The First Decade - by Rod Tennyson First President of CFISU (1987 – 2002) Professor Emeritus and Former Director, University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies

INTRODUCTION

As the first President of CFISU, an organization spawned from the founding of the International Space University (ISU) in April 1987, I feel that 21 years of success invites an account of the origin and early years of CFISU, which follow very closely that of ISU.

ISU was the brainchild of three young visionaries, Peter H. Diamandis, Todd R. Hawley and Robert D. Richards (a Canadian). These three made it their goal to gather a group of other like-minded people, including many notable space professionals, to meet at a ‘Founding Conference’ at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston. As Director of the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, (UTIAS), I was invited to attend this founding conference. I was impressed by concept, and the enthusiasm and organizational skills of these young visionaries.

Their idea was intriguing: they proposed a ‘space university’ involving graduate students and teaching faculty from many different academic backgrounds, countries and cultures gathering together for a 10-week summer ‘space education program’ in a different country each year. The purpose was to create an international cadre of space professionals, a cadre which did in fact emerge from ISU and which later became known only half-jokingly as the ‘Space Mafia.’

The plan was to expose these top-flight students to a broad overview of space sciences, technologies and space law, as well as management and business concepts. Integrating these students into ‘international’ working groups and insisting that each student be fluent in at least two languages (English being mandatory), was designed to expose them to international teamwork and collaboration in space-related projects. From this experience, bonds would be formed between the students that could be utilized in the future to promote international collaborations in the peaceful exploration of space. An ideal concept for sure, but there is no doubt about the networking and collaborations that have spawned from the ISU experience over the past 21 years.

I must admit to some measure of scepticism, in 1987, when I learned that the founders wanted the first program to be held the next year in the summer of 1988, at MIT in Boston. Further, the courses were to be taught by a collection of professionals from many different disciplines who had yet to be selected, and whose course content had yet to be determined.

In addition, for any chance of success, the whole process required each participating country to undertake the task of student selections and find the funding necessary to cover travel to the host city and tuition. Tuition costs included student/staff housing, meals, trips and administration costs. Before we could even consider selection of candidates, we had to both advertise and explain this new ISU program and distribute ISU applications across Canada and around the world. Moreover, a deadline had to be set for early in the new year to provide sufficient time not only for the selection process, but to allow students enough time to make arrangements to be away for 10 weeks in June/July.

It was quickly decided by those of us from Canada who attended the ISU Founding Conference that we needed to create a Canadian organization that could administer the promotion of the ISU concept and the selection process across Canada. We also recognized the more daunting task of raising funds to support student travel, ISU tuition fees set at $10,000 USD per student, and our own administration costs. Thus was born the Canadian Foundation for the International Space University - CFISU.

CFISU EARLY DAYS

There was general agreement within CFISU that in order to raise sufficient funds to participate in the ISU project, we had to tap into major funding from a variety of government agencies as well as the space industries. At this point, however, there was no Canadian Space Agency. The CSA did not come into existence until two years later, when this new agency was announced in Montreal by then-Minister of Regional Industrial Expansion and Minister of State for Science and Technology, the Honourable Harvie Andre on March 1, 1989. CSA’s first President-designate was Dr. Larkin Kerwin, at that time, President of the National Research Council of Canada.

Clearly, CFISU had to organize around several principles:

1. We needed a Board of Directors comprised of leaders from the space industry, academia and government;

2. CFISU had to be incorporated as a Charitable Organization in Canada in order to provide charitable tax receipts to donors;

3. The Board needed legal, financial and administrative services;

4. The student selection process had to be open and fair, preferably administered by an independent organization;

5. The students had to be outstanding since they were representing Canada in a competitive international environment.

I took on the role – and the honour - of the first president of CFISU. Fortunately, two individuals stepped forward to help me get CFISU organized - James G. Norton of the Toronto-based law firm Lilly, Goldman, and Ron Freedman, a principal in the Toronto consulting company The Impact Group. Ron Freedman quickly assembled a Board of outstanding people (see Table 1), with Mr. Larry D. Clark as Honourary Chairman. At that time, Clark was Chancellor of York University and President and CEO of Spar Aerospace Ltd. Once the Board was formed, James Norton submitted in February, 1988, CFISU’s Application for Registration as a Charitable Organization to Revenue Canada. Charitable status was approved by Revenue Canada in time for the 1988 session, allowing us to issue tax receipts.

To handle the selection process, the Board created a Student Selection Committee, which I chaired, comprised of individuals representing many of the ISU disciplines, to work in collaboration with the Association of Universities and Colleges Canada (AUCC) located in Ottawa. AUCC provided the dissemination and collection of ISU applications, together with independent oversight of the Committee deliberations and selection process, at their headquarters. Once students were selected, final approval rested with the CFISU Board. Nominees’ applications were then forwarded to ISU who essentially provided ‘pro forma’ approval before acceptance letters were sent to the students by CFISU.

Ron Freedman handled all of CFISU’s administrative work, including correspondence with the AUCC and Board members, and organizing meetings, including the student selection process. With his organizational skills and advice, our newly-minted CFISU functioned very well, becoming the exemplar model for other countries.

One of the customs the Board implemented involved gathering all the CFISU students from across Canada several days prior to their departure for the summer program. Their travel and living costs were provided by CFISU while they met with members of the CFIUS Board and industry sponsors at a special dinner function for them. In later years we included a Canadian astronaut as a guest speaker at the dinners. During two days of excursions, they were given in-depth overviews of the Canadian space program through lectures from space professionals, and tours of space-related facilities in the manufacturing sector, or later at the Canadian Space Agency. Although the express purpose was focussed on familiarizing students with Canada’s role in space, this time period also introduced our students to each other. Often this experience formed bonds between them and allowed them to move forward into this intense and unknown experience with the reassuring knowledge they could call on these newfound friends for help and advice if needed. In some years, T-shirts were distributed to the students announcing them as the Canadian contingent from CFISU, a unique feature of our program.

One of the major issues that ISU faced was the establishment of a curriculum suitable to the member organizations that had to supply specialist lecturers and staff to run this fledgling university. In my view at the time, describing ISU as a ‘university’ was very much a serious misuse of the term; ISU was in fact a summer program, with no degree-granting status. At best, this program amounted to a single course credit, for example, at the University of Toronto.

To address this concern, the ISU organizing committee arranged for a Curriculum Planning meeting at MIT in November 1987. Once again I was very concerned that time was running short since lecturers could not be selected nor content determined until the curriculum was defined. I was invited to attend this meeting on behalf of CFISU as an Advisor. I was also invited to be a Lecturer at the inaugural summer session at MIT in 1988 on the ‘Space Environment,’ one of my own areas of scientific research and expertise. (The Goals’ and ‘Agenda for this meeting are recorded in Appendix 1.)

Some of the main themes of the ISU curriculum that were established included;

• human performance in space
• space law and policy
• satellite applications
• space engineering
• space resources and manufacturing
• space sciences
• business and management
• arts and architecture
• design project (different for each year).

In this ISU’s first year of operation, CFISU sent 10 students. In all, ISU had 94 students from 20 countries who came for a nine-week program, which by all accounts was rated by staff and students as very successful!

As the organization continued, one problem CFISU encountered was a perception by one applicant that he was denied acceptance due to his age. This was completely erroneous; no reference to any age limitation was included in any of our selection policies. The individual eventually sought redress for this perceived wrong by seeking intervention from the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which required my presence at a hearing to determine why CFISU had committed this dreadful sin! I was able to convince the ‘interrogating commissioner’ that in fact we did not discriminate on the basis of age and that all judgements by the Selection Committee had been adjudicated by the AUCC and the Board of CFISU. Selection was based solely on the quality of the candidate and his/her accomplishments and scholarly achievements. Fortunately, this complaint was not upheld. I was, however, asked by the Human Rights commissioner to consider awarding the complainant some kind of financial compensation. I immediately replied unequivocally, no; CFISU was strapped for cash and I saw no reason to even imply we had committed an error, nor to set any kind of precedent. The case was dropped.

Another anecdote reveals the depth of commitment to CFISU, and reflects the generosity of our honourary chairman, Larry Clark, head of Spar Aerospace. At one of our Board meetings held at Spar, just after we had committed to sending our first 10 students, I had to advise the Board that we were short of funds in the amount of $3200. This was a result of financial commitments made by some donors that had not materialized. I continued the discussion with suggestions on where we could raise that money - funds which I had to include in our tuition payment to ISU before the students could head to Boston.

During the discussion, Larry Clark slipped out of the meeting, went to his office and came back with a personal cheque for the $3,200 that we desperately needed. I recorded that generosity for posterity in my year-end November 1988 Budget summary to the Board (reproduced in Table 2). That wonderful gesture I shall always remember.

In CFISU’s first year of operation, we secured income of over $182K. Expenditures for this new organization, still feeling its way, however, exceeded $192K, thus putting us in a deficit position of $10K for the beginning of the 1989 session. This was partly a result of the difference in the U.S. dollar, which translated into a total tuition fee outlay for CFISU of $131K CDN. CFISU, it must be remembered, paid for student travel as well as out-of-pocket expenses, which added up to about $6.8K. Administration expenses, including AUCC costs, amounted to about $53K which represents approximately 29 per cent of our income. Fortunately, with the establishment of the Canadian Space Agency in 1989, they became very involved in supporting CFISU and provided sufficient funds to address both our deficit and operational costs. These costs were to increase significantly the next year due to higher tuition fees and travel expenses in order to send students to Strasbourg, France in 1989.

ISU SUMMER SESSION IN TORONTO

After that first successful ISU summer session, in September 1988, I wrote to Mr Ian Pryke, the President of ISU, that the CFISU Board had recommended that Toronto be considered as the host city for the 1990 or 1991 summer session (see Appendix 2). A formal proposal was submitted to ISU on June 30, 1989, by the Toronto-based Institute for Space and Terrestrial Science (ISTS) on behalf of CFISU. Collaborating partners included York University, the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) of which I was Director and the Centre for Research in Air and Space Law located at Montreal’s McGill University.

We did not initially understand the huge costs that would be incurred to run this summer program. York University agreed to assume the responsibility of housing and feeding the students, and based on their cost estimates, the total anticipated budget was estimated at ~ $690K USD. This included the administration costs of ISU and their commitments to lecturers and faculty. To cover this budget, we decided to seek contributions from ISU (~ $380K USD) and to find the balance within Canada (~$310K USD).

As a result of the enormous task we faced, a large working group of dedicated individuals from different institutions and agencies was established to set up and organize this first Canadian ISU summer session (see Appendix 3). I had the honour of chairing this group, with the consequent responsibilities and grief if this undertaking was not a huge success. We garnered many letters of support together with financial aid from municipal, provincial and federal levels of government. Appendix 4 presents some notable letters of support, including endorsements from then-Prime Minister of Canada, Brian Mulroney and Dr. Larkin Kerwin, President of the CSA. The proposal was accepted by ISU for the 1990 session.

On June 20, 1990, 130 students from 30 different countries and faculty members from around the world attended the ISU summer session at York University. A large poster was designed and distributed worldwide through ISU to advertise the program in all the countries that supported ISU. CFISU printed copies of the poster in greeting card format for local advertising and as souvenirs for the attendees, as shown in Figure 1 (copies of which can still be obtained from the author).

Prior to the 1990 summer session, the fledgling Canadian Alumni of the ISU (CAISU) was incorporated in April including members from the very first year of Canadian ISU students. Its first Board of Directors was elected during the summer session in Toronto. This successful organization, partly funded by CFISU, has provided extensive networking between alumni and their ISU colleagues around the world. CAISU has also been very active in promoting the ISU program. Many of its members assumed leadership positions during their time at the ISU summer sessions, and in some cases, have gone on to become faculty at ISU.

THE ONTARIO BID FOR THE ISU PERMANENT CAMPUS

By 1991, ISU had come to the realization that they needed a permanent campus to house the organization, and provide an opportunity to offer a Masters of Space Science degree. The summer program would maintain its current format of moving to a different city for the 10 week program. In April of that year, John McLucas, Chai of the ISU Board, formally announced on behalf of the ISU Board of Directors a competition for bids from different countries to host the site of the ISU permanent campus (see Appendix 5). A detailed description of the proposal requirements can be found in the ISU RFP-PC/031 publication (available from the author). Some Board members of CFISU suggested that Toronto should submit a bid, while other members noted that Montreal also had an interest in submitting a bid. Thus began a competition between these two Canadian cities, as well as with the competitors from other countries. Initially, this posed a potential conflict within the CFISU Board. However, we all quickly realized that CFISU represented ISU within Canada, and it was necessary for the Board to maintain a neutral position with no special alliance to any one region.

In my position as Director of UTIAS, it was acceptable for me to work for the Ontario bid. An Ontario ISU Bid Management Committee was established with Dr. Phillip A. Lapp as the Chair, (a consultant to York University on land use projects, and Chairman of the ISTS Board of Directors) in which I represented UTIAS rather than CFISU.

The first task of the Ontario bid committee was to find a host site. When one considers the enormous funding commitments that would be required to house the ISU and meet the ambitious objectives set by the their Board, it soon became apparent that the Ontario government had to play a major role. After much discussion, the Ontario Ministry of Industry, Trade and Technology assumed the lead role and the Minister, the Honourable Ed Philip, formally announced on September 30, 1991 that:

“The province of Ontario is submitting a bid to become the permanent site of the ISU. The bid is being put forward by the Institute of Space and Terrestrial Science, one of the province’s Centres of Excellence, supported by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Technology. The bid will provide that a permanent central campus of ISU could be established as an affiliate of either York University or the University of Toronto”.

The full text of this announcement can be found in Appendix 6. Because the University of Toronto was not interested in hosting the ISU site, mainly because of lack of building space on the main downtown campus and the anticipated long term costs involved, the Toronto bid was sponsored by York University.. From an academic viewpoint, The University of Toronto also felt that ISU was not truly a university that could become an affiliate with independent degree granting status, which was a major requirement in the bid conditions.

In August 1992, ISU announced a short-list of site bids for the ISU central campus: Strasbourg, France, Toronto, Canada and Kitakyushu, Japan. It is interesting that all three bids came from cities that had hosted ISU summer sessions and thus had a track record of success in the eyes of the ISU Board. The Ontario bid team representatives, consisting of Dr. Phil Lapp, Dr. Stephen Fienberg (York University)) and Dr. Martin Walmsley (Ontario Ministry of Industry, Trade and Technology, and Centres of Excellence program Director), made several presentations to the ISU Board at meetings in Boston October 8-9,1992, in January 22-23, and January 30,1993, addressing issues and Board concerns.

Curiously, it is recorded in ‘bid committee’ minutes that the Ontario representatives were, for reasons unknown, met by hostility and aggressive questioning at the January meetings, with emphasis on the issue of “ISU’s autonomy within York University.” Most peculiar of all was the presence at these meetings of non-ISU-Board members who actually participated in the questioning; in fact, the Chair of the competing Strasbourg bid was present during these sessions but remained anonymous throughout out the meetings.

On January 31, 1993, John McLucas informed Dr. Lapp that Strasbourg had been chosen as the winning site, with the formal public announcement made February 1st. In follow-up correspondence, the ISU Board again reiterated that the main concern about the Toronto bid was the issue of ISU autonomy.

The selection of Strasburg created more than simply debate. Because of concerns about the evaluation process and the noted irregularities expressed by Dr. Lapp in a letter to the Board, ISU decided to convene a ‘Special Review Committee’ (SRC) consisting of David Webb, member of the ISU Board, Peter Diamandis, ISU founder, and Ian Pryke, the former President of ISU, two of whom visited Toronto in March 1993 to discuss the matter. The outcome was a forgone conclusion. Strasbourg remained the chosen site, but the notion of expanding the central site was raised, through the establishment of ‘affiliate campuses’ around the world, with one of course at ISTS. The art of obfuscation and compromise to save face for ISU was in play. It was clear to the Toronto bid team that the President of ISU at that time, Dr. George van Reeth (!992-1994), was hostile to the Toronto bid and did not want to entertain any of the concerns about the whole selection process, nor review with the ISU Board the views of the SRC.

Because of these attitudes prevalent at the ISU Board meetings towards the Toronto bid team, it was decided to “cease any further efforts or initiatives concerning its central campus bid” (April 30/93).

In 1994, Dr. Roland Doré, former President of the Canadian Space Agency, was selected as ISU President, and an ‘Affiliate Conference’ was held in Strasbourg. ISTS, UTIAS and the Institute of Air and Space Law became affiliate campuses, along with 22 other participants in this world-wide collaborative undertaking. The main objectives for establishing these affiliates were to:

• promote ISU
• share research facilities
• provide lecturers and course content
• provide graduate students for the Masters in Space Studies and summer session programs
• serve as a national point of contact.

The Affiliate campuses continue to collaborate with ISU. In 1998, Roland Dore completed his term as ISU President; and interestingly, another Canadian from the CSA assumed the role of ISU President, Dr. Karl Doetsch. He was the former Acting President of the Canadian Space Agency and Chairman of the Canadian Space Plan Task Force.

CFISU continues to enjoy pre-eminent status within the ISU community for the quality of students they send. It is clear that ISU recognizes the talent of Canadians in our space program, as evident by the fact that two of the ISU Presidents have been Canadians. In my role as President of CFISU from its founding, I am delighted with what has been accomplished by the ISU program and our alumni who have moved on within Canada to maintain Canada’s status as a world leader in space science and technology.

• History

• History
• Article by Dr. Rod Tennyson
• Article from Toronto Star

• Sponsors/Affiliates and Links

• AUCC
• Bristol Aerospace
• COM DEV
• CSA – ASC
• DND - Défense Nationale
• ISU
• MDA
• OCE
• SSHRC – CRSHC

• Alumni

• CAISU