DEPARTMENT HISTORY |
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In 1984 Kunz resigned his appointment at the University of Illinois to accept the position of Professor of Physics at MTU. About the same time, a "retirement incentive program" was put in place at MTU and a number of the older physics faculty, including Keeling, took advantage of it.* Prof. Truman Woodruff, from Michigan State University, was brought in to replace Keeling as department head. While Woodruff had a strong research record, it rapidly became clear that being department head at MTU was not going to work out. He left within his first year. Kunz was then appointed head of the department. The initial faculty rebuilding effort had principally centered on faculty in theoretical and computational areas, thus avoiding the need to find extensive start-up funds for equipment. The exception was Sam Marshall, a senior condensed matter experimentalist at Argonne National Labs, who was able to bring much of his equipment with him. Shortly after Kunz became head an effort was made to add several condensed matter experimentalists (with limited start-up funds). Through the early 1990's, with only a couple exceptions, the faculty hires were either for computational physics or condensed matter experiment. Early on Kunz pushed to get a PhD in the Physics
Department and to enhance the computational resources. One result was the
formation of the Center for Experimental Computation (CEC) out of the existing
facilities in Fisher Hall. For a PhD program, several possibilities were
considered including a joint PhD with Math and Computer Science and a PhD
in Computational Physics. Ultimately a PhD in Applied Physics was pursued
and that program began in 1987. Shortly thereafter (1993/94)
the word "Applied" was
dropped from the name, 'in recognition of existing facts.'
* Some referred to this incentive program as "out the door in '84!"
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