When Michael Pelczar joined the faculty of the microbiology department at the University of Maryland in 1946, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge connecting the Western and Eastern shores of the Bay would not be built for another six years. Although the population was on the rise after World War II, suburban development would not hit full force for another decade. Modern roads were just starting to shrink distances around the region, but much of the Bay still relied on slow ferry service.

Pelczar's own field of microbiology would soon see a major revolution. That year, 1946, saw the invention of the first large-scale electronic computer. Computing power that now fits in a wristwatch then filled a room. That same year, scientists first discovered that bacteria could exchange genetic information with each other in a form of sexual reproduction known as conjugation — a discovery that would lay the groundwork for genetic engineering. Scientists would also realize that it is DNA that acts as a transforming agent in cells, but it would be another seven years before James Watson and Francis Crick would unravel its famed double helix.

Teacher and researcher in the microbiology department (top right), Michael Pelczar shaped plans to rebuild the microbiology building in February 1963 (middle right). His vision for Horn Point Environmental Laboratory (now HPL) came to fruition in 1973 at the groundbreaking ceremony for the oyster hatchery (bottom, Pelczar in white suit, far right). Top photographs from the University of Maryland College Park archives. Bottom photograph courtesy University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.

The degree of technological advance and the extent of change in the Chesapeake watershed fated for the next half century were perhaps inconceivable when Pelczar first began his career at the University of Maryland. But he soon recognized that the organization of the scientific enterprise would have to keep pace as the scale of information grew.

To study a place like the Chesapeake Bay, he realized, would take capacity, expertise from multiple disciplines and across varying scales of organization — from microbiologists to oceanographers. Pelczar's administrative vision soon gained recognition within the University of Maryland. In 1966, he became the Vice President of Graduate Research. From this position, Pelczar helped to shepherd several key administrative changes in the scientific landscape of the Chesapeake region.

Most research grants from University of Maryland researchers began to make their way across Pelczar's desk. He soon realized that Bay science was diffuse and fractionated. The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, John Hopkins University, the University of Maryland, and Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences were all major players in the region, but no central body existed to coordinate these efforts.

One day Pelczar fielded a call from the director of the National Science Foundation (NSF). "No more funding for separate institutions to study the Chesapeake Bay. Put together a single program to identify regional priorities." This was the mandate handed down from NSF. The directive resulted in the creation of the Chesapeake Research Consortium (CRC), Inc., a nonprofit corporation chartered by the State of Maryland. The consortium, which now comprises an association of six institutions, provided an umbrella for Chesapeake science, one under which collaborations between institutions could begin to grow in a more integrated manner.

With the CRC in place as a foundation, Pelczar continued to work to build capacity at the University of Maryland for studying the Chesapeake Bay through an interdisciplinary lens. When the city of Cambridge approached the University in 1970 with a proposal to build an Eastern Shore campus on the old Horn Point estate of Francis du Pont, Pelczar chaired a university-wide committee to decide what that new campus should look like. The committee developed a proposal to create the Horn Point Environmental Laboratory (HPEL), now Horn Point Laboratory (HPL).

Pelczar's vision for Horn Point grew from the need to bring scientists from different disciplines to a central place to study the Bay, from oceanographers to biologists to chemists. According to the proposal Pelczar helped author, Horn Point would serve as the administrative home for a new Center for Environmental and Estuarine Studies, which would bring together university-based efforts to study the Bay.

There is "a unique opportunity to create something new and different at Horn Point," Pelczar wrote in the proposal. "The physical and the intellectual resources are clearly available. What remains to be seen is if we have the institutional will to redirect these resources to meet real problems of real people."

Together Horn Point and the Chesapeake Research Consortium boosted the capacity for environmental science in Maryland, creating a platform to go still further. For Pelczar, the next step would be to resume planning efforts to bring a Sea Grant program to the University of Maryland, a process that had begun in 1970 but was displaced by efforts to start up the Chesapeake Research Consortium and the Center for Environmental Studies.

Pelczar helped shape a proposal to the National Sea Grant office based on the need to solve the problem of the declining oyster population in the Bay. Recognizing the growing capacity in Maryland to apply marine science to real world problems, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration awarded the University of Maryland Sea Grant Program status in 1977. Pelczar tapped fellow microbiologist Rita Colwell, a colleague at the University of Maryland who shared his vision for interdisciplinary research, to become Maryland Sea Grant's founding director.

In 1977 the Chesapeake Bay was already a changing place. The floodwaters of Tropical Storm Agnes in 1972 had tipped the balance, transforming the Bay from a state with clear waters and abundant underwater grasses to one overrun by algae.

That same year, the Environmental Protection Agency commissioned a Bay-wide study to uncover reasons for the Bay's decline, a study that would take six years to complete. With the added capacity and coordination brought to the region by the Chesapeake Research Consortium, Horn Point Environmental Laboratory, and Maryland Sea Grant, the scientific community was better poised than ever before to confront the Bay's problems — problems that seemed to increase in complexity every day.

This page was last modified September 15, 2018