C

Work of the Committee

The National Research Council empanelled a committee to carry out this study that was deliberately composed of individuals who are or who have recently been leaders in academia, industry, government, and national laboratories. The NRC sought this sectoral balance and also diversity among academic institutions, balance across fields, and wide geographic distribution, including individuals with significant international experience.¹

The committee was organized in July 2010, and began its work through a series of conference calls to discuss its charge, plan its work, and organize its first meeting. That first meeting, held September 21-22, 2010, featured presentations from:

Robert Berdahl, President, Association of American Universities (AAU), and

Peter McPherson, President, Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU)

A second meeting, held November 22-24, 2010, featured additional speakers and three focus groups sessions.² Speakers included:

Lamar Alexander, United States Senator
Cora Marrett, Deputy Director, National Science Foundation

¹ See Appendix B for committee member biographies.

² See Appendix D for agendas of the first two committee meetings.

Sally Rockey, Deputy Director for Extramural Research, National Institutes of Health

Steven Koonin, Undersecretary of Energy for Science

Jonathan Cole, John Mitchell Mason Professor of the University and Provost and Dean of the Faculties Emeritus, Columbia University, and author of The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected

Anthony DeCrappeo, President, Council on Governmental Relations (COGR)

Debra Stewart, President, Council of Graduate Schools (CGS)

William Russel, Arthur W. Marks ’19 Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Dean of the Graduate School, Princeton University, and Chair, Commission on the Future of Graduate Education in the United States

Stacy Gelhaus, Chair, Board of Directors, National Postdoctoral Association (NPA), and Research Associate, Center for Cancer Pharmacology, University of Pennsylvania

Robert Cook-Deegan, Director, Center for Genome Ethics, Law and Policy, Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, Duke University; Member, National Research Council Study Committee for Managing University Intellectual Property in the Public Interest

Daniel Atkins, Associate Vice-President for Research Cyberinfrastructure and W.K. Kellogg Professor of Community Informatics, University of Michigan

This second meeting also included three “focus group sessions” on:

Institutional Environment: Research University Finance and Administration

Knowledge Capital: Academic Research Agendas, Resources, Organization, and Commercialization

Human Capital: Doctoral Education, Postdoctoral Training, Labor Markets, and Careers

Each group included committee members along with about 10 invited guests nominated by AAU, APLU, COGR, CGS, and NPA. These sessions were designed to ask probing questions about these three areas of inquiry in order to elicit input for the committee’s deliberation. The sessions began with each invited guest speaking for up to five minutes

each on questions provided them in advance and then continued with open discussion. A summary of each discussion was later provided by staff to the full committee.³

Information gathering, then, drew on the speakers in the committee’s public sessions, the three focus group sessions, comments provided to the committee by outside groups, comments provided by individuals to the committee through the study Web site, a review of the literature, and data analysis by staff.

³ See Appendix D for a list of questions and participants for each of the three sessions.

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