the Europa Mission presentation outlining the goals of the mission.

Figure 2. A PowerPoint slide from the Unmanned Mission to Mars presentation outlining the benefits of this mission over those of a manned mission.

3.2 Congressional Staffers

The depth of research required of the congressional staffers was obviously less than that of the mission teams, though it was hoped that the requirement of the staffers to be knowledgeable of all six missions would make the workload more or less equal. However, I do not believe that this was the case for all of the staffers. On their own, the staffers decided to pool their efforts by having each staffer concentrate on a particular mission and then share his or her research results with the others. With the exception of two outstanding students, the staffers all followed this model (and it showed in their presentations). The two exceptional students carried out their own research on all six missions and were able to give much more complete briefings to their congresspersons. There was also a great deal of diversity among the staffers' abilities to suggest questions and voting preferences for the missions. Whereas the better students asked very good questions and gave knowledgeable and considered opinions on how they would vote for funding, the others suggested very superficial questions and seemed to suggest funding the cheaper mission in each case (simply because it was cheaper). Before assigning this project again, I will have to think more carefully about the role of the staffers.

3.3 Congresspersons

The faculty playing the role of the congressional committee were very important to the success of the project. During the staffers' briefings, they asked probing questions and made serious efforts to learn all they could from their staffers in order to carry out their duties in the presentations. Furthermore, being professors, they were able to help me in evaluating the performances (both oral and written) of the staffers. They played their parts well in the presentations, asking sometimes quite difficult questions of the mission teams and forcing them to justify their requests for funding. The fact that they sometimes played the roles of local politicians kept the proceedings lively and entertaining.

During their post-presentation deliberations, the faculty members took their charge of awarding funding very seriously. They reviewed each of the presentations in detail, pointing out successes and failures on the part of the mission teams. (Note: although the deliberations took place outside the student groups' presence, written summaries of their comments were provided to the team members.) In choosing the teams to which to award funding, they based their decisions both on their backgrounds as college professors (evaluating the presentations) and on their roles as congresspersons (evaluating the arguments made by the mission teams). Though purposely chosen for their lack of science background and previous knowledge of the missions, I found their decisions to have been made very wisely and appropriately. One can only hope that decisions by actual congressional committees are made likewise.

4. CONCLUSIONS

I believe that this project was a success overall. The students were given the opportunity to work in groups (as much of science is done today), to present their results both orally and in written form (both important components of any college course), to learn about a range of current space science missions that otherwise would not have been covered at all in the course, and to get a glimpse of how funding decisions are made for the sciences. I believe that the students learned much more than had I simply assigned the same old term papers that I had for years (and I was saved from reading yet another paper on the "mysteries of black holes").

I believe this type of project contributes greatly to our shared goal of increasing the science literacy of our citizens. Majoring primarily in the humanities, the social sciences, and education, these students represent the core population toward which our science literacy efforts are directed. It is hoped that the act of arguing in favor of an expensive space mission that they had never heard of before (though admittedly for nothing more than credit in a course) might have resulted in their thinking a bit more deeply about the real-world reasons for funding these missions. If their attitudes (and those of the non-science faculty) toward science and its attendant costs are changed even a little for the positive, then this project was a success.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank K. Drumheller, R. Wettemann, C. Etheridge, T. Bertrand, D. Miller, and R. McLamore for serving as members of the congressional panel.