Beverly Hartline
Montana Technological University
For distinguished accomplishments and tireless efforts to build research capacity; champion and enhance diversity, science education, and outreach; and promote mentorship and honor in Science.
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The late Dr. John F. Ahearne, Sigma Xi Executive Director Emeritus, invited me to join Sigma Xi while I was at OSTP. He chaired the PCAST Energy R&D subcommittee on fission and fusion and I was the OSTP staffer assigned to his subcommittee. Sigma Xi’s broad inter-/multi-disciplinarity and strongly held values of ethics, honor, excellence, education, curiosity, persistence, service to society, and the importance of genuine research experiences for young people aligned well with mine. It seemed natural to join.
For my first decade of membership, I was responsive but not proactive—taking action when contacted, for example to speak at a national meeting or provide pre-publication review of a document. I also managed to pay dues annually (though often several months late, triggered by multiple reminders) and to enjoy reading American Scientist (as does my husband).
That passivity changed when I arrived in Butte. I was thrilled to discover that Montana Tech had a Sigma Xi chapter—established in 1966(!) albeit dormant—several members, and that the previous Chancellor, the late Dr. W. Franklin Gilmore, whom I subsequently had the pleasure to meet, had been a Sigma Xi president (2002-03), despite his location at a small institution in Montana. Given my mandate to expand research and graduate study, and believing that only research achieving the highest ethical and quality standards should be done, I engaged other Sigma Xi members to reactivate the chapter, start a weekly public lecture program featuring distinguished speakers from far and wide, recruit new members including students, and nurture and enhance the already vibrant scientific and engineering environment and discourse on campus.
We also took a performance-focused approach to teaching research ethics, rather than using the more common on-line modules. We wanted everyone doing research on campus to know that responsible research conduct is ESSENTIAL, not just compliant. Therefore everyone doing research needed to be equipped to make appropriate ethical choices. Our face-to-face workshops are presented multiple times per year—tailored for faculty, undergraduates, graduate students, high school students, and K-12 teachers—with faculty responsible for emphasizing ethics in their research mentoring. I smiled to receive the following note from a high-school student, who attended one earlier this summer.
"I wish to thank you… Your years of dedication to helping students of all ages be able to conduct research, and your decades of experience in the fields of science and engineering is a great influence …, and we are proud to have you talk to us about how to conduct similar research with proper ethicacy and safety in mind. [sic]"
Sigma Xi’s stalwart commitment to public understanding of science; science informing policy; all fields of science, engineering, and mathematics; science education and student-driven research; international collaboration; cooperation over competition; the highest standards of ethics; and increasingly the well being of scientists and engineers of all ages continues to be of critical importance to the research enterprise, to society more broadly, and to me. Thank you, Sigma Xi!
Biography
Beverly Karplus Hartline is Emerita Professor of Geophysics at Montana Technological University (Butte, MT), where she retired in February 2021 after serving as Vice Chancellor for Research and Dean of the Graduate School since 2012. At Montana Tech she led the reactivation of a dormant Sigma Xi chapter; established a weekly multidisciplinary public lecture program; personally taught numerous live workshops on research ethics for faculty, students, and high school students and teachers; and catalyzed growth in graduate-school enrollment and funded research. She held a similar position at the University of the District of Columbia from 2009 to 2012, was Dean of the College of Mathematics, Natural Sciences, and Technology at Delaware State University from 2006 to 2009, and spent 2004-2005 as Special Assistant to the President at Heritage University in Toppenish, Washington.
Previously, Hartline held scientific leadership roles at some Department of Energy National Laboratories, including Deputy Laboratory Director of Argonne (2001-2004), and sequentially Spallation Neutron Source Linac Project Director and Acting Deputy Associate Laboratory Director for Strategic and Supporting Research at Los Alamos (1998-2001). From 1985 to 1996, she helped build DOE’s Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Virginia, as its Associate Director and Project Manager, contributing to its value and impact as a distinctive scientific user facility serving a global research community. She also founded and led JLab’s innovative educational partnerships for faculty and students from elementary school through graduate school, which continue to thrive today.
From 1996 to 1998, Hartline was Assistant Director for Physical Science and Engineering at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. There she guided implementation of the Government Performance and Results Act for research agencies, facilitated U.S. involvement in international partnerships, and worked closely with the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), especially on the fission and fusion part of the Energy R&D Report. Assisting White House staff with planning for Stephen Hawking’s Millennium Lecture was one of the high points, as she managed to include about 40 diverse students and a dozen faculty, who were able to meet Hawking, President Clinton, and several Nobel Laureates and federal agency leaders at the reception following.
As a staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (1983-85), Bev helped launch major interdisciplinary initiatives, such as the Center for Advanced Materials, the Human Genome Project, and the Advanced Light Source. Previously, her research at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (1980-82) advanced remote sensing capability for monitoring snowpack water equivalent. From 1978 to 1980 she was a Research News Writer for Science, interviewing leading researchers and authoring twenty articles on a broad range of topics, ranging from solar neutrinos to avalanches, oceanography, astrophysics, and chestnut blight.
Hartline’s bachelor’s degree in physics and chemistry is from Reed College, and her Ph.D. is in geophysics from the University of Washington. In addition to being a newly elected Fellow of Sigma Xi, she is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Physical Society, and the Association for Women in Science (AWIS), and a member of several other professional organizations, including the American Indian Science & Engineering Society and the American Association of Physics Teachers.
A persistent champion for the inclusion and advancement of women and underrepresented minorities in science and engineering, Beverly was a member of the National Science Foundation’s Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering (CEOSE) from 2003 to 2009, including a year as its chairperson. As a member of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics’ (IUPAP) Working Group on Women in Physics from 2000 to 2011, she helped organize and fundraise for the first four IUPAP international conferences on Women in Physics (Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Seoul, and Stellenbosch). She also conceived and led the World Year of Physics’ Young Physicist Talent Search (2005) which engaged thousands of students aged 8 to 18 and a few hundred physicists from a couple dozen countries and culminated in a Symposium for ~100 students (half girls and half boys) from 17 countries, hosted by Taiwan. Congratulatory letters signed by physics Nobel Laureates were mailed to several hundred of the top participants. She has presented invited talks on these topics in many countries, including China, Korea, Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Tunisia, Brazil, Germany, Switzerland, and Cameroon, among others. Since 2004, she has been a member of the editorial board of Springer’s Journal of Science Education and Technology. Over the years, she has served on many advisory committees, panels, and task forces on various topics related to science and engineering, education, or diversity and inclusion.