Saving Scripps

摘要

When the Scripps Institution of Oceanogra-phy threw itself a 100th birthday bash last September, everyone from the Queen of England to Hollywood legend Paul Newman sent best wishes to one of the world's oldest, largest, and most prestigious marine research centers. More than 2000 celebrants jammed its seaside campus in La Jolla, California, applauding speakers who hailed a century of discovery as fireworks lit the crashing surf. Behind the scenes, however, the atmosphere was more somber. State budget cuts had tipped Scripps―which has a $140 million annual budget―into perhaps its worst-ever financial crises, forcing director: Charles Kennel to spend the centennial year laying off support staff and scrambling to find funds for everything from research cruises to saving precious biological collections (Science, 20 December 2002, p. 2305). But with the institution sliding ever deeper into debt, Kennel's management team concluded that they needed a more radical rescue plan. An array of related problems―from an aging faculty that was reluctant to teach, to Scripps's historically frosty relationship with its parent campus, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD)―were sucking Scripps into what one adviser describes as "an accelerating whirlpool of institutional collapse."