by Don Robinson of The Register-Guard
About the time research dollars began raining from the federal heavens, Paul Hoffman held out a basket.
That is an accurate if incomplete explanation of the success of what may be the world’s only think tank with stained glass windows, the Oregon Research Institute.
Eight years ago, ORI Director Hoffman was a 37-year-old assistant professor at the University of Oregon. He had a Stanford Ph.D. in psychology, seven years of teaching experience and an orthodox future climbing the faculty ladder.
But Hoffman was drawn more by research than teaching. Fortunately, as it turned out, research opportunity was limited then, particularly for a junior man.
So Hoffman took his own dare, wheeled his chair and $60,000 in research grants out of his university office and established the Oregon Research Institute.
The institute was and is devoted to research in psychology. “We are trying to understand human behavior,” Hoffman explains. Most of the work is basic research–scientific investigation with no immediate, practical application in mind.
As a home for his creation, Hoffman bought the 41-year-old meeting house and adjoining residence owned by the Eugene Unitarian Church at the southwest corner of East 11th Avenue and Ferry Street.
Since then, Hoffman has built another structure adjoining the original two. He also leases the house next door, has an option on another, and this month began leasing the basement of the U-Lane-O Federal Credit Union building across 11th Avenue, all for purposes of the institute.
If work done there sounds inevitably vague to the layman, measurements of the institute’s growth are quite concrete:
Originally housed in 2,600 square feet of space, institute activities now occupy 12,00 square feet.
The original budget of $60,000 has grown to $500,000 in 1967 and (if all the grants come through) an estimated $700,000 in 1968.
The staff now numbers a dozen or more full-time research associates holding the Ph.D. plus enough assistants and secretaries to produce a total group of 60.
The institute is, in effect, a collection of research projects financed almost entirely from federal grants. The projects encompass two broad areas of inquiry, personality assessment and human judgment and decision-making.
Throughout its eight years, ORI has had as its chief patron the National Institute of Health (NIH). The research child could not have made a wiser choice of father. During the first half of this decade, the NIH enjoyed almost embarrassing support from a Congress that regularly appropriated more money than the giant agency even asked.
That situation has changed. There have been crucial changes in the membership of congressional appropriating committees. And an inevitable reaction against annual quantum jumps in the federal research budget has set in, reinforced by a war-caused need for economy.
So far, Hoffman maintains, the national retrenchment has not affected ORI. NIH still supports about 75 per cent of the ORI budget. And Hoffman asserts, without crossing fingers, that ORI has by now built a strong position in the genteel but fierce competition for research funds among academic seekers.
Technically, ORI is a non-profit corporation directed by a five-man board of Eugene residents. Since 1964, its work also has been guided by a national advisory board of psychologists.
Despite the fact that Hoffman essentially jilted the University of Oregon eight years ago, relations between his institute and the university appear smooth. Several staff members hold joint appointments, working half-time for each institution.
Occasionally, the Institute makes room for visitors on leave from jobs elsewhere. The visitor in residence now is best known in this country for his book on the psychology of chess. A chess master himself, Adriaan D. de Groot is professor of methodology and applied psychology at the University of Amsterdam.
Possessing about $160,000 worth of computing equipment, the Institute also has a phone hook-up to a large computing center at UCLA.
“A project that in 1960 would have taken five or six people six months to complete we could turn out today with two or three people in six weeks,” Hoffman estimates.
Lean, tall and blond, Hoffman describes the history of his unusual enterprise with a detachment that denies the hard-sell image such success in the abstract would suggest.
He claims no interest in growth for its own sake. Yet he feels that the Institute is not quite as its “optimal” level. A full-time staff of 20 professionals, he believes, would be about right.
“This is really the first year I’ve felt able to afford an adequate administrative staff,” he notes. The comment carries a hint that the psychologist’s central ambition is about to get a second wind.
Having escaped university life in order to concentrate on research, Hoffman is pushing his eight-year-old vehicle toward a cruising speed that might enable him to escape the chores of administration. . . in order to concentrate on research.
Reprinted with permission. Copyright 1966, The Register-Guard, www.registerguard.com.