G. Wayne Clough began his tenure as the twelfth secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in 2008 after leading the Georgia Institute of Technology for 14 years. The Georgia Tech alumnus, a civil engineer by training and the first alum to lead the college, oversaw more than $1 billion in new construction during a push to increase the school’s enrollment and prestige. Among Clough’s goals at the Smithsonian are to digitize many of the institution’s 137 million objects and to beef up its K–12 educational programming to link methods of informal education to its formal education system. He was appointed to the National Science Board in 2004.
