As recently as last week, observers thought it unlikely that the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee would act before the Congressional recess on legislation that would reauthorize the America COMPETES Act.  In May, the House passed legislation (HR 5116) to reauthorize the 2007 law and has been waiting for the Senate to follow suit, and CUR recently joined other groups in writing to Senate lawmakers urging them to act on the bill.

The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee is scheduled to mark up a number of bills on Thursday, July 22, including S 3605, the American COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010.  This bill, which was introduced by Committee Chairman John Rockefeller (D-WV), would maintain funding for programs at the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Standards and Technology, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, but is a proposal that differs a bit from the House-approved legislation.  That bill included a National Nanotechnology Initiative and other programs absent from the Senate legislation.

Supporters of the many programs authorized by the America COMPETES Act have long lamented the disappointing lack of federal funding for them.  While this bill does not represent a commitment to funding, there are proposed changes to certain programs that would benefit undergraduate research.  Undergraduate research and courses of study are paid more attention at the NSF and other agencies in the proposed changes, as are primarily undergraduate institutions of higher education.  There is a new provision of the research experiences for undergraduate students (REU) program that directs the Director of NSF to require that every recipient of a research grant from the NSF proposing to include one or more students enrolled in certificate, associate, or baccalaureate degree programs in carrying out the research proposed under the grant shall request support, including stipend support, for those students as part of the research proposal itself versus in a supplement to the proposal (unless participation of the undergraduate student was not foreseeable at the time of the original proposal).  The House-passed bill includes a similar provision.

More broadly, both the House and Senate bills propose changes to programs that recognize the important contributions primarily undergraduate institutions, two-year institutions and undergraduates can and do play in the research enterprise, and there are proposals to diversify collaborative research applications that embrace this notion.

The Council on Undergraduate Research supports this legislation and is hopeful that House and Senate lawmakers will work together to enact the measure before year’s end.  In coming weeks, CUR and Washington Partners, LLC will continue to monitor Congressional action and weigh in with lawmakers on the proposed changes that will benefit undergraduate research.