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In 1947, the Steelman report had asserted the need “to assist in the reconstruction of European laboratories as a part of our program of aid to peace-loving countries.” John R. Steelman, “A Program for the Nation,” Volume 1 of Science and Public Policy: A Report to the President Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, August 27, 1947), 31. It also recommended that science counselors be appointed to key American embassies abroad. Thus, by implication, it asserted that international relations should be an integral component of a science policy based on science for the public good.

In the early 1950s, a working group organized under the non-governmental International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) began planning for the International Geophysical Year. In the United States, the National Science Foundation became the principal supporter of U.S. involvement in the IGY. Until 1957, NSF’s budgets for research and education had been approximately equal. Beginning with the two-year special appropriation the agency received for the IGY, its research budget exceeded its education budget for the first time. The special IGY appropriations were regarded as a temporary funding spike. However, because of the national consternation occasioned by Sputnik, NSF’s budget for fiscal year 1959 was 250 percent greater than it had been two years earlier. NSF had finally asserted itself as one of the principal supporters of basic research in the United States.

Early in the Kennedy administration, U.S. Ambassador to Japan Edwin Reischauer suggested that Kennedy negotiate with Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka to establish three bi-national committees: one on economic affairs, one on cultural affairs, and one on science and technology. With the establishment of the last, the NSF and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science were named implementing agencies for the two countries. To that end, the NSF established an office in the American Embassy in Tokyo, which facilitated visits of American scientists to the country for short-term workshops to explore areas of mutually beneficial cooperative research projects. Although development of such projects was slow at first, it soon accelerated as the benefits of collaboration became increasingly evident.

Following the shock of Sputnik and the related widespread conviction that something was seriously lacking in American education, the 1958 National Defense Education Act authorized the NSF to develop programs to improve science education first at the secondary school and later at the undergraduate level. Among the projects initiated by NSF were six-week summer institutes for high school and college teachers held on university campuses. During the early 1960s, India decided to try similar institutes, and asked the U.S. Government to send qualified scientific educators to serve as consultants. In 1964-65, these programs were implemented by university educators under contract with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In 1966, USAID requested that NSF take over the program. By 1970, the program had spawned longer-term projects, such as curriculum development, and numerous American scientists and engineers were developing collaborative research projects with their Indian counterparts. The author served as US consultant to a summer institute for college teachers at Sagar University in 1967 and was the resident physicist on the staff of the Liaison Group for Science Education attached to the American Embassy in Delhi from July 1969 to August 1971. This effort would end in 1971, when India shut the program down following the Indo-Pakistan War and the Nixon administration’s open tilt toward Pakistan.

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Source:  OpenStax, A history of federal science policy from the new deal to the present. OpenStax CNX. Jun 26, 2010 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11210/1.2
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