DSU President's Colleagues Meeting

Dixie State University will host its seventh President’s Colleagues of DSU meeting of the 2012-13 academic year featuring a discussion on the history of water in southern Utah by Colleagues member Richard Kohler. 

Kohler’s presentation, entitled “Redeeming the West: A History of the Scientific Approach,” will highlight a few historical documents that tell “a largely forgotten story” of the history of water usage and availability in southern Utah. Among the documents featured are John Wesley Powell’s analysis of the rising water level of the Great Salt Lake (1877), excerpts from Elwood Mead’s Irrigation in Utah (1902), the Lee’ Ferry Rock Fill Dam proposal of 1922, and the Great Boulder Canyon Project and pending legislation of 1922, among many other documents.

Kohler is an architect and a historian, and he currently serving as president of the Washington County Historical Society. He received a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Utah and a Master of Architecture from the University of Hawai’i, and has completed postgraduate studies at Harvard University. Kohler has authored a number of community planning studies and was the author of St. George: Outpost of Civilization, celebrating the sesquicentennial of the founding of St. George by Mormon colonists in 1861, which was published in 2011. His next book, entitled The Town Lot: A Little Piece of Zion, will be published this summer. That project was funded in part by a grant from Dixie State University and the Center for Education, Business and the Arts (CEBA).

The President’s Colleagues of Dixie State University, founded nearly 20 years ago by former DSU President Dr. Douglas Alder, is a group of retired professors and other professionals who live mostly in the St. George and Washington County area. Dr. Alder, who also started an Honors Program at DSU, organized the Colleagues as a way to increase academic activities on campus.

The Colleagues meet together once a month during the academic year to hear presentations from each other and/or invited guests. The next Colleagues meeting is scheduled for Monday, May 6th, 2013, featuring DSU President Dr. Stephen D. Nadauld, who will deliver his annual “State of the University” address. He will also answer questions following the presentation.