Albert Bridgewater, PhD


Albert Bridgewater is Senior Education and Research Programs Advisor with MDB, Inc., (http://www.michaeldbaker.com) and a retired member of the Senior Executive Service, National Science Foundation (NSF).  His experience at NSF included managerial, budget and science policy/planning responsibilities for hundreds of millions of dollars of national and international physics, astronomy, atmospheric sciences, earth sciences, oceanography, Arctic and Antarctic research and human resources program development. He served NSF in a number of positions, including Executive Assistant, Acting Program Manager, Deputy Assistant Director, and Acting Assistant Director. He has extensive experience developing and applying screening criteria for environmental research programs, as well as implementing Federal regulations and policies, coordinating with concerned Federal agencies, and testifying before Congress about Administration environmental policies. During his service as Acting Assistant Director for Astronomical, Atmospheric, Earth, and Ocean Sciences, he obtained funding for Global Geosciences – NSF’s first large-scale funding of climate change research. He is a member of the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He may be contacted at (202) 331-0060, or albert@albertbridgewater.com.

 Dr. Bridgewater has extensive experience addressing increasing minority participation in science, engineering and mathematics. For example, he was a member of the Advisory Board of the Ana G. Mendéz Educational Foundation, Jackson State University and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Science Consortium; has used across-agency program management groups to develop and manage the Research Careers for Minority Scholars (RCMS), Alliances for Minority Participation, Model Institutions for Excellence (MIE), and Collaborative to Integrate Research and Education (CIRE) programs; and obtained across-federal agency funding to develop “Together We Can Make It Work: An Action Plan to Provide Quality Education for Minorities in Mathematics, Science and Engineering.” He was also the recipient of an NSF grant for October 2003 and October 2004 workshops to prepare Tribal Colleges and Universities to submit Major Research Instrumentation proposals. Dr. Bridgewater further has experience as an organizer of student volunteers in Berkeley, a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon, and the developer of many special projects supporting minority participation in science, engineering and mathematics.

Dr. Bridgewater currently has a contract to provide technical assistance and logistical support for intermittent expertise in program evaluation, undergraduate Science, Technology, Education, and Mathematics education, and teacher education for the NSF’s Division of Undergraduate Education. The contract calls for providing staffing and expertise in technical assistance and logistical support for convening panels of experts, expertise in evaluation, and meeting support.

Dr. Bridgewater's physics degrees are a BA from the University of California at Berkeley, and a PhD from Columbia University.

 Additional information on the above activities is provided in the following section on the technical assistance capabilities of MDB, Inc.

Technical Assistance to Minority-Serving Institutions, and Federal Agencies

MDB Inc. provides technical assistance to minority-serving colleges and universities, and Federal agencies, in planning and implementing research and education projects in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). In general, technical assistance is provided for institutional infrastructure development and student support activities that contribute to successful recruitment and retention of undergraduates in the pre-college to graduate school STEM pipeline. In addition, technical assistance may be provided to identify and address the administrative, education and research infrastructure changes needed to achieve the institution's project objectives.

Specifically, MDB Inc., (and its associates) provide technical assistance in the areas described below.

Technical Assistance to Minority-Serving Institutions in Institutional Development

  • Strategic planning;

  • Aligning curricula, instruction, assessment and staff development;

  • Providing exceptional staff development (e.g. training courses or seminars for administrators);

  • Making use of various forms of technology;

  • Developing a wide range of assessment instruments;

  • Implementing institutional changes in policy to effect the project goals; and

  • Evaluating project impacts, and applying results.

Technical Assistance to Minority-Serving Institutions in Leadership Development

  • Designing means to develop the capacity of local and state level policy-makers, administrators, university faculty, business and industry, and the general public to work with the institution; and

  • Implementing a variety of approaches, such as workshops, national conferences, and forums.

Technical Assistance to Minority-Serving Institutions in Proposal Development

 

  • Development of an institutional administrative infrastructure appropriate for long-term support of the activity;

  • Acquisition of laboratory instrumentation/equipment and the development/improvement of laboratory based curricula;

  • STEM facilities renovation;

  • STEM curriculum revisions;

  • Installation of computer networking capability;

  • Development or expansion of opportunities for undergraduate student research and design at appropriate locations (institutional, national or international);

  • Development of high school-to-undergraduate bridging programs for recruiting and retaining undergraduate STEM majors, similar programs designed to recruit and retain students from two-year colleges, and programs that promote undergraduate entry into STEM graduate programs or STEM-related careers;

  • Development of distant learning, as part of a strategy of recruiting and retaining students at two-year or four-year colleges; and

  • Development of collaborative activities (such as pre-engineering transfer programs with other institutions, research facilities or Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs), that are intended to materially enhance the institution's STEM capabilities or otherwise further achievement of the project’s objectives.

Technical Assistance to Minority-Serving Institutions in Networking Activities

  • Discussing issues,

  • Sharing problems and solutions, and

  • Reflecting and communicating with others, both electronically and in person.

Technical Assistance to Minority-Serving Institutions in Project Dissemination

  • Assisting other minority-serving institutions, so that these institutions may develop comparable undergraduate education and research programs.

Technical Assistance to Minority-Serving Institutions in Project Evaluation

  • Implementing the program evaluation designs, and

  • Conducting a self-evaluation.

Technical Assistance to Federal Agencies in Development and Implementation of Conceptual and Operational Frameworks for Program Evaluation Design

  • Developing a Conceptual and Operational Framework to provide the agency the basis for a separate Program Evaluation Design for a detailed program evaluation.

  • Implementing the Conceptual and Operational Framework to enable the agency’s Technical Evaluation Committee to "follow" the plan from beginning to end.

  • The Conceptual and Operational Framework typically includes:

o      A statement of how what is known about the program initiative guided the development of the overall Conceptual and Operational Framework proposal.

o      A list of the questions that will be addressed; the specific procedures that might be employed to provide quantitative and qualitative information required to answer these questions and an explanation of why the chosen procedures are the most appropriate under the circumstances and questions about how the program is following its operational plan.

o      A description of how the various Conceptual and Operational Framework activities will work together to provide the basis for a useful and comprehensive evaluation of the program.

o      A plan for the dissemination of results.

o      A plan for working with institutional, agency and external evaluators of the existing awarded projects.

o      A time line for all of the Conceptual and Operational Framework activities and reports.

o      A description of the personnel and/or subcontractors and their responsibilities.

Program Development Experience

Dr. Bridgewater’s twenty-eight year career at the National Science Foundation had two distinct phases. The first twelve-year phase was marked by rapid promotion from an entry-level general services position to the second-highest level of the Senior Executive Service – a senior Federal executive corps established to have solid executive expertise, public service values, and a broad perspective of government. During this phase, he was accountable for all of the traditional executive responsibilities associated with managing the then largest directorate in the National Science Foundation. The second sixteen-year phase provided an opportunity to bring together diverse directorates of the National Science Foundation to address important public policy issues impacting the health of science, engineering and mathematics programs at minority-serving institutions. Undertaking each of the following activities typically involved assembling a cross-directorate working group to develop NSF-wide understanding of the nature and importance of the need for the activities.

Research Careers for Minority Scholars (RCMS) developed from data indicating that each year over one hundred thousand minority students entered U.S. colleges and universities intending to major in science, engineering and mathematics, but only two hundred annually received doctoral degrees. This suggested that the problem was not lack of minority student interest in science, engineering and mathematics. Rather, the problem was lack of a network supporting the science, engineering and mathematics development of the most talented minority students. RCMS provided mentoring, research experience and support for select minority students throughout their undergraduate years. According to data collect by the RCMS institutions, 56.7 percent of the RCMS scholars went on to graduate school, 3.8 percent went on to medical school, and 31 percent entered employment (Source: “What Works – Encouraging Diversity in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology Through Effective Mentoring” – NSF 96-70).

Alliances for Minority Participation developed from discussions with minority-serving institution faculty members. They expressed the need for greater access to science, engineering and mathematics resources at their own and other institutions, in order to provide their students enhanced exposure to science, engineering and mathematics research, and a pipeline to doctoral granting institutions. Now called the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program, LSAMP program supports sustained and comprehensive approaches to broadening participation at the baccalaureate level. These approaches facilitate the production of students who are well prepared in STEM and motivated to pursue graduate education. Projects place emphasis on aggregate baccalaureate production; attention to individual student retention and progression to baccalaureate degrees; aggregation of student progression to graduate school entry and institutionalizing, disseminating and promoting the replication of strategies and collaborative approaches proven successful to transition undergraduate STEM students to graduate STEM programs. LSAMP alliances are based on programmatic approaches known to be successful in meeting well-defined needs, and involving undergraduates in faculty research.

Model Institutions for Excellence was developed at the request of the then NSF Director, Dr. Walter Massey. Dr. Massey wanted to leave a legacy at NSF, based on replicating his undergraduate experience at Morehouse College. His faculty mentors gave him individual research projects to substitute for coursework that might have been available at research institutions. He wanted to strengthen the STEM baccalaureate degree producing capacity of a small number of minority institutions. Selected institutions were characterized by a productive track record of awarding STEM baccalaureate degrees, a strong commitment to STEM education and undergraduate research, and an existing infrastructure appropriate for launching a major enhancement of current efforts. Together with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NSF developed MIE to provide an opportunity to define methods for improving minority institutions in STEM education and undergraduate research; target a small number of minority institutions that were poised to make a substantial contribution to the goal of increasing the number of minorities who earn STEM baccalaureate degrees and go on to enter graduate-level STEM degree programs or STEM-related careers; and produce minority institutions that are serving as models for the successful recruitment, education and production of quality-trained STEM baccalaureate degree recipients. MIE included a third phase of providing funding for the institutionalization of these models.

Collaboratives to Integrate Research and Education (CIRE) was designed to improve and strengthen education infrastructure in STEM and increase recruitment, retention and degree attainment by members of groups underrepresented in STEM. Traditionally, minority institutions are leading sources of STEM degrees awarded to underrepresented minorities. CIRE activity was intended to enhance the quantity and quality of STEM opportunities for students and faculty members at participating minority-serving institutions by developing models for developing long-term STEM education and research relationships between minority-serving institutions and NSF-supported facilities and centers.

While on an Intergovernmental Personnel Act assignment at the Quality Education for Minorities Network, Dr. Bridgewater received a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)/National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop the Quality Education for Minorities (QEM) Mathematics, Science, and Engineering (MSE) Network. Since 1991, the QEM/MSE Network, an institutional membership organization hosted by QEM, has conducted annual national conferences to address major issues and barriers affecting the STEM education of underrepresented minorities; to identify potential strategies for addressing these issues and barriers; to highlight effective programs and interventions; and to recognize outstanding STEM-related achievements of students, faculty, and institutions.  Since its beginning, QEM has utilized an extensive networking and coalition building approach, with faculty from QEM/MSE Network members as well as from other colleges and universities serving as catalysts for change. With support from these institutions as well as federal and philanthropic support, QEM has been able to design and implement a range of initiatives to enhance STEM programs at minority-serving institutions and to provide leadership development opportunities for students, parents, and K-16 faculty.




(08/20/2011)