Center For Advance Research history

Hewett transformed himself from an amateur to a professional archaeologist, undertaking a doctoral program at the University of Geneva in 1903.

Her aims coincided with those of Edgar Lee Hewett, an innovative educator and passionate amateur archaeologist whom she met in 1906 in Mexico.

Edgar Lee Hewett at Caroline Bridge in Utah, 1907

In 1909, the territorial legislature established the Museum of New Mexico as a de facto agency of the School, creating a relationship that would continue for the next fifty years.

Hewett led the School and Museum until his death at age 82 in 1946.

On July 1, 1967, the Board of Managers of the School of American Research appointed Douglas W. Schwartz as its new director.

The new campus, with its extensive grounds and numerous buildings, permitted the realization of Doctor Schwartz’s vision for SAR. The Advanced Seminar Program, inaugurated in 1968, has sponsored more than 170 seminars, the results of which are published in SAR’s Advanced Seminar Series.

In 1972 the School found a permanent home, a beautiful adobe estate on Santa Fe’s east side. “El Delirio” had been the home of Martha Root White and Amelia Elizabeth White, wealthy New York business women.

CBR was founded in 1987 on the University of Maryland College Park Campus.

In 2001, SAR entered the new century with a new president, Richard M. Leventhal, an archaeologist from UCLA who assumed leadership of the School on the retirement of Doctor Schwartz.

Doctor Leventhal was succeeded in 2005 by Doctor James F. Brooks, formerly director of SAR Press.

IBBR was established by the University System of Maryland Board of Regents in 2010, building on the foundation of the Center for Advanced Research in Biotechnology (CARB) and the Center for Biosystems Research (CBR).