  I was saddened to hear this week that UHCL closed the Futures Studies Dept. Few opportunities exist, especially in this region, for a systems-based education. The Futures MS was original in its interdisciplinary and web approach to educating. The program's director, Peter Bishop, influenced the International Space University immeasurably (along with ISU's ragtag little sister, the Youth Advisory Committee that formed at UniSpace in Vienna), as well as the numerous employees of the space program and Houston industries who partook in a class or two, if not the degree while in Clearlake.
Peter will land on his feet, but UHCL and its surrounding Clearlake community are most damaged by the loss. urlLink Overmorgen: 2004-04-03: University of Houston closes its future studies course : "I'm guessing that the future must have seemed a more viable prospect in the past. This week it was announced that the University of Houston - Clear Lake is to wind up its Future Studies masters degree, which was founded in 1975, just up the road from NASA's Johnson Space Center.
I spent over a year completing the course over the turn of the century, and I was upset when I heard of its closure. Not that the news was wholly unexpected; the course managed to enroll 30-40 students but this wasn't enough to prevent it feeling small, with classes ranging from five to around 15 students. Not enough for the administration to keep it on the books when they could be concentrating on more populous courses, many of which, for some reason, attract large numbers of lucrative students from all over Asia. So now Peter Bishop, the remaining stalwart professor in the programme, is presumably looking for new prospects. " 
