On June 13, President Barack Obama announced his intention to appoint Robert Groves and James Jackson, two eminent social scientists, to the National Science Board (NSB). Robert Groves is a sociologist-demographer who served as director of the United States Census Bureau during the 2010 Census. He is provost of Georgetown University and Gerald Campbell SJ Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics and the Department of Sociology. James Jackson, a social psychologist, is director of the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research and is Daniel Katz Distinguished University Professor of Psychology.
The NSB is the policy-making body for the National Science Foundation. Groves and Jackson will be sworn in at the August meeting of the NSB. They join two other social scientists on the Board: Deborah Loewenberg Ball, dean of the School of Education at the University of Michigan, and Alan Leshner, chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Groves and Jackson have assumed numerous leadership positions in the social sciences over the years. Jackson is the current president of the Consortium of Social Science Associations. Groves is on the Advisory Committee for the National Academies’ Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Both are members of the steering committee of the Collaborative Initiative to Advance the Social and Behavioral Sciences.