Eight years ago, the scientific community got vocal about a problem at the National Science Foundation: Their annual prize to “bestest early career scientist, the absolute tops1” is the Alan T. Waterman award. At the time, for the prior eleven years, all of the recipients were men.
This overt problem was brought up in Dynamic Ecology, and later the same day I wrote about it at Small Pond Science (here’s the link in SfE). This became a broader conversation. That blog post really made the rounds. I remember it took quite a while the traffic to that post to die down, compared to other posts.
As you can imagine, it takes a bit of chutzpah (or naïveté) to put one’s neck out to criticize the federal agency that has been your primary source of funding (especially when using a level of sarcasm and annoyance that I don’t think current-day-me would choose to muster). I mean, I feel like I’ve had lots of good interactions with everybody I’ve dealt with at NSF, and I think the place is so nifty and impactful and I’m even excited about the prospect of serving as a rotating program officer at some point, so gosh knows I don’t want to blindly rant away at them and have them sour on me. But yeah, there was a thing that needed to be fixed and I (among others, of course) thought it would be good for us to talk about it.
And you know what? They fixed it!
For reals, they did a great job! In hindsight, there is ample indication that they put a lot of thought and concern into changing the process to come up with more equitable outcomes. They realized it was silly to give just one “great man” award, so they decided that they could spread the wealth around a bit more. They also discovered that women could receive this award. (And to be clear, I imagine that many members of the scientific community discovered that we should be nominating their women colleagues for this award).
Seeing that they had repaired this problem so well, six years after my griping, I wrote about how they fixed it, in the same venue where I published my initial grips. (Here’s the SfE link for the same post). My whole point was to talk about how lovely it was that there was positive change, and this is the kind of accountability we need to see.
Can you guess what happened with that blog post? Chirp, chirp. Crickets. Conversation? Nope. Did anybody write to NSF to say, “Good job, y’all?” Have no idea, but I suspect not. Lots of folks wanted to talk about NSF getting it wrong on gender equity, but when they did the hard work to get it right? Nope.
I don’t know how many of you have toilet trained a toddler, but when they hit the target, it’s important to offer a lot of praise when they are finally successful at hitting the target, even if it takes a long time and you’ve doubted whether they’d ever be able to get it right. Just sayin’.
If we’re going to complain about when NSF screws up, then we should make a point to be vocally pleased when they get it right. (I mean, we have been even louder about inequities in the outcomes of the GRFP process for several years, but haven’t seen any substantial changes like those made with the Waterman award, and if we want them to make outcomes more equitable, then we should show happiness and gratitude when the agency steers in the right direction. That said, I do realize that making a change to the Waterman is like guiding a sailboat, and redirecting the GRFP is like navigating a hulking aircraft carrier. Anyhow.) If we’re going to continue to demand changes (like, for example, the folks who are upset that the dissertation improvement grants in Biology went away), shouldn’t we be loud and happy when they respond in an effective way? For example, we generally didn’t like the experimental preproposal system in BIO, and they listened, and then implemented the a new system informed by an experiment in another directorate, and now they have eliminated deadlines for core programs, as well as getting rid of preproposals. This is working out really well, at least in my opinion from what I know. Isn’t it great that NSF makes make decisions based on evidence and are (often) responsive to community (and Congressional) concerns?
Anyhow, I have no idea who you are at NSF who fixed the Waterman program, but I want to say thank you! Great work. I imagine it took a lot of behind the scenes bureaucracy that otherwise would be thankless. Kudos, in full sincerity.
We all know that bad news and complaints get more attention than good news and praise. This is why people look at twitter and other social media and get the impression that all people do is complain about academic life and culture, and don’t seem to appreciate the parts that are actually okay and working. I do think there are some! Perhaps this is human nature, but we have the capacity to socially and culturally evolve to celebrate success.
Maybe keep this in mind as you are making the choice what to share, or reshare, on your favorite social media platforms.
not a real quote
Like you, I send emails and write reviews when I am pleased with how things are going. If we are going to complain or point out when things are not going well, we must praise and point out when issues are corrected or when things are just plain working well. Feedback on the good, the bad, and the just every day are needed to inform people when they get it right as much as when they get it wrong. Thank for writing this post!
This is great news! And I agree that we need to use LOTS of positive reinforcement to both (a) leverage positive changes for future changes AND (b) sustain positive changes after they are implemented. If there's no support for the change that makes the Waterman more equitable, who's to say it can't be met with some kind of pushback at some point; then we risk seeing the process regress (like far too many things these days). Complacency about good process doesn't protect it. (And, you're right, I didn't see your original SfE post about the change.)