The nonrenewal of the National Science Foundation grant to the Kansas University Center for Environmentally Beneficial Catalysis is a disappointment, but it is not a catastrophe. The scientists and engineers whose work attracted the grant in the first place remain at KU. The research they have done and continue to do remains outstanding. Industrial partners – more than a dozen – have affiliated themselves with the center. New faculty and graduate students have come to KU to work at the center. Those are all signs of success.

Why did the NSF pull the funding? Without inside information, I will hazard only the following observation: Anyone who has worked with government agencies knows that scientific merit alone doesn’t dictate funding decisions. Politics are always an issue, albeit often unmentioned. Budgetary constraints – remember that the war in Iraq already has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $300 billion – play a role.

Centers like the CEBC also must contend with walking the fine line between academic culture and industrial culture, not always the clearest or easiest line to follow. But whatever caused the nonrenewal, we can be sure that those faculty and administrators involved are attempting to understand what happened, improve those activities that need improvement and move on into the future. That’s all that any reasonable person should ask for at this point.

But there is another issue that has arisen in the past few weeks about CEBC. That is the way in which the local community – including the media – have handled the news of the nonrenewal. Many in the community and the media seem to want to play the “blame game.” When members of the university have rightly refused to do this, the media, especially, have become annoyed.

I commend the provost, only just arrived, for refusing to point fingers and find a scapegoat. The chancellor said – again rightly in my opinion – that in science not every project succeeds. In fact, no one yet knows whether CEBC will be a success; it’s far too early to know. How many businesses can proclaim success in only three years? Not many. After three years in business, even Microsoft was still far from successful.

Unfortunately, the NSF was unwilling to wait a bit longer to see whether CEBC would succeed. But whatever the NSF does, don’t we, who are part of this community who benefit from the work of faculty and administrators at KU, have some obligation to support those who take risks? It was a risk for the university and for the faculty and administrators to commit to the CEBC. They haven’t given up yet.

Quite the contrary, the director, Bala Subramaniam, the faculty and the administrators who work with CEBC are as committed as ever to making the center succeed. I would hope that all those in the community, including members of the media, who celebrated the establishment of the CEBC and the economic and educational benefits it promises to produce, instead of immediately looking for someone to attack for the setback that has occurred, would ask how we all can help to make this center succeed.

And as for administrators choosing not to further the search for a scapegoat, I say, every faculty member and administrator at the university ought to say thank you. I don’t want to work for a boss who won’t support me when things do not go just as we hoped. That’s precisely the time when one needs support.

No one of us, not even reporters and columnists, can be sure that the next professional setback won’t be our own. So, folks, let’s stop trying to find somebody to blame and criticizing a lot of hardworking folks. Instead, let’s act the way friends and neighbors ought to: Let’s tell them we’re here to help.