To: NRC Committee on Organization and Management of

Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics

From: Dan Stinebring, Physics Dept., Oberlin College

Re: a small college perspective on NSF astronomy support

I teach astronomy and do ground-based radio astronomy research at a liberal arts college. Since 1993 my research has been supported by the NSF Astronomy Division through the Research at Undergraduate Institutions (RUI) initiative. In addition to my own experience with funding through the NSF, I have also served on several review panels for the NSF as well as an NSF Math and Physical Sciences review of the Astronomy Division in 1999. I have never applied for funding from NASA and have never served on a NASA review panel; however, I have had many conversations with colleagues, both at small colleges and universities, about their experience with NASA, particularly in comparison with astronomy support at the NSF.

In brief, I think that the sort of education and research that I do has been well facilitated by the NSF and has provided excellent value both for the science accomplished and its educational impact. Furthermore, I feel that my "small science" would be lost in the vastness of NASA, particularly since ground-based research is a miniscule part of NASA's mission.

Since your panel's composition is diverse, I will mention that the United States has developed exceptional ground-based capability in radio astronomy and is poised to continue its international leadership in this area with new instruments such as the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), the Green Bank Telescope (GBT), and the upgraded Arecibo telescope -- all funded in part through the NSF. We need to continue to develop a pipeline of students who are trained in the use of these instruments and who can maximize their scientific output. In this effort, small research programs such as mine have played an important role in developing students with the interest and the skill to pursue this work at the graduate level.

My work has been well supported by the relatively small, streamlined, and education-friendly staff at the NSF. They have been responsive to the special needs of those of us with large teaching responsibilities while emphasizing that all supported research must be of high scientific quality as determined by peer-reviewed panels. Since NSF/Astronomy has a large accumulated expertise in the support of ground-based astronomy it seems sensible to maintain this streamlined and well-focused support in its current location. Ground-based astronomy will continue to form the mainstay of astronomical research for many years and provides exceptional hands-on opportunities for student training.

It seems likely to me that if US astronomy research funding is taken over by a combined NASA/NSF astronomy body, small research groups such as mine -- which contribute significantly to the national pipeline of trained astronomers -- will get lost in the ensuing large dollar, large bureaucracy environment.

Sincerely yours,

-- Dan Stinebring