Getting NASA Off the Ground

American children may grow up with stars in their eyes, but Jeff Lawrence '72, a high-level administrator for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), has his feet firmly on the ground. On the ground of Capitol Hill in Washington most of the time.
Three years ago Lawrence became a special assistant to the president of George Washington University after the congressman he had worked for lost in the 1992 election. After 16 years on Capitol Hill as a staff member for various representatives and congressional committees, he was considering getting an advanced degree and trying teaching when he answered a call from the White House. The Clinton Administration needed an associate administrator for legislative affairs, and Lawrence had the skills and contacts. He knew most of the people in the space agency and most of the people in the halls of Congress. As legislative director for former Rep. Bill Green (N.Y.), Lawrence was staff member on the House Appropriations Committee and the subcommittee that oversees independent agencies. In that capacity he had traveled extensively overseeing NASA projects. His experience with NASA and his record of developing legislative strategies and drafting legislation were the credentials that landed him the Presidential appointment.
For Lawrence, the appeal of working for the space agency lies in the earthly workings of Capitol Hill, not the mystique of space exploration. His role is "to keep Congress educated on what we are doing and [to] ensure a healthy outcome for the President's budget," he said.
In the early 1990s, a pattern developed in which NASA's budgets, and particularly funding for the space station project, were resolved in annual cliffhanger votes. Since Lawrence joined the legislative affairs office in 1993--a week and a half before the agency's budget was approved by a single vote--congressional budget approval has come more decidedly.
Lawrence meets with some 250 members of Congress each year. "The key," he said, "is to build up enough of an intelligence network so you know who needs what and then get it to them." Last winter, for example, he returned to his native Maine with NASA administrator Dan Goldin and astronaut Mary Ellen Weber to visit schools and businesses. The trip was organized, in part, to counter the notion that NASA offers nothing for rural areas like northern and western Maine. Lawrence explained to Bangor-area business groups that technology developed by the agency is available to private enterprise, sometimes simply by asking. That kind of "technology transfer" is how ear thermometers first used by astronauts ended up on store shelves and how digital imaging used for the Hubble Space Telescope improved the reliability of mammograms in detecting tumors, Lawrence says.
Lawrence was a history major at Colby. He recalls Professor Clifford Berschneider as a mentor who "beat me up because of my lazy academics and helped me see that just being glib wasn't enough."
Lawrence said he visited Berschneider in Pittsburgh after Berschneider's retirement. "He gave us a vision of the world that was greater than the little high school and the great little college on the hill," Lawrence said. "He really changed the way we looked at things."