The Center for Geophysical Investigation of the Shallow Subsurface (CGISS) at Boise State University (BSU) was formally established in July 1991 by the Higher Education Research Council (HERC) of the Idaho State Board of Education (SBOE) with a $1.05 million grant to Dr. J. R. Pelton of the BSU geophysics faculty. The general goal of CGISS is to focus undergraduate and graduate geoscientific research on the structure, processes, and properties of the uppermost part of the Earth's crust. Research carried out by CGISS requires measurements made with digital instrumentation deployed at the Earth's solid surface, within the oceans, or inside boreholes, and depends on theoretical results from physics and chemistry, mathematical methods implemented on powerful computers, and a wide variety of laboratory analyses to quantitatively interpret those measurements. The results are relevant to fundamental geoscientific questions and to diverse problems associated with natural resources, natural hazards, and environmental quality.