Geoscience Reference
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Expand opportunities for internal networking, including opportunities
for scientists and engineers to work between programs and offices.
Encourage scientists and engineers to work in interdisciplinary teams
and in new ways to provide information in a timely fashion.
Implement programs to help scientists and engineers to acquire new
skills and expertise throughout their careers, including educational opportunities,
sabbaticals and other kinds of leave, and laboratory rotations.
Provide opportunities for agency scientists to interact with colleagues
in other agencies, in universities, in non-profit organizations, and in the private
sector; such opportunities could include workshops, roundtables, participation in
traditional research conferences, and longer-term exchanges with or as visiting
scientists.
Promote the visibility and recognition of scientific excellence across
its divisions, programs, and locations by enhancing and highlighting its featured
research and awards programs.
Assess its current policies for retaining and hiring civil service em-
ployees. The agency should be nimble and should be able to easily hire or reas-
sign employees to make sure it has specific expertise to understand emerging
challenges and make use of new tools, technologies, and approaches in the ap-
propriate offices, regions, and laboratories at the appropriate time.
There are several fields in which EPA lacks expertise and in which in-
vestments in additional expertise could provide substantial benefits to the
agency and its mission. One key recognized need is for social, behavioral, and
decision scientists. EPA's economic, social, behavioral, and decision science
staff consists almost entirely of economists. The agency is without strong exper-
tise in social, behavioral, and decision sciences, though it does support some
research in these areas through the Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program
and procures economics research from contractors. Social research in EPA was
historically funded by ORD (NRC 2000). In 2008, the economics and decision
science extramural research program was transferred to NCEE (EPA SAB
2011). As part of the reorganization, decision sciences were eliminated alto-
gether (EPA SAB 2011). Economics has remained a low priority (EPA SAB
2011) and the economics staff (about 100 economists) is a very small fraction of
the agency's professional staff (EPA, unpublished material, 2012
2
).
The small representation of economics expertise and the virtual nonexis-
tence of behavioral and decision scientists (nine social scientists, four psycholo-
gists, and one sociologist;
3
[P. Vaughn, EPA, personal communication, July 13,
2
The unpublished data was received from M. Bender, EPA, on July 13, 2012, as part
of a data request made on behalf of the Committee on Science for EPA's Future. This
material is available by contacting the Public Access Records Office of the National
Academies.
3
In addition to psychologists and sociologists, NCEE acknowledged that it was lack-
ing expertise in behavioral economics and is pursuing the hiring of new staff in that field.
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