Lewis Duncan
President, Rollins College
Lewis M. Duncan is President of Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, where he has served since 2004, holding the George D. and Harriet W. Cornell Professorship of Distinguished Presidential Leadership. He received his B.A. (1973) in physics and mathematics, and M.A. (1976) and Ph.D. (1977) in space physics and astronomy, all from Rice University. He is an internationally recognized scholar in the fields of space plasma physics, radar studies of the upper atmosphere, and remote-sensing technologies supporting nuclear nonproliferation. More recently, he also has become a national spokesperson for STEM educational reform and for the values of an applied liberal education.
Dr. Duncan is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, Tau Beta Pi, and Phi Kappa Phi. Among his past honors, he received the Naval Research Laboratory’s Alan Berman Award for the outstanding plasma physics publication of 1989. He presently serves on the Florida Technology, Research and Scholarship Board; the Greater Orlando Economic Development Commission; the American Association of Colleges and Universities’ “Liberal Education and America’s Promise” Presidents’ Trust; and the American Council on Education’s Commission on International Initiatives. He also currently chairs the Associated Colleges of the South and the Southern University Conference of Presidents.
Abstract: Going Boldly Where No Radio Telescope Has Gone Before
As a provocation for future AO innovation and intellectual vitality, I enthusiastically present a continuum of interesting ideas, from the brilliant to the idiotic, unsorted, for consideration by the workshop participants. This begins with an appeal to more aggressively exploit AO’s greatest signal detection strength – for the weakest, most variable signals, collecting size matter. Additionally, AO’s focusing power allows transmission of the most intense radiowave beams. Suggestions for research program utilizing these distinctive observing and experimental assets will be described, including a priority return to “discovery science” opportunities and operational prerequisites; “work-for-others” application prospects such as high-power “proof of concept” demonstration studies for the DoD Artificial Ionospheric Mirror (AIM) program and the DoE/NASA Solar Power Satellite (SPS) program; recommendations for an assortment of “out-of-the-box” XScience (extreme science) programs that incorporate both passive observational and active experimental methods; and a few truly crazy “there is no box” speculations on observational possibilities of debatable merit and interest. Additionally, and more specifically, I will describe the conditional opportunity for AO to become a multi-agency national Earth-space transmission testing facility. I also propose that the educational partners sharing in AO management consider forming the “William E. Gordon Institute” through which on-line, blended, and residential teaching programs be offered, including for example both an accredited and certificate radar/radio astronomy school, as well as short and long-term undergraduate “research/study abroad” and graduate research programs. Finally, I will describe briefly a distinctive fund-raising and endowment-building initiative that AO might consider.