Staff reaction to NSF restructuring mixed

This week shapes up as a big one for the National Science Foundation. Foundation. Its director, Walter E. Massey, is expected to issue a statement outlining his views and priorities as director, and a long-range planning process for NSF. At press time, no further details were available. However, his statement couldn't come at a better time, because as one veteran staffer puts it, "Never have I seen morale so low around here." Recent organizational changes have greatly upset agency staff members. When physicist Massey took over NSF early this year, staffers breathed a collective sigh of relief. His predecessor, Erich Bloch, was a hard-driving industrialist whose main purpose, it seemed, was to agitate in favor of engineering. Hopes ran high that Massey would let the agency settle into its post-Bloch era while shifting it back to its old basic science persona. That hasn't happened. Massey, it turns out, is carrying out an even bigger organizational revolution at NSF than Bloch ever conceived. At the same ti...