Volpe Center Highlights
Director's Notes
Director's Notes |
Focus |
Safety |
Mobility |
Human and Natural Environment |
Economic Growth and Trade |
National Security |
Papers and Presentations
The Value of the Volpe Workforce
Recently, I was awarded the Rank of Distinguished Executive by President Bill Clinton. This honor has led me to reflect on what a privilege it has been to work here at the Volpe Center. I have worked at the Center since 1970 and one of the constant highlights has been watching an extraordinary workforce and work portfolio evolve, grow, and respond to the changing needs both of transportation and of our society at large. My award is a direct reflection of the Center's fine workforce.
For more than 30 years, the staff of the Volpe Center has been applying their technical knowledge to transportation issues. As a catalyst for innovation, the Center fosters key technical, operational, and management advances to meet current and future transportation challenges. A former NASA laboratory, we have successfully broadened our mission from aerospace research to the challenges of the entire transportation community. We have become market driven, re-engineered our federal staff, and streamlined our procurement process. Our diverse customer base includes local, state, federal, and foreign governments; and the private sector. A unique funding mechanism sets us apart from other federal entities. There is no direct annual appropriation for the Volpe Center--we are budget neutral with $200 million in annual obligations.
As the Volpe Center has grown, hard-core engineering and scientific approaches have been augmented by a need to look at other disciplines. The Volpe staff has realized that the real questions about transportation technologies have to do with their value to society rather than simply whether they will work from a technical standpoint. The Center's workforce has broadened to include economists, social scientists, computer specialists, operational research analysts, and psychologists. In this way, the Center has been able to establish a tradition of providing leadership and rapid response to help decision makers and organizations to define problems and pursue solutions that are necessary for advancing transportation into the 21st Century. Over the course of the last 30 years, the Center has addressed major national and international issues related to safety, security, environment, mobility, and economic growth and trade.
Today, the Volpe Center is an internationally recognized federal center of transportation and logistics expertise. The Center places high value on critical thinking--which affords a perspective on the problems of transportation and technology. This perspective has fostered an ability to transfer the lessons learned across the transportation modes. Our workforce addresses problems in one transportation area and at the same time applies the knowledge gained in different areas. Our flexible organizational structure promoted creative teamwork across disciplines long before working in teams became the norm in today's workplaces.
Teams and individuals at the Volpe Center have the opportunity to grow and learn and adapt their skills to the changing problems faced by our society. Resourcefulness is encouraged by the wide variety of professional development opportunities to continue to learn while working at the Center. For example, the Center's Fellows Program pays the full tuition, fees, and book expenses for employees undertaking graduate or postgraduate degree programs that directly support the DOT and/or the Center's work areas, core disciplines, or long-range goals. I am proud that our dedicated and motivated workforce takes advantage of these opportunities. Because the Center is a knowledge-based organization, strong investment in learning and development is critical to our success. This atmosphere has led to a unique blend of talents where many staff members have shown themselves to be capable of working on a diverse range of projects, learning new disciplines, and taking new approaches as times change.
As we look to the future, it is our obligation to create an environment where the lessons learned in the past will be transferred to a new generation of transportation workers. We have a mandate to transfer knowledge. As part of this effort we have a Mentoring Program, which pairs new employees with established employees and allows established employees to convey not only their accumulated knowledge, but also a sense of what it means to be a part of the Volpe community. Through our distinguished Emeritus program "retirees" can continue to work on a part-time basis. These programs capture and disseminate the accumulated knowledge of the Center's technical and management leadership and create learning partnerships within and across the organization. The Faculty Fellows Program enables visiting professors from local academic institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Tufts University to work on site at the Center while retaining their faculty positions. This program enables academics to work side-by-side with our permanent staff, and the collaboration often continues after the staff has returned to their parent institutions.
I also am encouraged and excited about the programs that bring young people into the Volpe Center. The John A. Volpe Internship Program, established by DOT Secretary Rodney E. Slater, provides major tuition assistance and paid work opportunities at the Volpe Center for selected outstanding graduate students in the engineering, scientific, and social science disciplines who have expressed an interest in working in the field of transportation. The Center's Co-op Program employs highly qualified graduate and undergraduate students from 20 colleges and universities, allowing students to attend college while working at the Center. These programs give the Center access to an excellent pool of future professionals, and also give students the opportunity to serve their country and make a difference while working side-by-side with leaders and experts in transportation.
We can indeed look back proudly on the Volpe Center's history. It is with gratitude that I look back on the hard work of the Center's workforce and look forward with great optimism to the Center's future.