Records of the Office of Research Services/Office of Sponsored Programs

With the passage in 1862 by the U.S. Congress of the Morrill Act an its subsequent approval, in 1887, of the Hatch Act, federal funds began to flow to higher education in this country, first to states for the establishment of land-grant colleges of agriculture and of the mechanic arts (1), and then to those newly established schools for the institution of agricultural experiment stations and the conduct of agricultural research (2).

From those distant beginnings evolved the role of universities as the primary home for basic research in the United States and the training ground for succeeding generations of scientists. An important stimulus in this process arose in the international sector, in pre-World War II days. Rearmament was under way in Germany. Planners and designers were drawing upon weapons technology advances from World War I, adapting them for strategic purposes and incorporating them into new military equipment and material.

In this country, groups of scientists concerned with German remilitarization, many viewing it as preparatory to a second world war began communicating to the highest levels of the U.S. government their awareness of these events. One outcome was the establishment of a White House-based Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), its purpose to collaborate with military scientists and, with the realization that "the greatest practicable source of otherwise untapped scientific expertise lay in colleges and universities," (3) to identify and contract with campus-based scientists capable of meeting defense related technical needs as well as preparing cadres of scientifically and technically competent manpower.

A consequence of this new relationship was the realization that while numerous U.S. faculties included academics with the desired of adaptable skills and knowledge, often their institutions' business operations were not structured to handle the particular administrative demands in play. It has been said that "one of the most significant contributions of OSRD was the writing and administration of a form of contract which reconciled the requirements" of accountability for the use of federal funds with the need of scientists for freedom to address the problems before them. (4) However, on the business side of many involved universities new assignments and often a considerable degree of improvisation were called for in order both to provide research faculty with the requisite support services contract fulfillment called for and address previously unfamiliar matters such as the identification of associated direct and indirect costs of these projects, space allocations, and secrecy issues.

Moving into the post-war years, university reputations became increasingly tied to levels of funded research as those universities identified as research universities gained prominence. A specialized bureaucracy in the universities and in federal agencies developed to manage these programs, which over time became increasingly complex, both in the nature of much research and in the demands of its administration and management. On campuses, the administrative function(s) supporting the programs of research became known as research administration; such offices often reported to the financial side of the house. Some others evolved with an academic orientation and reported to an academic officer.

Scientists active in the programs OSRD put together during the war years often later became advocates for continuing federal funding of campus-based research, positing the notion of a special partnership. At the federal level the National Science Foundation was created in 1950 to provide academic scientists with funding for investigator-initiated research. That era also saw the emergence of funders such as the Office of Naval Research, Air Force Office of Sponsored Research, Army Research Office, etc., agencies spun off from defense mission sponsors with a new orientation to academic initiated research ideas. (5)

Events in the 1960s and 1970s brought changes in this atmosphere. "Qualitative aspects of higher education were being more closely examined by politicians, by the citizenry, and by educators themselves." (6) U.S. involvement in Vietnam, the ensuing student anti-war demonstrations and campus uprisings, along with emotions and political residue from the Cold War had given rise to widespread anti-academic sentiment. The collaborative university-government relationship increasingly came under attack in Congress, the White House, and by some interest groups. Expensive, mission-driven research not feasible on campuses gained support. The government-university relationship as a vehicle for implementation of social change (consent for the use of human subject, oversight of the use of animals in experimentation, maintenance of a drug-free work environment, property alteration to facilitate hiring of disabled workers, etc.) became significant.

The nature of the relationship often became more adversarial than collegial. One perhaps unintended consequence of the foregoing new initiatives was that they required the employment of campus-based compliance officers at almost the same time as federal Office of Management and Budget imposed new limitations on university expenditures associated with research. Tellingly lobbying for funding, including "earmarks," a political process, often substituted for prior selection processes usually based on technical competitiveness.

Much related to these matters is reflected in this modest collection. Again in consultation with the University Archivist it was deemed unnecessary to provide detailed guidance by series to users of this collection. A few topics have been highlighted below. The Box and Folder List, following, is designed to guide interested researchers to particular matters reflected within the collection.

New York University (NYU) was not a first tier institution at the time of the outset of this collection. It was, nevertheless, a significant player in the new environment of 1940-1946, providing contracted-for research and training services to the military, especially at the then College of Engineering at the University Heights campus, research at the University Medical Center, and the work of the Mathematics Institute emerging at Washington Square under the direction of Dr. Richard Courant. The excerpts from the Chase Papers mentioned above are incorporated into this collection as the first entry in Series III, Research Administration and titled here "The World War II Era." They reflect some of those early, and sometimes temporary, institutional assignments. A few years later, postwar faculty interested in advancing their programs of research and seeking new institutional administrative and financial support to facilitate their work can be seen in the 1949 report by a committee of Graduate Arts and Science faculty which follows the Chase section. Notably, in that same year NYU was invited to Association of American Universities (AAU) membership, the national association of premier research universities in North America. Also in Series III, new appointments and offices emerge, charged with generally stated responsibility for various management and administrative activity deemed pertinent to the increasing availability of external funding for research and growing faculty interest in obtaining it. For a sense of the functional interconnectedness among offices reporting to various officers/deans at he time of this collection, see Series III, Series IV, Research Administration, Other Units, and Series V, Schools/Units.

NYU undertook an ambitious development plan in 1964 under the leadership of President James M. Hester (1962-1975), (R.G. 3.0.7). Records pertinent to the research administration function, covering developments related to the university's proposal to the National Science Foundation's Science Development Program, funded at NYU 1969, are found in both the Hester collection and, more completely, including the university's management of the multi-million dollar grant, in the Papers Chancellor/Executive Vice President Sidney Borowitz (1972-1977) (R.G. 6.0.7), some of the latter of which as described above were transferred from Office of Sponsored Programs records into that collection at the time of the Borowitz Papers' processing.

Intellectual property considerations arose in connection with some projected university-industry research relationships; in some instances like concerns were also generated by contractual terms and conditions proposed by publically funded sponsors. Among them were matters of freedom to publish, patent and copyright ownership, and rights in data. Institutional responses of ten took the route of empanelment of faculty or joint recommending policy to the university administration. Detail about these matters can be found in Series I, Administration, and Series VI, Sponsor Matters. Series I and Series II, University Administration, include documentation of the process of institutional consideration and response to government compliance initiatives of the period. Representatives of school research administration offices also participated in these discussion and development activities. See Compliance and Policy committee membership lists, etc., Series I.

At no time during the period of this collection did NYU centralize the research administration function. While from 1952 onward the office initially named Office of Research Services, which reported to the Chancellor, served as "Authorizing Official" for the submission of proposals from most university units to external funding sources-a form of signature authority which committed the institution to the proposal and specified acceptance of its obligation to accept funding awarded and manage it under terms previously agreed to or to be negotiated in advance of acceptance of any such funding-Medicine and the Mathematics Institute (renamed the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences in 1958 in Dr. Courant's honor) retained that authority for those units as did Engineering until its transfer to Brooklyn's Polytechnic University in 1972.

At this writing in 2008, there has been some movement toward centralization of authority. Electronic transmission of proposals has become a reality, and unitis with local research administration offices, including the previously independent Courant Institute, submit proposals directly once cleared by the central office. The Medical Center operation, however, remains completely independent.

Sources:

(1) Axt, Richard G. The Federal Government and Financing Higher Education. New York: Columbia University Press, 1952.

(2)True, Alfred Charles. A History of Agricultural Experimentation and Research in the U.S. U.S. Department of Agriculture: Miscellaneous Publication No. 251, 1937.

(3)Stewart, Irvin. Organizing Scientific Research for War—An Administrative History of the Office of Scientific Research and Development. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1948.

(4)Ibid.

(5)Dupree, A. Hunter. Science in the Federal Government. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957.

(6)Wilson, John T. Academic Science Higher Education and the Federal Government 1950-1983. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1983.