National Academies

You can only become a member by being voted in by current members. No, this is not the beginning of the new Dan Brown novel. It doesn't refer to the Masons; it's the National Academy of Science (and engineering, and medicine) and we, the Fellows, were invited over to the Keck Center to learn more about them. http://www.nationalacademies.org/ The best and the brightest. All of this year's US Nobel Prize winners are members, so we were told. My boss, Dr. Chu (no, I never see him, but he's still the big boss...) is a member. We were treated to a host of presentations by various departments at the Academies who laid out for us what it is they do and presented us with what they can do for us. Quick 411: President Lincoln started it in 1863. They are a fiercely independent, unbiased, data driven group who puts out reports on X, Y or Z as asked for by Congress or Federal Agencies. They apparently put out the equivalent of a PhD dissertation on a near daily basis!! Sometimes they put out their own reports because no one else is asking for it, or won't ask because it's too controversial. Hence, the reports on stem cells and evolution. They don't do research but gather a committee of the brightest folks in the field who discuss and collect the best of what's out there, have it vetted, vetted again, put out for review and compiled into a report back to Congress or the appropriate Agency. Then OTHERS go about implementing programs based upon the National Academies' recommendations.

Example: We were given copies of "Ready, Set, Science!" today which is subtitled "Putting Research to Work in K-8 Classrooms" and is based upon the National Research Council's "Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8". You can see the connection. But again, the Academies don't do action plans. They leave that to others. Several of the Fellows were familiar with the report and this accompanying book. The director of the division that put it out found mentioned his concern about this book being used in secondary education: are kids that far behind that this is relevant? We asked about a companion study, one geared towards high school. "Ah", says the director, "no one has ASKED for that report yet", and then looked around at all the NSF Fellows and told them to maybe mention that back at the office.

It was an overly full day of information and powerpoints but ended with a tour of the Marian Koshland Museum of Science at the National Academies. Small museum but probably to coolest one per square foot that I've seen in a while. They have exhibits based on a few of their more popular reports. One was on Climate Change and another on Infectious Disease. The Climate Change is being updated from "oh, is climate change real?", to something more along the lines of "What will our lives be like as climate continues to change".

And back in the bookstore I picked up a new tie, one to accompany my ebola tie. Now I have one with a graphic of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), more commonly called Mad Cow Disease. Pretty cool, in that geeky sort of way.

Tomorrow it's back to work to create a 45 minute speech/ppt for one of my bosses for a conference he's attending, all of which has me rather intimidated right now. And then it's off to Boston to attend a conference at MIT on Wednesday and promote the Fellowship at the National Conference of Teachers of Mathematics on Thursday. Good times. I'll do my best to blog again from Boston and perhaps figure out how to include some photos.

-J