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The Space Era

In the last half-century, three strong presidents dramatically advanced the thrust of the University of Colorado. Quigg Newton in the late fifties put the University on the road to becoming a premier research university. Arnold Weber in the early eighties proclaimed his Space Initiative with the goal of making the University the leading space university in the nation. E. Gordon Gee in the late eighties renewed Weber’s Space Initiative and put money and resources behind the drive to become the number one space university.

In 1962, Quigg Newton brought Max S. Peters from the University of Illinois to be the new Dean of Engineering. With the new dean, the College won an award of nearly $1,500,000 from the National Science Foundation to build a new Engineering Center. The state provided the rest of the $9,000,000 cost. In addition, millions were spent for furnishings and equipment.

For aeronautical engineering, a new Department Chairman, Mahinder S. Uberoi, (PhD, Johns Hopkins, 1953) came from the University of Michigan in 1963, when the Department was renamed the Department of the Aerospace Engineering Sciences. Professor Uberoi had a reputation in magneto hydrodynamics, turbulent flow, and other basic sciences of fluid flow. The faculty members he added were for the most part strong in basic sciences and secondarily interested in applications to engineering.

In 1963, the Department added the greatest star in its history: Adolf Busemann, the father of supersonic aerodynamics, the inventor of the swept wing, the creator of conical flow theory, and a genius with seminal research in nearly every field of fluid flow. After joining the faculty, he continued his research in fluids, and ventured into new areas of space trajectories, propulsion, and structures. He was awarded the Prandtl Ring and gave the Prandtl Lecture in 1965. Professor Busemann remained active even after his retirement until his death in 1986.

As Chairman, Mahinder Uberoi added faculty in basic research areas in the fields of fluids, controls, and even biology. His theory was to bring in researchers strong in the basic sciences, and have them apply their work to engineering. Hence, he hired three biologists to build a bioengineering program.

During the sixties and seventies this approach worked well. The Department grew to twenty-nine faculty and twenty postdoctoral assistants. In 1975, Uberoi’s reign as Department Chairman ended, and the Department entered a ten-year period of acting and short-term chairs. The absence of leadership and other turmoil in the Department took its toll. By 1984 there were only nine regular faculty members.
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The Space Initiative

At this time, 1984, University President Arnold Weber launched his Space Initiative. He was determined to make the University of Colorado the outstanding space university of the nation. He brought Don Hearth, former Director of the NASA Langley Research Center, to Boulder as the University’s space czar. Dean of Engineering A. Richard Seebass worked with Don Hearth to implement this strategy in engineering.

In 1985, Arnold Weber left to become president of Northwestern University. The next University President, E. Gordon Gee, adopted the Space Initiative as his own, and announced that it would feature sizeable resources poured into aerospace engineering. George Morgenthaler was brought from Martin Marietta to Chair the department, and George Born was hired from the University of Texas to establish the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research. Over the next ten years, 1985-89 with Morgenthaler as Chair, and 1989-1996 with Robert D. Culp as Chair, twenty new faculty members were added and three million dollars of new offices and laboratories were built. Gordon Gee proclaimed the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department to be “the gem in the crown” of his space university.

Research developed massively with these new faculty members. From a low of a few hundred thousand dollars in 1984, annual research expenditures grew to well over ten million dollars by 1990. The Department led the University in research expenditures for several years in the nineties, and has remained the top engineering department and one of the top four departments in the university since 1987.

The facilities added in the early nineties included several benefiting from major gifts. The Eaton Conference Suite was a gift of Maurine and Thomas Eaton. The McDonnell Douglas Laboratory, containing the Aerospace Structural Dynamics and Control Laboratory, was a gift of the McDonnell Douglas Foundation. The Lockheed Martin Room, serving the senior projects teams, was a gift of the Lockheed Martin Corporation. Two premium conference rooms were dedicated to noteworthy achievers connected with the Department: The Onizuka Conference Room and Onizuka Wing for Ellison Onizuka, an astronaut alumni killed in the Challenger explosion, and the Seebass Forum Room for A. Richard Seebass, former Dean and Chairman.

This wave of multimillion dollar construction, the major achievement of Robert D. Culp’s terms as Chair, provided the wing of faculty offices housing most of the faculty in new, quality space, and a series of new laboratories for BioServe, global positioning systems, orbital systems, fluids, computers, and controls.

In this period of expansion, CU Boulder alumnus H. Joe Smead gave the Department most of the $2,500,000 to endow the A. Richard Seebass Endowed Chair. The Department spent more than ten years searching for the outstanding professor to fill this chair, and in 2008 appointed Daniel Scheeres from the University of Michigan as the first Seebass Professor.
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The New Curriculum

After thirteen years as Dean of Engineering, A. Richard Seebass served one term as Department Chair, from 1996-1999. His great interest was in revamping the curriculum to take advantage of the new Integrated Teaching and Learning Laboratory, which he created, and to implement the new ABET guidelines. He had been largely responsible for the new ABET rules by helping to organize the research engineering colleges in a movement to bring greater freedom and recognition of the research colleges and their abilities. This brought about in 1997 the Department’s “Aerospace Engineering Sciences 2000 Curriculum”.

From 1943 through 2002, aerospace engineering has produced 2226 B.S. degrees, 720 M.S. degrees, and 220 Ph.D. degrees. The Regents authorized the PhD degree in 1948, however the Department granted its first PhD in 1965. Currently the Department produces between ten and fifteen doctorates per year. The first graduates produced completely under the new curriculum graduated in 2002.
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The 21st Century

In the new century, under Lee Peterson as Chair, the Department once again benefited from major investments by the University. Hiring became intense, and the faculty numbers increased to thirty. Research expenditures rose to new heights and once again the Department led the Boulder Campus with $15,000,000 per year.

Lee Peterson was appointed to a four-year term as Chair in 2004. In 2007, he was enticed by a too-good-to-turn-down offer to join a team at JPL in cutting edge research. He agreed to go for a 15-month sabbatical and return if appointed Department Chair for a second term. The faculty overwhelmingly voted to recommend him for a second term. During his absence, Professor Penina Axelrad served as Acting Chair, and Lee Peterson returned monthly to help with major projects.

The most dramatic of these projects was the new Aerospace Building. Lee Peterson had the vision to seek to build the Department’s own building, as befits one of the largest and most recognized research departments in the University. The building, to be constructed adjacent to the Engineering Center and the Discovery Learning Center, was approved by the Regents in March, 2008. Funding was the only delaying factor, but lack of funds prevented this project from proceeding.