Bertenthal back to school after three years at NSF

His time as a leader of behavioral and social science research funding has taught him the importance of communicating science to the public.

By Beth Azar
Monitor staff

The behavioral and social sciences, and especially psychology, will lose a strong advocate at the end of this month when Bennett Bertenthal, assistant director of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate (SBE), returns to his life as a researcher and academic.

A developmental psychologist, Bertenthal moves next month to the department of psychology at the University of Chicago where he hopes to develop a center for developmental science.

He's only the second head of the 8-year-old directorate, having replaced Cora B. Marrett, PhD, in 1997. And though he says it will take several years to evaluate the influence he's had on the directorate, he believes the social and behavioral sciences have a stronger position at the foundation than when he arrived.

Until NSF hires a replacement for Bertenthal, psychologist Wanda Ward, PhD, of the NSF director's office, will act as an interim assistant director.

In an interview with the Monitor, Bertenthal discussed his tenure at the directorate and his hopes for its future.

Q. What do you consider your most important accomplishments?

A. I can only point to what I think are some of the processes I put in motion.

For one, I reorganized the directorate into scientific programs rather than overarching divisions that diluted the strength of each program. The reorganization was necessary to accommodate the explosive rate of discovery in the social and behavioral sciences and to facilitate new partnerships within and between directorates.

I've also had modest success in increasing the attention programs give to encouraging new investigators. Over the years, I have set aside special pools of funds for making small awards to new investigators, and in 1998 we made more than 40 such awards.

Q. Those are organizational changes. Have you had any influence on the intellectual vision of the directorate?

A. There are three themes that I have tried to emphasize. The first has to do with the realization that science is scaling up, funding bigger projects, asking bigger questions. NSF is a $4 billion foundation that spends almost $1 billion on large facilities and centers. But out of 192 NSF-funded centers, only four are funded through our directorate.

As a result, we don't have the experience and knowledge to compete for these big grants. To give us that experience, this year I helped initiate a new and very successful infrastructure competition for the social and behavioral sciences, which awarded to six grants.

The second theme has to do with multidisciplinary research and the clear need for researchers to work with people from other disciplines. If we're going to answer truly important but complex questions that will ultimately have implications for society, we have to get beyond addressing them in a piecemeal and fragmented way.

The third theme is promoting public understanding of science. We need to work effectively with the media to get our message to the public and to Congress. We have to realize that it's the same kind of investment as any research. This needs to be a grassroots effort. We need to insist that every scientist become not only a competent scientist but a civic scientist as well.

Q. Will you be true to these themes as you head back to academia?

A. I hope so. This experience has truly opened up and broadened my view of science, and given me a sense of a new responsibility of how I can contribute to my field.

Q. Where do you see SBE headed after your departure?

A. I'm very optimistic that my successor will have even greater opportunities for influencing the policy of the social and behavioral sciences, and NSF policy more broadly. Under my tenure we have grown in strength and visibility. I have increased the number of partnerships we have with federal agencies, private foundations and international partners. And the directorate is gaining in stature, learning more about NSF's culture, how to become better integrated and how to have a stronger and more effective impact on what's going on.



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