Green Fire A History of Huxley College 1 1970 World population is 3.7 billion. Troy Abel James Albers Andrew Bach Gigi Berardi Richard Berg Brian Bingham Leo Bodensteiner Environmental Timeline Andrew Bodman David Brakke Scott Brennan Huxley College admitted its first Patrick Buckley Andrew Bunn students in September of 1970. Rebecca Bunn Rabel Burdge A brief environmental chronology Devon Cancilla of the following four decades runs Sea Bong Chang TABLE OF CONTENTS David Clarke along the top of our story. Susan Cook William Dietrich Barbara Donovan 5 Introduction Arlene Doyle Crystal Driver Claire Dyckman Jack Everitt 9 1962—1970 Michael Frome The Experiment Richard Frye Ernst Gayden John Hardy Ruth Harper-Arabie 37 Who Was Thomas Henry Huxley? James Helfield Peter Homman Ronald Kendall Thomas Jr. Lacher Wayne Landis 41 The Concrete Cocoon Jason Levy Brooke Love Robin Matthews Richard Mayer 63 Innovative And Stormy 1970—1974 Timothy McDaniels John McLaughlin Michael Medler Jean Melious John Miles 89 The Huxley Student Experience Scott Miles Huxley College Faculty Gene Miller Debnath Mookherjee Of the approximately 4,000 Huxley College Eugene Myers 105 1974—1978 James Newman Huxley Against The World alumni, forty were chosen to profile in this Gilbert Peterson Lynn Robbins book. Those who were selected illustrate the David Rossiter John Rybczk 121 The Hunt For Balance 1978—1994 incredible range of expertise and leadership Jennifer Seltz David Shull that graduates of the college have achieved. Donald Singh-Cundy To the right is a list of college faculty who Bradley Smith Gary Smith 153 All Grown Up 1994—Present spanned the four decades of its history. On Ruth Sofield Paul Stangl each profile page, the professors who were Martin Stapanian William Stapp 173 The Next Forty Years teaching during the student’s attendance William Stocklin Thomas Storch are highlighted with bold text. Stephen Sulkin William Summers Michael Sweeney 179 Author’s Note Howard Teasley Thomas Terich Manfred Vernon David Wallin Grace Wang Herbert Webber Ruth Weiner Oliver Wilgress Robert Wissmar Herb Wong 2 3 Ming-Ho Yu Nicholas Zaferatos 1970 January 1 National Environmental Policy Act Signed. INTRODUCTION Our story is the environmental movement’s story. Like Earth Day, Huxley College of the Environment was forty years old in 2010. It was, and is, the progeny of a century and a half of American thought about industrialization, its consequences, and humankind’s proper and happiest relationship to the planet. It embodies the dictum of British scientist and namesake Thomas Henry Huxley, who said, “Learn what is true to do what is right.” And, like Earth Day, Huxley’s history tracks the history of the modern environmental movement. The idea of establishing an interdisciplinary environmental college at Western Washington University predates most of the legislation that governs environmental politics today. Huxley was never just an academic experiment; it was a cultural creation, a physical embodiment of new values. In the forty years since, those values have shifted in step with broader society. The radical experimentation of Huxley’s earliest days inevitably gave way to a more structured, conservative, and politically calibrated college as it matured. The result is a school that has managed to harness youthful idealism and earn business respect, to spawn ideas and successfully implement them. For better and worse, Huxley has become an established institution — dare we say an establishment? — with the longevity, influence, and practical compromises that name implies. Huxley’s history is important because it reflects the history of man’s struggle to develop a sustainable stewardship of the earth. Accordingly, Huxley Dean Bradley Smith and Development Director Manca Valum Sun reflects on Samish Bay 4 Photo by Avela Grenier 5 1970 January 22 General Motors President Edward Cole promises “pollution free” cars by 1980 and urges removal of lead from gasoline. conceived the idea of summarizing its story in a fortieth-anniversary book. It is hoped that internally, Green Fire will aid institutional memory and prove useful in inspiring those who will guide and grow its experiment in the future. The book is also intended to give potential students, faculty, staff, and donors an idea of how the college came to be and the ideas that have guided it. Huxley’s accomplishments can be measured in at least three ways. One is faculty research. The college has frequently led Western in grants funding and contributed to fundamental scientific knowledge, from the analysis of Lake Whatcom to a study of carbon cycling in Siberia. A second accomplishment is social activism. Huxley students have done everything from pioneering Whatcom County’s first recycling center in 1971 to work on making SeaTac Airport one of the greenest airports on the planet in 2009. They have marched on sidewalks, gathered data for urban planners, and published an award-winning environmental magazine. A third is the contribution of its students in green careers. Here the college has an outstanding legacy. To demonstrate it, we selected forty of our approximately 4,000 alumni to profile, ranging from those working on the cleanup of Puget Sound to organic farmers. These forty are not meant to represent the “best” of Huxley graduates — such a judgment is beyond our capabilities — but rather to represent an inspiring cross section. Their individual stories give a clearer picture of what Huxley is all about. Huxley College is not so much a place (in fact, its physical presence is scrambled in two main campus buildings, a marine center with which it is affiliated in Anacortes, and branch programs at three Pacific Northwest colleges) so much as it is a forty-year fellowship of people: of teachers, students, donors, partners, and advisers. Its presence on campus is (regrettably) understated, with no flashy sign or even a single building to call its own. It has no billionaire benefactors, attention-winning sports teams, ivy-covered brick (more on its quirky quarters later) or People Magazine celebrity alumni. What it does have is a consistent mission, to produce environmental problem solvers, and a quiet, persistent, unquenchable fire in its belly to make the world a better, more sustainable place. And for forty years, that has been quite enough. Photo by Michael Bakke 6 7 1970 April 22 December 2 First nationwide Earth Day. Environmental Protection Agency signed into law. CHAPTER ONE THE EXPERIMENT 1961-1970 In the beginning, before there was an Environmental Protection Agency, Washington Department of Ecology, or the federal Clean Air and Clean Water acts, there was Huxley College of the Environment. It was founded in the fires of one of the most tumultuous periods in U.S. social history, the late 1960s. The college was a daring experiment in education, in cross-discipline communication, in interdisciplinary research, in architecture, and in balancing environmental values with scientific objectivity. That experiment is still going on today in what promises to be the most challenging era of environmental crisis and debate in world history. In the next forty years, according to United Nations demographic projections, human population is expected to peak, fossil fuels to decline, and atmospheric carbon levels to spike. Climate change, species extinction, competition for resources, risk management, and the quest for renewable energy have made Huxley’s mission more important than ever. Huxley was one of the first – by some measures, the first – environmental college of its type in the nation, and perhaps in the world. Today it is one of two surviving “cluster colleges” at Western Washington University, and a template for programs across the United States that have come after it. Huxley’s success, however, can never be measured by its budget, its endowment, its faculty, or even its research. After forty pioneering years, what sets Huxley apart is the achievements of its 4,000 graduating students. They hatched from their educational experience with green The Zimmerman and Mitchell fire and flew into positions of responsibility with an unusually broad houses were the original Huxley headquarters. In this 1971 view, the understanding of our planet’s problems. Environmental Studies building rises in the background. Photo courtesy of Stuart Gustafson 8 9 1970 December 29 December 31 Occupational Safety and Health Administration signed into law. Clear Air Act passed. taken proper advantage of this intriguing invention by promoting the college, and thus itself? Could Western make more aggressive use of Huxley’s uniqueness in the future? This book, by design, has a cliffhanger ending. But how and why did such an experiment arise in a pulp-mill town in the damp Northwest corner of the United States? Why Bellingham, and why then? The truth is that the college was born by one tie-breaking administrative vote in a period of academic tumult. Huxley started with idealism, benefitted from serendipity, struggled with identity, survived campus turf battles, and won over a suspicious surrounding community. It proved itself “It proved itself by proving useful.” by proving useful. Within a couple years of its founding, Huxley students were contributing fundamental research to the future planning of Whatcom and San Juan counties. The college pioneered a recycling center. It created a community clearinghouse for environmental information. Students and faculty studied the impact of new industrial fluoride emissions on Whatcom County dairy cows. They called attention to an unraveling old-growth ecosystem, troubled salmon runs, and polluted water. They both angered and enlisted local businessmen and provoked and intrigued local government officials. Huxley started as a dream, but it was made real by the work of students, Huxley students participate in faculty, and administrators. an active group discussion. Huxley’s birth occurred in the tumultuous 1960s, and its educational ca. 1970 Huxley College archives philosophy was defined by the politics, economy and culture of that decade.