South Campus Complex

Curtiss Hall was the final campus building that the state paid for entirely. After 1991, the Legislature approved partial funding contingent upon matching grants for academic buildings, which meant an end to state oversight at all stages of planning and construction. After completion of Curtiss Hall, SVSU managed its own construction projects. The university deemed that change a significant improvement.17

South Campus Complex

In 1989, the state government provided a little more than $235,000 to fund the renovation of the first buildings constructed on campus, the “66 Building” and the “68 Building.” The work transformed the former into the campus physical plant facility and the latter into space for Central Stores, the Graphics Center and a black box theater.18

During this period, U.S. Rep. J. Robert Traxler approached the university regarding an intriguing idea. The Bay City Democrat chaired the House Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs, Housing and Urban Development and Independent Agencies, the latter of which included the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Since the 1980s, various scientists, some within NASA or affiliated with NASA projects, had explored ways that the space agency could gather and interpret global climate data from NASA satellites. The idea was that if such a system of data collection existed, it could be used by government agencies, universities and private corporations to model probable changes in global climate and develop appropriate responses.

In 1989, Congress approved a $3.9 million NASA grant to create the Consortium for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN). Traxler announced on Feb. 9, 1990, at SVSU that CIESIN would come to SVSU.19

SVSU became a part of CIESIN because of Traxler’s influence in the U.S. House. SVSU was also attractive because of innovative approaches the university had made in promoting science education. One of CIESIN’s goals was making climate data useable in classrooms, and the expectation was that faculty in the College of Education and the College of Science, Engineering & Technology could offer advice in how to achieve this.

Accordingly, SVSU hosted or participated in workshops in 1990 and 1991 designed to test the efficacy of storing, interpreting and disseminating data for middle school and high school teachers. A $525,000 NASA grant funded the largest of these. The sessions included more than 145 teachers — including several from Carrollton, Swan Creek and Hemlock — from six states, representatives from six universities (SVSU, Ball State University, East Tennessee State University, the University of Western Illinois, Youngstown State University and the College of William & Mary) and advisors from three state Departments of Education (Michigan, Illinois and North Carolina).

CIESIN included three Michigan entities: SVSU, the University of Michigan and the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan (ERIM). The director was former NASA astronaut, Jack Lousma, and two administrators from SVSU served on its executive board: Robert Yien, vice president for academic affairs, as chairman and Jerry A. Woodcock, vice president for administration & business affairs, as treasurer.20

In fall 1990, as part of a bill approving another $9 million to fund the CIESIN project, Congress included $1 million to fund the planning of an Affiliated Data Center for NA-

President Eric Gilbertson officially presented the keys to the Administrative Services Building to Peter Banks, president of CIESIN’s board of trustees, during an Open House program in October 1992.

SA’s Earth Observing Satellite system, which potentially would have the capacity to store and process daily incoming data that equaled the entire holdings of the Library of Congress. CIESIN appointed Gary Bachula, a former aide to both Traxler and Governor James Blanchard, as facilities planning director for the project and directed him to find a suitable location. Traxler suggested that SVSU was an attractive site.

Bachula and his staff set up shop in the Administrative Services Building (later renamed South Campus Complex A), which had been built to house administrative offices after a fire in April 1985 had completely destroyed a “temporary” complex made up of mobile units. On Dec. 19, 1991, the university hosted a groundbreaking ceremony for an expansion of the Administrative Services Building. The project doubled the size of the building, which CIESIN leased from the university. Although the building never reached full capacity while CIESIN remained as a tenant, the expectation was that it would eventually house 75-80 administrators, technicians and clerks.21

At the groundbreaking, Traxler announced that he had helped secure $29 million in federal funds to build a research and data center somewhere in the Saginaw Valley. This facility would serve as CIESIN’s gateway, connecting it to resource managers, educators, scientists, public policy makers and business interests around the world. The center, he said, would contain the necessary technological power to collect, store and disseminate data.

While the project sounded exciting, some within the university noticed warning flags. Despite all the rhetoric regarding the planned data center, CIESIN remained frustratingly vague about precisely how it would accomplish its goals. CIESIN representatives talked, for instance, of being able to link the proposed data center with NASA’s Distributive Active Archives Centers Network. However, they could not clearly articulate how this would work or what advantages it would bring. Second, some on campus noted that it was unclear as to exactly what the staff in the new building actually did. One remarked, with tongue firmly in cheek, that CIESIN was unquestionably good at ordering office furniture but, despite the release of attractive publications, it was unclear what specific services the consortium aimed to provide. Many were skeptical of predictions that thousands of visitors would eventually tour the CIESIN center. And finally, when CIESIN requested that the university provide it with a large piece of land in the northwest section of campus for its data center, the Board of Control balked. The university was torn between its desire to support what could become a technological cornerstone and the uncertainty of whether CIESIN would ever get there.22 Gilbertson offered some prescient caution during the groundbreaking for the expansion to the Administrative Services Building when he stated that:

It is important, too, to make clear what CIESIN is not. CIESIN presents some major opportunities for SVSU – but not the only opportunities in our future. CIESIN is unique in the scale of its work and the public notoriety it has received – but it is not likely to skew the focus or change the priorities of this university, an institution with a comprehensive range of programs and a strong undergraduate teaching mission. CIESIN is not, again, a tonic for our problems or an elixir guaranteeing the university fame and fortune. It is an opportunity – one opportunity – only that.23

While the university should receive credit for pursuing an idea that seemed promising, it should also be lauded for remaining cautious and skeptical. This was especially true at a time when many thought CIESIN would transform the Saginaw Valley into a science research center that would revitalize the regional economy. The Board of Control offered land on campus to CIESIN provided that it relinquished its claim to it if the center left campus. CIESIN refused, and the Board voted 7-1 to hold firm with its offer.

CIESIN never built its data center on the SVSU campus — or anywhere, for that matter. For a time, it considered a site on Ojibway Island in Saginaw. That proved ephemeral as well, in part because the land contained sawdust from the city’s lumber era and proved too unstable for construction. Traxler retired from Congress in January 1993. The 1994 Newt Gingrich revolution, during which Republicans swept into the House of Representatives, closed the financial tap to projects such as CIESIN. Furthermore, the emergence of the Internet made a large data center of the sort CIESIN envisioned in the early 1990s obsolete by the latter part of the decade. In 1998, CIESIN found a home at New York City’s Columbia University, as part of its Earth Institute. Following CIESIN’s departure from SVSU, the Administrative Services Building was renamed South Campus Complex and housed offices for facilities planning and construction, the campus police department and the controller’s office.24