 HAO launched an Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Relations in January 1956 for a four-year period “to study the effects of the sun on weather with the hope that from this work would come an improvement in weather or climate forecasting based on analysis of variations in the emissions from the sun.”  Subsequently he was the founding president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and first director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).In the fall of 1956, Walter Orr Roberts was named head of the newly created Department of Astro-Geophysics in the graduate school by the Regents of the University of Colorado; instruction began in the fall of 1957.In 1960 after the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) incorporated, Roberts was elected its first president.