ERDC boss Houston to retire

Published 12:00 am Thursday, April 23, 2009

Dr. James R. Houston, director of the U.S. Army Research and Development Center, will retire in January.

He said the extensive travel involved in managing ERDC’s operations prompted his decision.

“I’m retiring because I travel 35 times a year,” he said Wednesday. “I promised my wife five years ago that I would retire at this time.”

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Houston, 62, said about 20 of his trips annually are to Washington, D.C., headquarters of the Army Corps of Engineers. In addition, he’s often needed at ERDC’s other labs around the country, at adjunct sites from Alaska to London, or at the sites of their civilian customers.

The federal science laboratory was created in 1929 as Waterways Experiment Station, mostly for hydraulic studies related to management of the nation’s rivers and harbors. Houston became the first — and so far only — director of ERDC on May 24, 2000, when its seven separate laboratories in four states were consolidated under one headquarters in Vicksburg, a reorganization that began in October 1998.

ERDC’s nearly 700-acre campus on Halls Ferry Road is home to administration and support plus four of the labs — Environmental, Coastal and Hydraulics, Information Technology and Geotechnical and Structures. Other labs are Construction Engineering in Champaign, Ill.; Cold Regions Research and Engineering Research in Hanover, N.H., and the Topographic Engineering Center in Alexandria, Va.

As ERDC director, Houston manages more than 2,000 employees, $1.2 billion in facilities and an annual budget of more than $1 billion as the center provides research services to the Army and other service branches in both military and civilian projects.

During his tenure, he said, “We’ve been doing so much in support of soldiers. It’s had a big impact in saving lives in Iraq and also in Afghanistan. We’ve also been involved with anti-terrorist activities.” About 80 percent of ERDC’s annual budget comes from military contracts, with the remaining 20 percent from civilian works. Much of the research and development carried out in Vicksburg and the other sites falls under classified guidelines, he said.

Houston and his wife, the former Fran Smith, who was a home economist with the Warren County Extension Service, have been married 33 years. They became grandparents for the first time Sunday as daughter Tracie, who lives in Jacksonville, Fla., with husband Charlie Scales, gave birth to a son, Gregory James. Houston said he and his wife are looking forward to baby-sitting assignments. “It’s possible we could move to Jacksonville to be near our daughter, but for now we are planning to stay here.”

Houston has presided over a period of high achievement for ERDC, the lab being named Army Research Laboratory of the year four out of the past seven years, including twice in a row, in 2007 and 2008. “We’ve been the perennial winner,” he said. “I hope we can continue that.”

He also said projected growth, both in manpower and facilities at the Vicksburg campus, could be a boon to the area’s economy in the next decade or two. “We’ll be building new buildings. We’re planning a new environmental lab, expanding the information technology lab, eliminating some of the old tin buildings and modernizing some of the others.” The construction could pump millions of dollars into the local economy, he said.

In addition, a large number of baby boomer engineers and scientists will be retiring in the next five to 10 years. ERDC already has begun to hire new people to take their places, trying to get ahead of what Houston sees as a highly competitive hiring market later on.

“I hope Vicksburg’s economy booms,” he said. “For one thing, it will make it easier to recruit good employees.”

Houston himself was not exactly recruited to Vicksburg when he arrived in February 1971. As a young Army draftee from the San Francisco Bay Area, Houston was almost sent to Vietnam but had his orders changed. With a masters degree in physics, Houston found himself assigned with other engineers and scientists to what was then the Waterways Experiment Station.

“I didn’t want to be drafted and I didn’t want to go to Mississippi, which seemed like the end of the earth to me at the time,” he said. “But I got real interested in the work.” When he was discharged from the Army in May 1972, he hired on as a civilian at WES. “I decided to stay on for a while, and then a while longer. Then I met my wife, got married…” He also obtained his doctorate in engineering sciences from the University of Florida, published more than 130 technical and scientific reports and garnered numerous honors and awards including the Senior Executive Service Distinguished Presidential Rank Award and the Department of the Army Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service.

Houston cited the people of Vicksburg as much as the work for his decision to stay all these years.

“We’re the best and we deliver,” he said. “The work we do here saves lives, protects the environment, reduces the cost of locks and levees. There is such great diversity, particularly at Vicksburg.”

ERDC Deputy Director Dr. Jeffrey Holland has already been named Houston’s replacement by Army and senior engineering officials, Houston said.

Holland has been deputy director at ERDC since November 2006. Prior to that he was director of ERDC’s Information Technology Laboratory, technical director for HydroEnvironmental Modeling and Simulation in the Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory, and first -and second-line supervisor and program manager. 

Holland received his bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering, with honors, from Western Kentucky University, and a master’s degree in environmental and water resources engineering from Vanderbilt University. He holds a doctorate in civil engineering from Colorado State University.

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Contact Pamela Hitchins at phitchins@vicksburgpost.com