Morgan Hill may appear to be a sleepy little town at times but
actually numbers among her citizens some pretty surprising people.
C.P. Chang, Ph.D. is one of those surprises.
Morgan Hill may appear to be a sleepy little town at times but actually numbers among her citizens some pretty surprising people. C.P. Chang, Ph.D. is one of those surprises.
At a lunch Sunday, a roomful of Morgan Hill dignitaries, family and friends heard Chang’s wife, City Councilwoman Hedy Chang, and colleagues from the Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey heap plaudits and congratulations upon his head.
Chang, a professor of meteorology (the study of weather) at NPS for 30 years, has been racking up honors all year. In September he was named “Distinguished Professor” at the NPS, one of only 32 faculty members and only the second Asian-American to be so named during the school’s 94 year history.
The NPS is the U.S. Navy’s corporate university in science, technology and management – and the nation’s top university source of astronauts.
Chang was also elected chairman for 2004 of the United Nations World Meteorological Organization’s international panel for East Asian Monsoons. And, in October, he was named one of six Hong Kong Observatory 120th anniversary Distinguished Meteorologists.
NPS Professor Robert Haney, past chairman of department of meteorology, described the criteria for being named distinguished professor.
“A sustained significant contribution to the school, with a combination of continued effective service to aid growth or enhance the status and research or school continually having a significant impact on candidates in the field,” he read.
Chang, Haney said, has helped to recruit and retain young faculty members. He published widely in his field of expertise, the meteorology of Eastern Asia and the Western Pacific.
Haney also praised Chang’s contributions to helping many Asian military officers who have attended NPS.
“He is a remarkable scientific leader in Asian politics,” Haney said.
Both Changs are natives of Taiwan.
Besides praise from his own school, Chang also received tribute from elected officials. Moses Sanchez, Congressman Richard Pombo’s representative, gave his presentation in Chinese and State Senator Bruce McPherson and Santa Clara County supervisor Don Gage also sent a citation and good wishes.
Mayor Dennis Kennedy praised Chang for helping the city understand the possible effects on Morgan Hill from the Calpine energy station being constructed upwind from the city.
“He studied, on his own time, the air flow between the Calpine station and Morgan Hill,” Kennedy said.
Meteorology is the study of weather, a science particularly necessary to the Navy as any sailor or anyone who has seen the movie or read the book “The Perfect Storm” can attest.
Chang’s latest fame comes from an unexpected storm called Typhoon Varmei that hit U.S. Navy ships just 93 miles north of the equator in the South China Sea in December 2001.
Tropical storms (hurricanes, called typhoons in the Western Pacific) are not supposed to occur near the equator, Chang said. He and NPS colleagues set out to discover why the storm happened and to calculate the likelihood of it happening again.
Northern hemisphere hurricanes spin counter-clockwise; southern hemisphere storms clockwise. Near the equator the two directions normally cancel each other out. Chang discovered that conditions must be exactly right for a hurricane such as Varmei to occur and that the odds of such a storm happening again are once every 100 to 400 years, he said.
Hedy Chang acted as the afternoon’s emcee.
“I was proud of him 32 years ago (when the couple married) and I still am proud of him.”
Chang had earlier commented on C.P.’s effect on her political life, first as school board trustee, then, for the past seven years, as city councilwoman.
“He’s a good husband,” Hedy said. “He gives me lots of support but doesn’t interfere too much. He pulls me back when I want to go too far.”
Carson Eoyang, NPS associate provost and longtime friend of the Changs and a practiced and amusing speaker, told of their fruitless 30-year search for a really good Chinese restaurant in Monterey, solved by monthly pot luck dinners.
The couple’s three children, Albert, 25, Michael, 23, and Stephanie, 17, were present to hear their father thank everyone for their kind words, then let the cat out of the bag by relating that he did not do well in high school or during his undergraduate years in college. The game of bridge, apparently, was more interesting, he said, causing him to cut classes.
Acceptance to the University of Washington, a renowned graduate school for meteorology, changed his direction.
