Vision of BARC

Speech by Area Director Dr. Phyllis Johnson to the Leadership Meeting, Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, October 24, 2000

I've been asked to talk about what my vision is for Beltsville.

My vision is that Beltsville would be the first place people think of, anywhere in the world, when they think about agricultural research. They might think of Clay Center, or Peoria, or Rothamsted second, but they'll think of us first. Let's be not only the flagship for ARS, but the flagship for everybody.

My vision is that we will be known as a place that does high quality, high impact research to solve problems for farmers and consumers, and that we have much of our impact because we take a holistic, systems-based approach, rather than a reductionist or discipline-based one, to solve problems.

That's one way in which the reorganization contributes to the vision. Over the past 5-10 years, BARC has taken advantage of the fact that it is a comprehensive center with nearly every scientific discipline represented to put together teams that can take systems approaches to large, difficult problems. Many of these activities, such as sustainable agriculture and animal manure and nutrient management, have not been as visible as we'd like, and the new organizational structure will help us to show off our strengths in a variety of programs.

My vision is that we will be at the cutting edge of science and that we will be known for that. There's still a bit of that lingering feeling out there that ARS research isn't, and can't possibly be, as good as the work done at Berkeley, for example. We know that's not true, and we are going to do our best to make sure that people recognize the quality of the science done here. Perhaps some of this perception comes from the feeling in academia that curiosity-driven research is somehow better, or purer, or more noble, than research undertaken to solve a problem, regardless of how fundamental it is. I think that most people in ARS don't make those kinds of value judgements-both kinds of research are valuable, and we can be proud to do research that serves the American people.

We will continue to build on our strengths, both in areas that involve primarily field work and in areas that are focused on laboratory research. I mentioned sustainable agriculture earlier as an area we have been and will continue to highlight. Another focus that we have been building up in the past two or three years is genomics, of plants, animals, and microbes. We've put well over a million dollars of HPRL and Area Director's reserve funds into purchasing hardware, software, robotics, and other equipment to enhance our ability to use the 3700 and other sequencers, and we anticipate spending considerably more. We got new equipment that has allowed a large group of scientists and other laboratory personnel to participate interactively in weekly genomics lectures from NIH, without having to fight the Beltway, and I'm sure this will prove useful for other topics as well. We've recently received an inquiry about working with the human genome to look at the effect of nutrition on gene expression as it relates to risk factors for chronic disease in humans. If we didn't already have a significant level of effort in other areas of genomics here, it would be hard to even think about the human work, which is exactly in line with USDA's mission to define nutrient requirements to keep the diverse American population healthy. We cannot build up these programs from the top down. While the Area or Headquarters often provide money or other resources, we depend on your scientific wisdom and expertise to plan and carry out these programs.

Dr. Dwayne Buxton, the new Deputy Administrator for the National Program Staff, has told me a couple of times in the last few weeks that he wants to sit down and identify the strengths here at Beltsville that we can further build on in the future. We're going to do that, and we will continue to leverage our strengths as we've been doing already. Dr. Horn has provided great support in terms of agency budget requests for our facilities modernization, and I am optimistic that we are going to be able to accomplish much of what we need for modern facilities in the next few years. We are taking steps to do what we can to ensure that we have the things we need to do cutting-edge research. We recently arranged with the National Agricultural Library to add another T-1 line to increase our bandwith for internet access, and we are in the early planning stages for doing a comprehensive assessment of all of our information technology needs-hardware, software, and people. We have invested considerable funding, probably more than a million dollars, of our repair and maintenance money, in the past few years to upgrade animal facilities, and we will continue to seek construction funding for new facilities. We need to show leadership by having excellent animal facilities, not old out-of-date ones. As soon as the appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2001 is signed, we will be contracting with the Navy to do an in-depth assessment of all of our security needs at BARC-building access, security patrols, communication during emergencies, monitoring of buildings for fire and intrusion.

We get a lot of foreign visitors at BARC. Some are just curious, some are on official junkets and we're part of their excuse to visit Washington. Sometimes we get very serious visitors, like the delegation from the Russian duma; the Minister of Agriculture and the Senators and Congressmen from the Philippines; the journalists, members of Parliament, and high government officials from Great Britain, all wanting to talk to our scientists about GMOs and to get first-hand information and opinions from them to be used as they develop legislation and policies for their country, or educate the public about issues. I think those visits exemplify the kind of place we want to be. My vision is that we will be the place people turn to for information because we are known as world leaders in agricultural research, and the place to come to if you want to know about agricultural science in the United States.

We have that kind of reputation because we have a high quality, productive research staff. You've heard me talk repeatedly about the productivity of scientists at BARC, and how they are promoted more often than scientists in the rest of the agency. I've talked about the major awards the scientists win. I do this for a couple of reasons-first, I want you all to know that I think you and your colleagues do great work. Second, I want the rest of the world to know-and I found out last week that even NPS was unaware of some of these things. Third-I think the current level of both productivity and impact here set a high standard, and since many people, certainly many scientists, are competitive, not only with others, but with themselves, there is much to look forward to in terms of getting even better!

An essential ingredient for doing great scientific research is to have a great laboratory and field support staff, and great facilities people too. We do have excellent support personnel, but some kinds of employees are getting hard to find. Information tecnology people, people with skills in molecular biology, microbiologists, and high-voltage electricians-we face strong competition for the best people in many fields. We will continue to make use of the flexibilities we do have with recruitment and retention bonuses to attract and keep high quality support staff, and I am continuing to dialogue with the Human Resources Division and the Department about inconsistencies-perceived or real- in how we and other Federal agencies grade and classify employees. There are no easy solutions to these problems, but we will keep trying.

If you look in the map book for Prince George's County, the purple splotch that represents BARC is shown as the National Agricultural Research Center, and there are a couple of road signs in that area with the "national" designation. Although "national" isn't part of our official name right now, I think that we have to keep in mind that this is truly a national center. Maybe we aren't called a national laboratory, like the big Department of Energy labs, or a national institute, like the National Institutes of Health, but our mission is national and international, and we need to communicate this to our customers and stakeholders. This is not the Maryland Agricultural Research Center, and it's important that hog producers in Iowa and dairy operators in California know that it's not.

At the Area level, I have come to believe that much of what we should be doing is to be the Chief Marketing Office for the Beltsville Area. We have made great strides in just the past year in developing relationships with the county and state economic development offices, the biotechnology industry in the area, and with the business community in general. This is now at the point where these relationships are starting to increase exponentially. I think they are going to result not only in more people knowing we are here and understanding what we do, but in more products being developed through Cooperative Research and Development Agreements, and even more impact on agriculture and human nutrition. We are also forming plans for some very focused outreach activities to enhance our relationships with particular commodity groups or segments of the agribusiness industry that will, we hope, lead to political support for BARC that goes far beyond our immediate Congressional district, and far beyond the state line. You'll be hearing more about the details in the next month or so. Ultimately, we need this to help our programs grow by getting increases to base funds.

In addition to the programmatic emphases, I have a vision for how we will get work done at Beltsville. And it's a vision of harmony. When I came here four years ago, I heard from many sources that Beltsville had more than its share of complaints, grievances, and problems that nobody knew how to solve. Since then, I think we have made great progress in dealing with these kinds of problems. We started supervisory training open to everybody, because many complaints arise because a supervisor has done something dumb, not always intentionally. In partnership with the union, we've provided training for non-supervisors on critical processes like performance evaluations and on employee rights, so that employees know what their supervisors can appropriately do-and what they can't do. Dr. Korcak, the Institute Directors, and I, have invested large amounts of our time in talking with employees and finding solutions to problems. We have the monthly brown bag Lunch with the Director, which provides another avenue for employees to raise concerns directly to the Area Office. We've also provided specialized training for animal care employees, so they could become nationally certified, and which should help them advance in their jobs. We've initiated, with the union, a program to provide tutoring for employees who need help with literacy, or who want to work for a GED; this should help them not only in their jobs, but in their day-to-day lives.

We've also been doing other things to improve the quality of the work environment for our employees. We partnered with the union to create a large new conference room in Building 426, along with new locker rooms there for our shop employees. We are working on plans to upgrade locker room facilities for animal caretakers in a number of buildings, so that they have clean and pleasant places to clean up and to eat their lunches. And we continue to support maximum flexibility in other areas where it can help people meet family obligations and other needs they have away from the workplace. As a result of these and many other efforts, some good things have happened. For the past two fiscal years, which is all we have reliable statistics for, we have had a 19% decrease in new EEO complaints over the previous year. Last week, for the first time ever, we had NO pending informal EEO complaints. Recently, we successfully negotiated a contract with the union for the first time since 1976, and it is pending a ratification vote by the union. John Van de Vaarst and Joe Marshall, the outgoing union president, received an award from the USDA partnership council last week for the way we've worked together on various issues. We will never be totally free of complaints and problems, because this isn't Utopia, and never will be, but I think we've made a lot of progress. I think this can really be a place where people want to come to work, and we get lots accomplished because we can spend our time together working rather than fighting --because we treat one another with respect.

The final element in my vision is that Beltsville will reflect the wonderful diversity of the American people. It's going to take some real work for us to recruit and keep minorities, the disabled, and others who may be under-represented in our workforce. In some cases, we'll need to help high potential students get degrees in areas where we need help. In others, we'll need to work with current employees to help them get training and education that will allow them to advance in their careers while meeting our workforce needs. We're going to have to go out and look for talented people, not just wait for them to come to us.

I want to tell you a little story here. Back when I was a rather new hire, a GS-12, out at the end of the world in North Dakota, Dr. Kinney, the ARS Administrator, sent around a copy of a speech that one of the senior ARS leaders had given here at Beltsville for Black History Month or some similar special program. Dr. Kinney was so impressed with this speech that he wanted every scientist in the agency to read it. In the speech, the story was told of how a new scientist had been hired at an ARS location, and he had not fit in well with the existing staff. Apparently they all drank beer, listened to country music, and liked football, while the new scientist preferred wine, listened to classical music, and didn't care for sports at all. Even the daily chit-chat most of us have with our co-workers was difficult because they had so little in common. Things got worse and worse until the new scientist's work deteriorated significantly. He was then transferred to a location where he "fit in" better and his work was very good. The moral of this story was supposed to be that when you get a new employee who is "different" than you are, you should give him/her guidance and mentoring so they could learn to be like you.

Folks, that's not the line we are pushing in Beltsville any more! You know this, but I'll say it anyway because it's so important:

The Beltsville Area is committed to establishing and maintaining a diverse workforce where everyone is accepted, encouraged and respected "because of" their differences. As you know, I established a Workplace Diversity Task Force to identify and eliminate barriers that may restrict diversity when recruiting, training, promoting, and soliciting nominations for awards. This taskforce has already been very helpful, and I expect it will continue to be so. Our success in science and everything else we do is dependent on the contributions of all our employees. Our goal is to make the Beltsville Area a place with a diverse workforce in which all employees receive equitable treatment. Each of us is unique. Obvious differences are age, gender, race, and physical ability. However, we also vary in language, geographic origin, religion, intellectual ability, education, personality, sexual orientation, family status, personal habits, interests, income, work experience, and job assignment. Our individual blends of differences and likenesses make each of us unique, and uniquely able to contribute to the success of the Beltsville Area. "One size fits all" never fits anybody. No matter how we differ, we can all work together to make sure that this is "the place" to be for agricultural research in the world.

I think my vision can be summarized by something Buck Rodgers once said:

"There are countless ways of achieving greatness, but any road to achieving one's maximum potential must be built on a bedrock of respect for the individual, a commitment to excellence, and a rejection of mediocrity."