In the early seventies (1970’s), the Chancellor’s Office of the California State University System initiated a new division called New Program Development and Evaluation. Its mission was to stimulate the design and delivery of innovative new curricula. The newly initiated Institute for Advanced Systems Studies (IAS), founded by Troncale and Faculty Fellows at Cal Poly Pomona university received three awards across three years to develop a new set of interdisciplinary courses on Comparative Systems Analysis (CSA). Altogether this was an award of more than $180,000 for Institute Fellows to create different tools and curricula on CSA. This resulted in 14 interdisciplinary courses that were kept in the university catalogue until Dr. Troncale retired in 2008. They were given the prefix CSA and constituted the training for a Minor in Comparative Systems Analysis offered by the Biology Department until circa 2012.

1.   $67,184 from the Office of New Program Development and Evaluation, Office of the Chancellor, California State University and Colleges, (CSUC-NPDE #72-24) to design a time-shortened “Degree Program in Comparative Systems Analysis” (applying systems theory to environmental and energy problems using innovative teaching techniques),June 1972.

2.   $76,876 from the Office of New Program Development and Evaluation, Office of the Chancellor, California State University and Colleges, to “Design and Test 14 Interdisciplinary Courses on Environmental, Energy and Systems subject areas using innovative teaching techniques,” (CSUC-NPDE #73-04) June 1973.

3.   $36,169 from the office of New Program Development and Evaluation, Office of the Chancellor, California State University and Colleges, (CSUC-NPDE #74-50) to “Design and Develop a Computer-Augmented Research, Teaching and Illustrating Facility for energy, environment and systems fields,” June 1974.

Ultimately, the study of Isomorphies that resulted in this Systems Processes Theory (SPT) came from the foundations established with these grants. That is to say that all of the work and grants to IAS for fifty years culminated in the SPT.