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Nevada's first Ph.D. recipient 
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In 1964, a 50-year-old geologist from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) received the first Ph.D. awarded by the University of Nevada. Roger B. Morrison, who received his doctorate from the Mackay School of Mines, was a student of the late Dr. George B. Maxey. Maxey had been recruited to Nevada by the Desert Research Institute in 1962 to develop a ground water research program and also establish a hydrology curriculum at the university. Looking back Morrison recalls, "Nevada was about the only college in the country that was teaching hydrology in those days." At that time, DRI was barely five years old, and the University of Nevada had not yet evolved into a statewide campus system. Beyond Reno, there was the small "Southern Regional Division" in Las Vegas, which gave few clues in 1964 of the dynamic urban campus the University of Nevada Las Vegas would become.
Dr. Morrison, now in his 80s and retired from the USGS, went on to achieve a notable career in federal employment and as a private consultant. He continues to publish scientific papers to this day. As for Maxey, he proceeded to develop a nationally recognized hydrology/hydrogeology curriculum at UNR and an internationally regarded program in water resources research at DRI.
Maxey's name now graces one of DRI's main office and laboratory buildings. His legacy has also continued as the Institute's graduate program has expanded--along with the University of Nevada system--to encompass the spectrum of environmental sciences and involve both Nevada university campuses.
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As classes resumed on Nevada's campuses this fall, 32 graduate students were directly employed on funded DRI research projects; and more than 50 were being supervised by DRI scientists or had DRI faculty serving on their graduate committees. During the past few years, as many as 40 DRI scientists have taught about 30 courses per year on the two university campuses, sometimes team teaching course offerings.
During the 1997-98 school year, DRI also provided more than $900,000 for student employment and tuition expenses to Nevada's teaching campuses. For all of these services, the cost to the universities is the equivalent of only about four full-time faculty positions.
Dr. Jack Hess, DRI's vice president for academic affairs, says DRI's greatest impact on the University and Community College System of Nevada's academic programs is not financial; rather it is the enhancement of scientific course offerings. According to Hess, "The two university campuses have the opportunity to pick from among more than fifty disciplines represented at DRI to obtain top-rate scientists who can dramatically broaden subject offerings. As successful as recruiting has been at both UNR and UNLV, no single professor can be expected to have the breadth and depth of a half-dozen scientists each teaching one or two courses per year."
And it's not just graduate courses. Scientists from DRI also add their knowledge to undergraduate courses as well as participating in community college instruction in Las Vegas and Reno.
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The influence of DRI's scientists goes beyond the classroom. Graduate students are written into research proposals submitted by DRI to top federal and private research sponsors, and the funded research often becomes the students' thesis or dissertation topic. For example, graduate students manage a major part of DRI's water quality monitoring project along the length of the Truckee River in northwestern Nevada. This fall one DRI graduate research assistant is helping develop a new application for Doppler radar to provide experimental short-term forecasts and severe weather warnings in the Reno area, and another is providing guidance to California's efforts to design an air quality monitoring program for the Central Valley.
Hess is also executive director of DRI's Water Resources Center and a teacher and advisor in UNR's Hydrologic Sciences Program and UNLV's Water Resources Management Program and Geosciences Department. The teaching and graduate student collaboration, he says, has been mutually beneficial for DRI, UNR, and UNLV. "The students are performing serious, professional-level research," Hess says. "The training and experience are cutting edge; sometimes they are defining the direction future research will follow. The students aren't just receiving an excellent education, they're an integral part of DRI's research program."
The graduate employment as well as awards and fellowships available through DRI (see sidebar) represent another valuable advantage for the campuses--recruitment tools. Professor Stephen Wheatcraft, associate dean of students for UNR's Mackay School of Mines, likes to keep a few DRI graduate assistantships in his back pocket when talking with top graduate student prospects from other universities.
Recruited to Nevada as a DRI scientist himself before accepting a UNR faculty slot, Wheatcraft said the national competition for top geology, hydrology, and hydrogeology students is fierce. "These students are quick to recognize the value of a position working in a full-time research environment in an organization like DRI," he notes. "UNR is rated with the top few schools in the country in this field. The quality of our faculty is an important part of the equation, but you have to attract the students who can take advantage of them."
At UNLV, Dr. David Kreamer, professor in geosciences, has guided that program's development for the last decade. Kreamer believes the collaboration with DRI "added an important dimension while the campus was building its graduate program. DRI's participation gave us a big head start in establishing our program."
The reach of DRI into the campuses' other graduate programs includes atmospheric sciences at UNR, where all the active instructors of the designated "Program of Excellence" are DRI personnel. Twenty students from that program alone are working with the Institute's scientists this semester on projects involving meteorology, air quality, and high altitude atmospheric physics.
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Atmospheric sciences students from UNR have ended up flying on NASA's "vomit comet," the research aircraft that climbs and then dives to simulate low-gravity conditions for crystal-growing experiments. Other students have climbed down tunnels and up smokestacks testing for smog or to the top of mountains to study clouds. One opportunity is a two-week-long, 24-hour-a-day project in cloud chemistry investigations at DRI's Storm Peak Laboratory above Steamboat Springs in the Colorado Rockies. Dr. Steve Wells, executive director of DRI's Quaternary Sciences Center (QSC), said his faculty are developing programs in hydrologic sciences, geosciences, and anthropology at UNR. Specific subjects include geomorphology, the study of the processes which shape the surface of the land, and courses on Quaternary geology, how the Earth has changed during the past two million years. In addition, QSC faculty also teach in UNR's Anthropology Department, focusing on paleoenvironments and anthropology--studies of how the environment, climate, and ecosystems have developed and changed over time and the resulting impact on cultural evolution.
In addition to supervising UNLV graduate students, DRI archaeologist Dr. Paul Buck has conducted summer field schools for UNLV in years past, taking groups of students on extended trips to excavate ancient Native American sites in southwestern deserts.
Budding research talent isn't only found on the four-year college campuses. In Las Vegas, DRI soil-water scientist Dr. Glenn Wilson has hired a Community College of Southern Nevada (CCSN) student to work on a project involving waste disposal landfills. The student, Michelle Lamb, worked on a DRI project under a U.S. Department of Energy program and then was hired by Wilson to continue conducting laboratory analyses. Lamb intends to enroll in the geosciences program at UNLV next year, with plans for continuing on to graduate school.
Further strengthening the community college ties, DRI archaeologist Anne DuBarton has taught Introduction to Anthropology at CCSN since 1991. Beginning in the mid 1960s, students from Reno--soon joined by others from UNLV-- assisted Institute scientists on DRI's long-running study of ground water transport of pollutants on the Nevada Test Site. More recently, students have also traveled to Africa, Antarctica, Greenland, and sites spread around the U.S.
Research collaborations also connect the Institute with universities beyond the state of Nevada, and even beyond the borders of America. Some DRI scientists are actively supervising graduate students from the University of California, Davis; Colorado State University; Oregon State University; George Mason University; the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology; the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico; and the Universita La Sapienza di Roma.
Dr. Peter Barber, interim DRI President, believes that while DRI doesn't confer its own degrees or give course credits itself, "the graduate students who pass through the Institute have come to represent our alumni. Every one of these young people who end up in research, consulting, teaching, or management represents another opportunity for DRI and Nevada's university campuses to extend their research expertise in new directions." In other words, Roger Morrison and George Maxey blazed a trail 34 years ago that continues today.
John Doherty
