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1967-1972. The Beginning: Out of Chaos, Order, then ComplexityGetting EstablishedLawson Crowe succeeded James Archer as the dean of the graduate school (and with line authority over the director of CIRES) and Wilmot "Bill" Hess followed George Benton as the director of the ESSA laboratories. The presence in Boulder of the headquarters of IER (later moved, as ERL, to Silver Spring, Maryland) and several of the research laboratories provided easy access by the CIRES Director to the ERL director and cooperating laboratories This was an important asset in accomplishing the goals of CIRES. Both Crowe and Hess became strong supporters of CIRES, though Crowe had initially to deal with personnel commitments and financial exigencies caused by prior agreements with other recently organized research units on the campus. Problems confronting Harrison and the other founding fellows included finding a satisfactory solution to the housing situation (CIRES could never grow within the confines of the Willard Hall space), the search for a "permanent" director, and the need to improve internal relations with a number of key individuals and units in the University that were less than enthusiastic about the development of a new entity with which they might have to compete for funds and faculty positions. The housing problem went from serious to critical in the summer of 1969, when CIRES was evicted from the Willard Hall space. Harrison and Hess went to Vice-President Manning to determine what was going on. They learned that the University was making arrangements to purchase a fraternity house at 914 Broadway (present site of the offices of the Central Administration of the University) and Manning committed this building to the use of CIRES. A memorandum from Harrison to Hess, October 28, 1969, contains the following: You [i.e., Hess] will find out if ESSA can sign a long-term (four or fiveyear) lease on the frat house. If so, Dean Manning will be able to finance its purchase through the revolving fund. This will save about 6 months and avoid the possibility that the legislature may refuse to go along with the appropriation for its purchase. These efforts proved fruitless when Crowe succeeded in persuading Manning that a better use for the fraternity house would be as offices for the graduate school. CIRES was then moved to the east campus, Physical Science Research Building #1, later renamed rl-1, the Litman Research Laboratory. All of its activities were based there until the mid-1970s, when expansion into several other buildings was necessary to accommodate growth. One good result of this experience was that Crowe became convinced that Hess really wanted CIRES to succeed and develop, thereby making Crowe himself a strong supporter of the new institute. In the October 28, 1969, memo to Hess, Harrison also indicates the state of planning. A master plan for development was to be generated. He writes:
It is perhaps inevitable that the development of new forms of organization within an established institution will evoke resistance from those responsible for the well-being of their existing units. Deans and department chairs expressed concern that CIRES might not only claim financial resources and faculty positions for which they had hopes, but might also impinge directly on their missions of teaching and research. CIRES, whose personnel were dedicated to making the university an even stronger force for excellence in research and instruction within the scope of its subject matter, had to justify its existence to those in the university community not directly involved in its creation, some of whom were quietly hoping that CIRES would disappear. The flavor of some of the criticism, and indications that CIRES in its enthusiasm was not sufficiently sensitive to the concerns of others, is re- flected in notes and memos written a few years after CIRES started. Provost Lawson Crowe wrote to Chris Harrison, July 26, 1971: I have emphasized on many occasions the necessity for consulting with Dean _______ in the appointment of a Director of CIRES. Most of our difficulties with the _______ appointment originated in the fact that adequate consultation had not been conducted. On February 12, 1972, Crowe sent the following memo to Harrison, with a copy of a letter to University President Thieme from a faculty member in the Department of Astro-Geophysics: I don't know what all the shouting is about but it looks to me as if CIRES has some fence mending to do. I have heard complaints from Briggs [Dean of Arts and Sciences], Peters [Dean of Engineering] and Ned Benton [Professor in Astro-Geophysics who later became a fellow of CIRES] in a similar vein. What do we need to do? The attached letter from the A.-G. faculty member (not Ned Benton) to President Thieme includes these comments prompted by a proposed new version of the MoU: Apparently this document is a restatement of an earlier agreement between these two institutions, and its intent is to extend the scope of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.... any new negotiations should also reflect the changing needs of the University and the implied differences in the useful role of such a cooperative institute.... most of the fields included in the CIRES "Scope" have already been initiated within the Department of Astro-Geophysics. ... I have found them [i.e., CIRES scientists] interested only in self consistently generating their own program priorities, while completely ignoring pressures from University faculty that adequately represent the fields listed within the CIRES scope.... Unless a new administrative resolve is created within CIRES, I consider the organization uselessly competing with present University programs, and as such jeopardizing their existence. Clearly, the leadership of CIRES, while devoting its energy to the early development of the new organization, had not paid enough attention to relations within the University. The hostility expressed in this letter and in other written and oral comments was especially distressing to the CIRES fellows because they felt the Institute existed to move the University toward greater excellence. It was particularly critical that departments participating in CIRES through shared faculty, as well as other units, should understand what could be accomplished in the institute mode of operation that would not be done by the same faculty members working in the conventional way in their departments. The need to justify the development of interdepartmental, interdisciplinary institutes applied not only to CIRES but to all institutes, those recently created and any to come in the future. Faculty concern about the growth of institutes reached a point such that the Educational Policy and University Standards Committee of the Faculty Senate asked the Office of Institutional Research to submit a report, "Year-Round Institutes on the Boulder Campus," dated April 14, 1970 (appendix two). The report was "a response to a desire expressed by some faculty for a fuller understanding of the functions and relationship of institutes to the University." An institute is defined as "an interdisciplinary vehicle created for the purpose of conducting research activities." The report also emphasizes the contribution of institutes to graduate education. During 1969-1970, nine such institutes were functioning on the Boulder campus, including CIRES. The benefits to the University of the existence of institutes are summarized as: Institutes permit intensive focusing upon specialized kinds of research and research projects. They cut across departmental units of organization to permit the desired aggregation of personnel. To a larger extent, Institutes also generate much of their own funds. Specialized facilities may be provided to aid the research.... Without Institutes, many of these research activities would very likely not happen and benefits would be lost to the University and the faculty. In the context of this history, the summary of the objectives and research interests of CIRES in 1970 offered by the Office of Institutional Research in this report is informative: "This institute is devoted to research and advanced training in continuum mechanics; geophysical fluid dynamics; solid earth and planetary geophysics, including geochemistry; and plasma science, including magnetohydrodynamics." Titles of then-current projects were: "A plasma instability mechanism for the formation of ionospheric irregularities," "On the potential importance of acoustic techniques for the remote measurement of atmospheric parameters," "Propagation and re- flection of electromagnetic pulses and their use as a diagnostic tool in geophysics," "Geophysical information obtainable from laser measurements of the lunar distance," "Propagation of the Pc1 geomagnetic micropulsations in an ionospheric duct," "Morphology of the fine structure in the dynamic spectra of Jupiter's decametric radiation." The notion that an institute like CIRES represented a diversion of funds from other units, a concern principally of deans, was not supported by the facts. The University was not in a position in 1968 to contribute directly to the financing of the CIRES operations, beyond the commitment of signifi- cant amounts for the salaries of faculty members, including the director, who would be recruited directly in support of CIRES research. All of these faculty members were also to be obligated to major contributions to the teaching programs within their departments. No general funds for operations were provided for many years. The University did make some significant indirect contributions to help CIRES get started. The space in rl-1 occupied for many years was rented. As a contribution, the University charged CIRES one-half the rent that an outside organization would have paid for the same space, that half to be paid with funds provided by NOAA. The University also agreed that CIRES could charge the off-campus indirect cost rate on all of its proposals, so that the Institute could use more of the funds it brought in for research program purposes. Because the University could not provide office or laboratory space on the main campus for teaching faculty members from CIRES, it agreed to grant them free parking permits so that they could make the needed trips to campus to meet their classes and fulfill other customary responsibilities, such as advising students and attending meetings. One motive for creating CIRES, from the University's point of view, was the prospect that outstanding faculty members who might otherwise not be interested in coming to Boulder might be attracted to an appointment in CIRES with rank and tenure in an appropriate department. Department faculties, on the other hand, were suspicious that any new members that they recruited jointly with CIRES would be "counted against them" when they asked for authorization to fill other positions that they needed as part of their own growth plans. Lawson Crowe and his immediate successors declared in writing that this would not be the case, but departments were still concerned that, as administrators came and went, such promises might be forgotten. Nevertheless, the early CIRES leadership was surprised and dismayed that some departments crucial to its plans did not eagerly grasp the opportunity to add excellent faculty that might not otherwise have been authorized. The resolution of relations between CIRES and the academic departments took a number of years, but as new faculty demonstrated their commitment to the department as well as to CIRES and CIRES worked at being recognized as a good campus citizen, the situation improved greatly. The third problem, the search for a director, was finally solved by the recruiting of Carl Kisslinger, who agreed in the summer of 1971 to accept appointment, with tenure in the Department of Geological Sciences, to begin in July 1972. The next phase in the development of CIRES was launched. Next > 1972-1980. Youth: The Years of Early Growth
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