David C. Webb

Webb was recruited by Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin to serve as founding full professor and chairman of the Department of Space Studies, Center for Aerospace Sciences, University of North Dakota. There, Webb created and established the world's first interdisciplinary graduate degree program in Space Studies. He recruited the founding faculty which included Dick Parker (space medicine and biology), Joanne Gabrynowitcz (space law and policy), Jim Vedda (space commercialization), and Grady Blount (planetary geology and Earth System Science). The broadly based curriculum combines scientific/technical, political/legal, social/psychological and other relevant fields of study into an integrated approach to our understanding of the issues and impacts associated with our entry into space and our attempts to live in and develop this new frontier. After Webb's departure from UND in 1990, the program was taken over by selenologist Chuck Wood, who expanded the program into the first Internet-based degree program in space studies (1993). Space Studies remains one of the largest graduate programs in North Dakota and more than 400 students have completed this program and received their M.Sc. degree.

At the University of North Dakota, Webb and Blount created one of the first fully interdisciplinary Earth System Science programs in the United States. This program incorporates into a single field of study the usually separate areas of atmospheric, earth and ocean sciences. This was in response to the then-speculative Earth Observing System of remote sensing satellites and integrated data systems. Blount went on to serve on the International Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems which defined many of the data formatting and calibration protocols for global environmental monitoring. The pair wrote an eight million dollar grant proposal to the U.S. Department of Agriculture which funded the construction and establishment of the Earth System Science Institute at UND (1988–1989), now known as the Department of Earth System Science and Policy. Webb, Blount and Vedda hosted the first (and only) International Conference on Hypersonic Flight in the 21st Century (1988). Gabrynowitcz went on to found the National Land Remote Sensing Data Archive Advisory Committee and served as a pioneer in the creation of space law and policy, particularly in the area of satellite remote sensing.

David Charles Napier Webb (November 20, 1928 - October 1, 2016) was a consultant to government agencies, corporations, universities and nonprofit organizations on various aspects of aerospace development, technology, and education. Webb created an interdisciplinary Space Studies program at the University of North Dakota, where he later established the Earth System Science Institute, now known as the Department of Earth System Science and Policy.