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New High Energy Theory Center Allen Robbins (1979-1995) 173 Chapter Thirteen New High Energy Theory Center Allen Robbins (1979-1995) Rutgers University In the spring of 1982, President Bloustein appointed a new exec- utive vice-president, T. Alexander Pond. This appointment was destined to have an enormous impact on the University as a whole, and the Physics Department in particular. Because of his background in physics, Pond was given a tenured appointment as Professor of Physics. He received his Ph.D. degree from Princeton in 1953 where he carried out positron exper- iments. Following his degree, Pond served for two years as Instructor at Princeton, and then went to Washington University, St. Louis for nine years. In 1962 he went to SUNY Stony Brook, where he was Chairman of the Department of Physics (1962-68) and played a major role in building the department there. He was then Executive Vice-President at Stony Brook (1968-80). At Rutgers he became Executive Vice President and Chief Academic Officer (1982-91). A major thrust in the development of academic and scientific facil- ities in the State began shortly after the appointment of Alec Pond as Executive Vice-President in 1982. The result would be a significant en- hancement of academic programs at Rutgers, especially in the sciences. In particular there would be a 50% increase in the size of the Physics Depart- ment, and the addition of distinguished faculty members who would dra- matically enhance the reputation of the Department. In 1982, Governor Thomas Kean established a Commission on Science and Technology for the State of New Jersey. President Bloustein was a member of that Commission. In December 1983, the Commission issued its report recognizing the vital role New Jersey had played and would continue to play in technological innovation. The report pointed out that no other state had more scientists and engineers per capita than New Jersey. In the fields such as pharmaceuticals and electronics, expenditures for research and development in New Jersey were the highest 173 Allen Robbins (1979-1995) in the nation. New Jersey's colleges and universities constituted a valuable resource. The Commission recommended investments in ideas, enterprise, and people in specific areas: biotechnology; hazardous and toxic substance management; materials science; food technology; and telematics, the convergence of computer and communications technologies. In November 1983, President Bloustein convened a committee of 39 distinguished citizens to study the future financing of the University. The report, issued the following year, pointed out that Rutgers was poised on the threshold of a new level of national distinction. The report gave a list of public universities, ranked by the number of programs with high faculty quality ratings. In this list Rutgers ranked eleventh, behind Berkeley, UCLA, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Texas, Washington, Minnesota, UNC, and Indiana. The report suggested that Rutgers was in a position to make significant contributions to the economic, cultural, and social prosperity of New Jersey. It urged a broad-based partnership between New Jersey and the State University, and outlined the needs and strategies of the University in some detail. In his 1984 Annual Message to the New Jersey State Legislature, Governor Kean announced that there should be a new partnership between the twin missions of higher education and economic development. In November 1986, he stated that he could not think of any better way to invest business dollars and bring back a return than in education, and that in education he couldn't think of a better investment than Rutgers University. Governor Kean spearheaded a movement for economic development in the State, and Rutgers was ready to take advantage of that movement. In November 1984, the voters of New Jersey approved a $90 million Jobs, Science and Technology bond issue to provide funds for capital construction of research facilities at advanced technology centers around the State. This bond issue provided the stimulus for the develop- ment of a number of technology centers at Rutgers. By December 1986, there had been substantial progress on the implementation of the University's Financial Strategy for Academic Distinction. The University had added to its faculty more than a dozen scholars of national and international reputation as part of a program to recruit world-class scholars. These new appointments included Herbert Freeman, an international authority on computer graphics and image 174 Allen Robbins (1979-1995) processing, Joachim Messing, a leading molecular geneticist, David Levering Lewis, a noted biographer of Martin Luther King, Jr., Aaron Shatkin, a cell biologist who was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and George Sigel, Jr., former director of fiber optic related research for the Naval Research Laboratory. In addition, the Henry Rutgers Research Fellows program provided support for thirty-nine promising young scholars in launching their research projects at the beginning of their careers. One of the recommendations of the Future Financing Committee was the bold proposal that the University use its bonding capacity for building academic facilities. Previously the University had only borrowed money to finance buildings such as dormitories and dining halls, which generated income that could be used to pay off the loans. The new finan- cing strategy was approved by an act of the State Legislature in 1985-86. The first $10 million of general obligation bonds was issued in 1986 to finance Rutgers share of the construction costs of the New Jersey Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine, a joint project with the University of Medicine an Dentistry of New Jersey and Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. The University planned to issue $88 million in bonds in 1987 and another $62 million in 1988. This borrowing against future revenues, together with private giving and state appropriations, enabled Rutgers to embark on the largest building program in its history. In the fall of 1986 the University inaugurated a major capital campaign to raise $100 million from private sources. It eventually exceeded that goal. The Fund for Distinction that was created provided about $340 million for buildings and equipment by 1990. These projects included nine new science institutes such as the Center for Ceramics Research and the Center for Advanced Food Technology. The Fund for Distinction also provided for over forty- five other building or renovation projects, including $10 million for the new physics building and $2 million for physics laboratories. President Bloustein died suddenly in December 1989, after serving as President for eighteen years. Francis Lawrence became the eighteenth president of Rutgers in 1990. Lawrence was a native of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, and received a bachelor's degree in French and Spanish from Saint Louis University in 1959. He earned a doctorate in French classical literature from Tulane in 1962. He became a faculty member at Tulane 175 Allen Robbins (1979-1995) and assumed a number of administrative positions there. He was Academic Vice-President and Provost, and Dean of the Graduate School at Tulane when he accepted the presidency at Rutgers. 1 During the period between Bloustein's death and the appointment of the new President, Alexander Pond served the University as Acting President. He stayed on as Executive Vice President for a short time after Lawrence's arrival, but in 1991 decided to leave the position he had held at Rutgers for nine years. He and Bloustein had worked very well together in building the University. After leaving his administrative position in Old Queen's, Pond took up residence in the Physics Department in 1991. He had been given tenure in the Department when he came to Rutgers in 1982, and he was appointed University Professor when he stepped down as Vice-President. When Francis Lawrence came to Rutgers he found a University that had seen major advances since it opened for instruction in 1771. By 1991 the University had awarded over 250,000 degrees, with nearly three- fourth of those degrees awarded in the previous twenty years. The Univer- sity had 26 schools and colleges with nearly 100 major fields of study. Rutgers enrolled over 47,000 students and stood in the top five public universities of the 58-member Association of American Universities in minority enrollments. The University employed among the highest per- centages of women and minority faculty of any of the AAU institutions. External research support at the University increased from $17 million in 1977 to $93 million in 1990. In its last private fund-raising campaign the University raised over $166 million, and higher education bond issues in 1984 and 1988 contributed to the massive $600 million building expansion program. These resources were instrumental in the growth of the Univer- sity during the previous two decades. Rutgers University had become one of the great universities in the nation. Physics and Astronomy When Harold Zapolsky stepped down as Department Chairman after six years of service, the Department asked Allen Robbins to be its next Department Chairman. Robbins was familiar with the Department and the University, having come to the Department as an undergraduate 1“Presidents,” Journal of the Rutgers University Library , v. 53, p. 37 , June 1991. 176 Allen Robbins (1979-1995) student in 1949, and as a faculty member in 1956. Robbins served as De- partment Chairman until 1995. During the first seven years (1979-86) there was no change in the size of the faculty, which had been at the level of about 40 full-time faculty members since 1971. Then, during the next seven years (1986-93) there was a major increase in the size of the faculty to about 60 full-time faculty members. In this latter period some out- standing faculty members joined the Department. The enhancement of the Department during this period could fairly be compared with the major developments of the Department at the end of the World War II and at the time of the Science Development Grant.
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