The Measure of STAR Review of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Science To Achieve Results (STAR) Research Grants Program (2003) / Chapter Skim
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The research sponsored by the STAR program allows the agency to fell information gaps that are not addressed completely by its intramural research program and to respond to new issues that the EPA laboratories are not able to address. The research support awarded by the STAR program is of three main kinds: grants awarded to individual investigators or small groups of investigators, grants awarded to multidisciplinary (and sometimes multi-institutional)
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The EPA officials represented NCER and other EPA research and program offices. The public sessions included presentations by representatives of other federal agencies that support extramural research and by experts in evaluating research programs.
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Several previous reports by EPA and the National Academies have addressed the question of whether EPA should have its own research program or rely on research results developed elsewhere. Those reports all concluded emphatically that EPA needs its own strong research program to meet the needs of its mission.
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The STAR program also encourages its grantees to disseminate their research results widely to promote their rapid and widespread use. For all those reasons, STAR research effectively expands the nation's scientific foundation for protecting human health and the environment.
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. gram gives primary potential users of research results a unique role in helping to plan the research and to identify the specific high-quality proposals that will be of greatest value to them.
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When the desired research is outside EPA's traditional research fields and might therefore include scientists not already involved with the agency's research program, STAR often solicits the help of other agencies that traditionally work with these scientists to ensure that they are aware of the funding opportunities. The STAR program has established a rigorous peer-review process.
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Evaluating the quality of research results is difficult and necessarily involves substantial judgment on the part of scientists with expertise in the research fields being reviewed. In addition, because of the relative youth of the STAR program, only about 40°/0 of STAR research projects funded to date have been completed.
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The STAR program is too young to be able to document fully the extent to which its research results are being used to inform development of new regulations and environmental-management clecisions. Even with respect to projects that have been completed, there is often a substantial delay between when the research results are proclucect and the agency clecicles to undertake rule-making or other actions to aciciress the issues that were stuci.
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To ensure the usefulness of STAR research results, it is also important for the STAR program to maintain a balanced research portfolio, including balances between "core" and "problem-driven" research and between human health and ecologic research. Recommendation.
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When appropriate, EPA should consider involving representatives of the intended audiences from outside the agency in helping to define the relevant research results and the strategy for their dissemination. Should the fellowship program continue to be part of the ORE research program?
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Recommendation. Given the nation's continuing need for highly qualified scientists and engineers in environmental research and management, the STAR fellowship program should be continued and funded.
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Finding. There are no easy answers when it comes to identifying metrics for evaluating research programs, and the best approach for evaluating the STAR program is to establish a structured system of reviews by panels of experts.
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Qualitative metrics are less likely to have such effects, but they need to be interpreted carefully. The committee judges that expert review by a group of people with appropriate expertise is the best method of evaluating broad research programs, such as the STAR program.
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