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Transcript of A.R. Chamberlain oral history (copy 1, tape 1 of 3), 1975-08-25
Item Metadata
Collection: Oral History Tapes (UOHT)
Author(s): Hansen, James E., 1938-, Chamberlain, A. R. (Adrian Ramond) Title: A.R. Chamberlain oral history (copy 1, tape 1 of 3)
Date: 1975-08-25
Identifier: UOHT_0013_access_sideA Date Edited: February 2021
Editors: Victoria Lopez-Terrill, Mary Swing Transcript Provided By: Memnon
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00:00:14.000 00:00:41.360 Hansen: My name is Jim Hansen. Today is August 25, 1975. I'm in the President's Office of the Administration Building at Colorado State University speaking with A.R. Chamberlain.
I suppose what I'd really like to start is why you were drawn to CSU?
00:00:42.150 00:00:58.010 To this graduate program from Washington State? Was the reputation of people like Tom Evans, Dean Peterson, and Maury Albertson sufficient to lure you here?
00:00:58.030 00:01:03.270 Surely there were better graduate programs at that time.
Chamberlain: Jim,
00:01:03.310 00:01:11.020 the reasons are quite straightforward. I did have a great deal of interest in irrigation engineering and fluid mechanics
00:01:11.020 00:01:23.060 at that point in time. My first order desire was to study for the PhD under Hunter Rouse at the State University of Iowa.
00:01:23.080 00:01:27.660 This was not possible for reasons I don't even remember anymore.
00:01:27.940 00:01:50.230 So I felt that the next best alternative was to have an opportunity to study under one of Hunter Rouse’s outstanding and well-known students, Maury Albertson. When that was coupled with an
opportunity to come to Colorado where two other conditions were available,
00:01:50.230 00:02:13.360 One was of course Dr. Dean Peterson with his many years of experience in irrigation engineering. And the second was that Colorado had a great deal of surface irrigation underway compared to what I had run into in Washington, a great deal of sprinkler irrigation.
2 00:02:13.570 00:02:43.820 So really three things brought me to CSU. The opportunity to see
surface irrigation as a complement to what I had studied in
Washington. Maury Albertson is one of the outstanding students of Hunter Rouse. And number three Dean Peterson with his well- established reputation in irrigation engineering. There was nobody else that I knew at CSU nor about the program at CSU that brought me here.
00:02:44.190 00:02:49.440 Hansen: Were you recruited or more or less seek out the program yourself?
Chamberlain: Some of both.
00:02:49.630 00:03:12.160 I made the initial overture. And then Dr. Albertson initiated the request to have me come because he had been able to raise some money Armco Steel Company that would support a study in an area which was of interest to him as well as to me.
00:03:12.460 00:03:15.600 Hansen: How did your find the program once you got here?
00:03:16.000 00:04:30.090 Chamberlain: When I first arrived in Fort Collins I was appalled. The community and the institution were truly the smallest and most dried up sets of activities that I had ever run into, being the product of Michigan State as my first institution and Washington State second. Washington State at that time being substantially larger than CSU. I also came here at a time of semi drought conditions. So that when I first arrived in town even though I was physically tired, still even years later after I discounted the fact that I arrived not in the most optimistic in the first place, I wondered what kind of stupidity had led me into coming sight unseen into a community this small and an institution that looked as if it was made up largely of the remnants of some college that was wondering why it was still alive.
00:04:31.960 00:05:08.650 But I had come largely because of people and in the long run it was people that made it a worthwhile experience. You probably are aware from some of your other discussions that when it came to facilities, many of the facilities that were necessary for the program Dr. Albertson and Dr. Peterson and some of the other staff along with those few graduate students who fairly soon came on the scene, were largely created from,
00:05:10.570 00:05:26.280 without any exaggeration, the actual physical labor as well as mental labor of those of us on the faculty and on the student body.
Hansen: Was the big Thompson Project a factor at all in your decision?
00:05:27.000 00:05:32.540 Chamberlain: Yes it was. It was.
Hansen: Because it was beginning to come into its own.
3 00:05:32.620 00:05:52.720 Chamberlain: That's right. And to put that in context, I had spent a
couple summers in part on the Columbia River Basin Project and the delivery of water to the Columbia River Basin was several years behind the Big Thompson Project.
00:05:52.720 00:06:19.510 So this gave me an experience in seeing what would actually happen on downstream on the Columbia River Basin Project as well simply because this Big Thompson one was, I would judge, six to eight years ahead of the Columbia Project.
Hansen: Why don’t we move into some of the professional spots that you occupied.
00:06:19.770 00:06:32.410 You go to Grenoble after you attained your PhD here.
Chamberlain: With a short interlude at Phillips Petroleum Company.
Hansen: Did that come before or after?
Chamberlain: Before.
00:06:33.630 00:06:40.190 Hansen: Ok. What were you seeking specifically in furthering graduate study at Grenoble?
00:06:40.400 00:07:43.100 Chamberlain: I had, during the course of my three years at CSU, shifted quite a ways away from the purely irrigation engineering aspirations that I had when I came to a much broader interest in fluid mechanics. This came about in part because while a graduate student here I had an opportunity to work on such things as hydro foils, high speed aerodynamics, so on. Some wind tunnel
relationships with Dr. Cermak but I was not heavily involved in that.
All of which led me to feel that given my strong interest in applied mathematics and physics, I really was never going to practice as an irrigation engineer. I was to theoretically inclined to be satisfied with just running water
00:07:43.910 00:07:46.300 Down a furrow or through a sprinkler.
00:07:46.580 00:08:46.220 So the desire to go to the University of Grenoble into their hydro dynamics program was an opportunity to enhance the theoretical background that I had been able to obtain here. Our program historically at CSU, then Colorado A and M, had been strong on practice and weak on theory. To go to this very large program between industry and university in Grenoble for the enhancement of theoretical training was a very special and desirable opportunity.
With an emphasis in that instance in theoretical hydrodynamics.
Hansen: You returned to a CSU following that experience. You got almost immediately involved in the administration of the
engineering program.
4 00:08:46.990 00:08:48.990 I guess that was primarily CSURF at that point.
00:08:49.990 00:09:19.900 Chamberlain: Much of it was run through CSURF. Most of it as a matter of fact in those early days. CSURF was created in 1947 as a vehicle for contract and grant research. And it wasn't till later under Dr. Olson's administration that some of the legalistic deficiencies of running research through CSURF rather than through the university became an issue and we subsequently then shifted the role of CSURF.
00:09:19.960 00:09:27.400 But you're right. During those early years most contract and grant research was written in the name of CSURF.
00:09:27.550 00:09:39.760 Hansen: I observed a real conflict between the Experiment Station and CSURF during this period, especially this coming back.
Chamberlain: There were two general conflicts, Jim.
00:09:39.760 00:11:24.600 One was CSURF versus the Experiment Station. But one of even greater substance was a very strong conviction by the faculty who were on full time teaching assignments that those who were engaged in research really were kind of second-class animal. And they weren't really sure that they should be permitted to survive on campus, but at best they would be considered second-class citizens.
So when you had that conflict embedded in the professional class of the campus along with the concern of the Experiment Station that CSURF was going to be a monster that would eat them alive, there was conflict. It was unjustified conflict because they really should have been, that is CSURF and Experiment Station, truly interpreting their missions as complementary to one another. But recall too that at that point in time, the late ‘50s, the agriculture sector of our society was on its most defensive posture. Food surpluses all over the place. And so while later on, the Experiment Station began to see how it could use CSURF to its own benefit, CSURF really began to burgeon right at the time when the agriculturally oriented people were very defensive.
Hansen: What were your biggest responsibilities in 00:11:25.010 00:11:27.520 assuming this initial position?
00:11:27.630 00:12:16.700 Chamberlain: Well, I started out as an associate professor, and I don't know whether it was the first year or the second year anymore, had the assignment of coordinating civil engineering research. During a couple or three years from ‘56 to ‘59, I guess, I must have had two or three different titles all linked however to coordinating the contract and grant type of support for engineering and trying to put the vise on the Experiment Station to come up with more money for engineering because of the conviction that agriculture was dependent upon more water resources research
5 than just that that would be done by the Department of Agronomy over in the College of Agriculture.
00:12:16.710 00:12:38.520 This of course is what partially promoted the level of conflict and it became particularly acute at a time when we were permitted to go to the legislature. And we got an increase for engineering water resources research money. And there was practically no financial increase for other sectors of the Experiment Station that year.
00:12:38.520 00:13:08.700 I think I was drawn into this kind of administrative task that is organizing and coordinating civil engineering research because as a graduate student, I had demonstrated considerable talent for not only organizing a project to do it in the most efficient manner but to guide people in groups in ways that achieve the goals on specified timeframes.
00:13:09.810 00:13:38.670 So given these two talents as a graduate student, Dean Peterson asked me practically from day one to help them out in some of the organizational aspects of carrying out the mission of the
department.
Hansen: What sort of condition was the administration of research ideas when you took over? Was it how to plug in overhead and things of that sort?
00:13:38.670 00:13:54.670 Chamberlain: No, the institutions accounting system, even in its central office, had no perception of appropriate accounting structure for contracting grant research let alone dealing with overhead.
00:13:54.820 00:14:50.550 So at that early time the primary accounting system for contract and grant research including most of CSURF was really structured by Dr. Peterson. With his prior experience in private industry, he knew enough fundamentals of accounting under contract law to structure a chart of accounts that ensured that in CSURF and in the Civil Engineering Department, there was an adequate accounting record for audit purposes. The university itself never did create adequate accounting records for the projects conducted during those early years. When the Office of Naval Research people used to come to the campus, for example, they would come to the department for their financial records since there were none at the university level.
00:14:50.550 00:16:46.440 It was only after Dr. Olson came on the scene in CSURF, and well to a lesser extent in Dr. Albertson's administration of the CSURF as well. But particularly after Dr. Olson came again with his industrial experience, that the pressure began to come for the creation of a university accounting system for contract and grant research. But Dr Peterson was really the first to set in motion that the classical educational institutions system of accounting was not sufficient for contract and grant research.
6 Hansen: Was your task essentially administrative here or were you supposed to go out and hustle grants too?
Chamberlain: I was expected to hustle some of the money, though that was not in the early couple three years. My primary task, in effect, I was being asked to take over on campus administrative things thereby, and technical leadership things, in order to further free Dr. Albertson as first priority for him to do the so-called hustling, conditioned only by Dr. Peterson's own involvement and Dr. Cermak’s involvement. Dr. Cermak was already quite dominant in the program at that early stage. Dr. Schulz and some others. But Dr. Albertson was considered to be the primary promoter for the group.
Hansen: Did you look at the foothills expansion very much at this point.
Chamberlain: We must have written the first proposal for consideration of facilities and moved to the foothills around nineteen fifty-seven or fifty-eight.
00:16:47.060 00:19:28.990 My recollection is that we got it put together in ‘59. But we knew very early, even before I left the campus in 1955, that the program was going to be in a bind for expansion of facilities on the main campus. Somewhere along 1956 when I first got back, Dr. Peterson and I put together a proposal under his supervision to the National Science Foundation for expanding the facility in its then location.
And the plans would have eaten up so much space that we very quickly got the reaction from President Morgan and others on the campus that including the opposition of the Ag people that we weren't gonna make it go on the main campus.
Then we also happened to have the coincidence of trying to figure out ways to deal with hydro machinery under flow conditions that could not be reproduced anyplace else in the United States, where the only real competition for contract and grant research of that nature would be in England and France.
That led us to consider what might happen if we could hook a laboratory to the big pipeline that goes under the dam out at Horsetooth Reservoir. So we took President Morgan and his executive staff Sherm Wheeler and so on completely by surprise when they came in to give us an audience on our on-campus plan where they had gone through a great deal of effort to figure out how to say no nicely to us. And we came forth and volunteered to leave to go to the foothills if they would give us certain support.
Such as control of a portion of the land at the foothills which was then under the control of the agriculture people.
So everybody won in this particular set of exchanges. The engineering group agreed to leave the campus. And that was exactly what the central administration wanted. And we gain
7 control of a modest amount of land for the hydraulics fluid
mechanics facilities which was what we wanted. And of course endorsement of building in to CSU's request to the legislature matching money for any money we could raise from the federal government to build a new lab.
00:19:29.370 00:19:37.940 Hansen: Where did you get most of your support for research activities? Did you get it, was the professional faculty sort of hostile of this development?
00:19:38.430 00:20:36.190 Chamberlain: The primary supporter of the type that one considers ideal was ONR, the Office of Naval Research. Certainly ONR set many of the principles that affected the creation of NSF and NIH and so on down the stream. The actual dollar volume came in terms of the largest dollars from the private consulting firms and then a close corollary was the Bureau of Reclamation and the Corps of Engineers.
Model studies were very big items during those periods and typically model studies were being supported by other
governments through American consulting engineering firms, and ultimately, I'm sure, trace back to World Bank money.
Hansen: How did President Morgan and the Board and the legislature view this development?
00:20:37.820 00:21:33.820 Chamberlain: They didn't have much to do in those very early years of my tenure at CSU with either the Office of the President or the legislature. My first contact with the legislature was in 1959, when incidental to this negotiation about location for the lab that I mentioned earlier, President Morgan agreed to let us make our own presentation about state matching money for the hydraulic laboratory to the Joint Budget Committee. This was a very fine opportunity for us and obviously we must have done a pretty good job because we got the commitment from the state. But one must recall compared to the present time that this took place in an era when the Legislature's Joint Budget Committee would grant CSU two full days of hearings normally on our own campus.
00:21:34.140 00:21:59.020 While now the committee never comes to the campus and only gives us two hours in Denver. So it was a very favorable
environment in which to be invited by the president to make our own pitch. People like Eric Roth[?] were on the committee at that time. Allen Dines, Harry Locke who has now expired. We were given a most courteous audience and the commitment was made.
00:22:01.100 00:22:18.050 Hansen: Was the board supportive...?
8 Chamberlain: I really don't know because it was not until 1960 that I ever saw the governing board of Colorado State University. I assumed they were
00:22:18.050 00:22:23.050 or the president wouldn't have inserted us in the gracious way that he did.
00:22:24.160 00:22:39.940 But I can't assert from firsthand.
Hansen: Alright. You move from this post of essentially
administrative research to acting dean of the biggest college of engineering yet.
00:22:40.020 00:22:49.320 Was this strictly an acting position or was there any inkling that this might materialize into something more permanent?
00:22:49.710 00:24:19.190 Chamberlain: Let's see, it was never presumed that I would become Dean of Engineering. A frame of reference was as dean. But my recollection of the sequence of events was that I was tabbed to serve as acting dean of faculties for one summer while Dean Clark had a chance to visit Europe. What Dean Clark had in mind, though I had no clue to this, was to simply get me acquainted with the president on a basis that would permit Andy to then draw me in more heavily to central administration.
Most of the time as acting dean, maybe not most. At least half of the time I served is as acting dean, I ended up for whatever reasons also being vice president for administration so that the
responsibility or authority frame of reference for the acting deanship was at least equivalent and probably exceeded that of being the dean in my own right. I guess another way I largely had the responsibility to structure picking of a permanent dean and that became quite a hassle unto itself.
00:24:23.850 00:24:37.280 Hansen: Well then as a result of this due to the faculty position, you become acquainted with President Morgan as an administrator for the president, pretty much.
00:24:37.750 00:25:14.620 Chamberlain: I think that's an exaggeration of what my recollection is of what transpired. The Dean of Faculty position for the summer, I don't know if we ever even recorded it on the books. They just did it by agreement as to President Morgan doing part of it, in my doing part of, that is, of Andy's assignment. Perhaps what
transpired more than anything else is that I seemingly took care of those things which were assigned to me and didn't bother the president a great deal.
00:25:14.890 00:27:19.470 So if I gained an acquaintance with him, it probably was that he had the opportunity to relax, that things were done that were supposed to be done without my being on his doorstep at 7:30 every
morning. And that apparently satisfied him, given perhaps his background as a military officer that when he has his task delegated, the junior officer doesn't come in and harass the
9 supervisor every 24 hours. So that sometime in the fall of 1959, he or Andy or both called and ask if I would be willing to consider the position of Vice President for Administration because Hap Dotson had had a heart attack some months earlier.
And being young and responsive to authority at that point in time, well you're the president, whatever you want me to do, I obviously will attempt to do the best of my ability. He said to me, “Well, write up a proposed brief job description for the position you'd like it to represent.” He took that plus whatever his own perceptions were to the governing board and phoned back some time later and said,
“It's locked in. You're on your way.” And I carried the last stages of the acting dean of engineering along with Vice President for Administration until we picked Dr. Baldwin to be dean.
Hnsen: What sort of description did you write for yourself?
00:27:20.340 00:27:23.570 Chamberlain: Well, my recollection is it was about five sentences.
00:27:26.820 00:28:02.100 Because again I had zero experience from which to try and
construct such a job description. So I took his verbalization of what he wanted the position to be. And knowing Andy Clark who was the senior person behind the president, I tried to structure a very brief text that matched to those realities and submitted it. It was only one page as I recall and most of which was at the...
00:28:05.420 00:28:12.560 Hansen: Tell me about some of the responsibilities that you found yourself assuming at the outset of this position.
00:28:14.160 00:28:20.210 Chamberlain: Well, typically the one of the first moves had to do with the budget process.
00:28:22.050 00:29:00.480 And so the first task of significance, aside from coordinating on physical plant and personnel matters and contract and grant research which I obviously was going to be involved in, had the task of trying to understand the university's budget request process.
Where did the numbers come from and how might one construct new and better ways to articulate the financial needs of the institution that would assist the president in selling it both during the hearings and during the legislative process itself?
00:29:01.590 00:29:54.720 So I had to put a great deal of effort into that in part again because I came from having very limited experience and in part because the budgeting process was largely done by a man named Hickman, sitting in a dark corner of Joe Whalley’s business office. And yet we were going into an era when much more documentation would be called for, and it was just going to be a different ballgame.
President Morgan was very aware of this and wanted a major overhaul of the whole process so that he would feel he had better documentation, better written, and better articulated with which he could communicate with the legislature and of course
particularly the governor and the Joint Budget Committee.
10 00:29:56.190 00:30:26.880 So that was probably the most important task in the early years.
Right behind it somewhere in 1963 or ‘64, because of the increasing importance of this area, President Morgan agreed with me that we should hire a person whose full-time duties were those of being budget officer for the institution, independent of the fiduciary role of a business manager. And we hired Dr. Hehn to be director of budgets.
00:30:26.880 00:30:41.160 He came to us from Montana, as a professional economist and as head of the financial management of the Experiment Station in Montana.
00:30:42.840 00:30:45.750 So having employed Dr. Hehn...
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