Maurice Albertson

Maurice Lee Albertson was the first child born to Ruby Mullen Albertson and Fred Albertson in Hays, Kan., on Aug. 30, 1918, followed by his sister Mildred, four years later. He grew up in Hays, attended Fort Hays State College now University, and graduated from Iowa State University in 1941. The next day he married "Dolly" Myrtle Marie Campbell in Waterloo, Iowa. He received his PhD in Civil Hydraulic Engineering from the University of Iowa and began teaching at Colorado State University Colorado A&M in 1947. He obtained a second doctorate in 1954 in Grenoble, France, during a year he spent there with his family. Over the six decades that he taught at CSU he was instrumental in developing the department of engineering and the water resources arena by building the university's research, graduate and international programs. His students from many countries now fill positions around the world in engineering and water resources organizations. His interest in his international students and their experience at CSU led him to be a founder of the CSU International Center. In 1958 he was appointed to be the director of CSURF Colorado State University Research Foundation and in that position was a major force in helping to bring research grant money to the university. He had a lifelong desire to benefit the poor people of the world and tried to put the ideas from the Sermon on the Mount from the Bible into action. This began as he worked on water resource projects in many countries. He founded the South East Asia Treaty Organization Graduate School of Engineering later the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand, where many engineers from all over southeast Asia have been educated. In 1961 he directed the feasibility study for the Peace Corps for the U.S. Congress, and worked with Pauline Birky, Andrew Rice and Sargeant Shriver to found the Peace Corps and to train early Peace Corps groups at CSU. He has been a leader in institution building in causes for peace, humanitarian advancement, village development and water resource management. He has been an inspiration to many people in these endeavors. His first wife, Dolly Alberston, died in 1976, and he married Audrey Olsen Faulkner, a professor of social work, in 1978, in Highland Park, NJ. The two of them shared many ideals about overcoming poverty and injustice in the USA and in third world countries. In recent years these interests led to the foundation of a new non-governmental organization, Village Earth, based here in Fort Collins, to support worldwide villagers who wish to develop their own communities. He also created the International Association for New Science to study a wide variety of phenomena that have not been explained by traditional science. Among his many publications are two books that he co-authored:" Fluid Mechanics for Engineers" and "New Frontiers for American Youth-Perspectives on the Peace Corps"; as well as more than 200 papers or reports that he wrote or edited in the fields of international development, village development, water resources, water supply, wastewater treatment, appropriate technology, hydropower, renewable energy and international education. CSU 's College of Engineering selected him as a Centennial Professor in 1976. CSU honored him again in 1998 for his over 50 years of international engineering leadership and in 2000 with an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters. Other honorary doctorates were given to him by Peshawar University, Pakistan; the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand; and Lowell University in Massachusetts. He received numerous awards from the American Society of Civil Engineers for his published professional papers and they selected him for the prestigious Honorary Membership and the Lifetime Achievement award of their Environmental and Water Resources Institute. He was honored as a founder of the Peace Corps at a Peace Corps Reunion here in Fort Collins last summer. He loved the mountains of Colorado and spent time in the summers in Allenspark with the family. He was an active member of the Colorado Mountain Club well into his eighties. He will be greatly mourned as a loving husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather by his family. He is survived by his wife, Audrey Faulkner; and her son, Robert Faulkner and wife Patricia Faulkner of East Brunswick, New Jersey; his daughters, Kay Reed and her husband, Sidney Waldman of Haverford, Pennsylvania, Sarah Albertson and her husband, Bill Peters of Santa Cruz, California; and Ann Yeager of Albuquerque, New Mexico; four grandchildren, two great grandchildren, seven step grandchildren and two great step grandchildren; and a sister, Mildred Newport and her husband, Walter Newport, of Sacramento, California. Donations in his memory can be made to his Village Earth nonprofit organization or the Maurice Albertson Scholarship Fund in the Department of Civil Engineering at CSU. A celebration of his life will be held at 10 a.m. on February 14, at the First United Methodist Church in Fort Collins. Friends may send condolences to the family at bohlenderfuneralchapel.com.