5,778 research outputs found
Donald R. Gerth oral history interview, "Researching Higher Education in Transition", Origins of The California State University", 1987
No full textTranscripts and cassette tapes of oral history interviews with various individuals involved in the formation of the California State University system.Origins of
The California State
University
Donald R. Gerth
Interviewed
by
Judson A. Grenier
An Oral History Project
of the
Archives
UUU Archives
CSU, Dominguez Hills
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
Oral History Pilot Project on the Origins of the CSU System
DONALD R. GERTH
RESEARCHING HIGHER EDUCATION
IN TRANSITION
Interview Conducted by
Judson A. Grenier
in 1987
Processed by CSU, Fullerton Oral History Program
August 1988
COPYRIGHT
This is a transcription of an interview conducted for the
California State University Archives under a grant from the
Office of the Chancellor, CSU.
Scholars are welcome to utilize short excerpts from any of
the transcriptions without obtaining permission as long as
proper credit is given to the interviewee, interviewer, and the
institution sponsoring the project. All uses of this
manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between the CSU
Archives and the interviewee. Therefore, scholars must obtain
permission from California State University Archives before
making more extensive use of the transcription and related
materials.
None of these materials may be duplicated or reproduced by
any party except the California State University Archives.
However, because it is the goal of this project to preserve and
make accessible significant documentation relevant to the
history of the State Colleges, copies of any unrestricted
transcriptions may be obtained at cost by writing to the CSU
Systemwide Archivist at California State University, Dominguez
Hills, Carson, California, 90747.
Copyright(c)1988 by the Board of Trustees
of The California State University
PREFACE
The purpose of this oral history pilot project is to
record and make available to researchers using the California
State University Archives the reminiscences of individuals who
participated in the creation of the California State Colleges
from 1959 to 1965.
The creation of the California State Colleges in 1961
united fifteen formerly independent colleges into a single,
identifiable system, with its own Board of Trustees and a
Chancellor to serve as chief executive officer. Using a
formula which stressed systemwide planning in the allocation of
resources and programs, the California State Colleges sought to
offer Californians quality higher education at reasonable
cost. The key to the success of the California State
University was the decision to adapt a plan, incorporated into
the Donahoe Higher Education Act of 1960, dividing higher
education into three distinctly separate segments. Under the
act, the California State Colleges were mandated to emphasize
undergraduate and master’s level programs, while the University
of California campuses were to emphasize graduate education,
and the California Community Colleges were to focus on
vocational training and college preparation.
The California State University, starting from a base of
fifteen campuses and 95,000 students in 1961, has grown to
where it now provides a wide variety of innovative programs to
more than 320,000 students on nineteen campuses. The system is
the largest as well as one of the strongest institutions of
higher education in the United States.
In September 1979, the Board of Trustees created the
California State Colleges and Universities Historical Archives,
to be housed on the Dominguez Hills campus. Since its
establishment, the Archives, as a systemwide project, has been
jointly supported by the Chancellor’s Office and CSU Dominguez
Hills, through the funding of a professional archivist.
The Archives currently houses a collection of materials
received from a variety of sources. These include the
Chancellor’s Office, the CSU Academic Senate, and private
individuals who had previous dealings with the CSU, such as
former Chancellor Glenn Dumke, former Trustee Paul Spencer, and
others. Consequently, the Archives holds some personal papers
as well as official systemwide documents. As part of its
collection policy, the Archives also has a responsibility to
collect individual recollections and oral histories of the
early System and pre-System years.
m
Short-term goals of this oral history project are to make
available the recollections and reminiscences of former members
of the Board of Trustees, the State College-University of
California Liaison Committee, and the Master Plan Survey Team,
as well as other individuals who participated in the formation
of the California State Colleges from 1959 to 1965.
For the long run, the project has three purposes. First,
it will help to increase interest in the history and
accomplishments of the California State University. Next, it
will, hopefully, be a tool to aid in the acquisition of
additional materials concerning the System now in private
hands. Finally, it will serve as a model and learning device
to develop a more comprehensive oral history program. If the
pilot project is successful, as many interviews as possible
will be conducted under the expanded program with the System’s
retired trustees, former vice-chancellors and college
presidents, current senior management, state legislators, and
others who have been influential in the growth and development
of the state university.
Funding for the project is provided by the Office of Vice
Chancellor, Administration, Dr. Herbert L. Carter. We thank
the interviewee for generously giving of his time. We also
acknowledge the work of the Oral History Program at CSU
Fullerton for the use of its facilities in processing this
interview. Transcribing was performed by Shirley de Graaf,
final preparation, proofreading and index by Teryne Bell.
Lawrence B. de Graaf, Jacquelyn K. Sundstrand,
Judson A. Grenier, CSU Archivist
Project Co-Directors
MEMBERS, CSU ARCHIVES ADVISORY BOARD
Betty Blackman
John Brownell
Mayer Chapman
Robert W. Cherny
Lawrence B. de Graaf
Glenn S. Dumke
Donald R. Gerth
Judson Grenier
Arthur Hall
Claudia H. Hampton
James Harris
Louis H. Heilbron
Donald B. Leiffer
Gloria Lothrop
Theodore Meriam
Carol J. Numrich
Morris Polan
W. Ann Reynolds
Phillip V. Sanchez
John Smart
Jacquelyn K. Sundstrand
IV
DONALD R. GERTH
ca. 1976
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PILOT PROJECT ON THE
ORIGINS OF THE CSU SYSTEM
This interview of Donald R. Gerth (DG) was conducted in the
office of the president of California State University,
Sacramento on July 7, 1987. The interviewer is Judson Grenier
(JG) of the CSU Oral History Project.
JG: We begin all these interviews with a short personal
background. Could you remind me where you were born and
reared?
DG: Chicago, Illinois. I was bora in 1928, December of 1928,
and I grew up in Chicago, went through the Chicago public
schools. Did not graduate from high school until after I
graduated from college, because I left high school and
went to the University of Chicago as an early entrant. I
got my B.A. in June of 1947.
JG: I remember that under [Robert] Hutchins that was a fairly
common procedure, wasn’t it?
DG: It was possible, yes.
JG: And what was your major?
DG: At the undergraduate level, it was liberal arts.
JG: I see.
DG: We had no majors at Chicago. It was possible to get a
concentration; I didn’t even elect to do that. I took the
solid liberal arts program.
JG: What did your father do for a living?
DG: He was a civil engineer.
JG: And after you got your B.A., what then?
DG: Went on for the master’s; got a job on the staff of the
University of Chicago in student affairs, and also went on
for my master’s degree. Did that for two years, then went
to southeast Asia as field representative for World
University Service for the better part of a year. Came
back, finished up my master’s. Always on the staff, too.
Was loaned at one time as assistant to the president at
GERTH 2
Shimer college, which was at that point in time a small
college in western Illinois that had a relationship with
the University of Chicago. Finished my master’s, started
on the Ph.D. It was clear that the military was going to
get me; by this time the Korean War was underway. I was
in the Far East when the Korean War broke out. So, I
volunteered for the Air Force, and got a commission in the
psychological warfare . . .
JG: That’s interesting.
DG: . . . business or branch of the Air Force. And did that
for four and a half years. Then I came back and rejoined
the staff of Chicago, finished up the Ph.D. By this time
I was getting beyond the age of eighteen, which was all I
was when I graduated from college I taught at the
University of the Philippines while I was overseas in the
Air Force in southeast Asia. I worked all over southeast
Asia for the Air Force.
JG: My goodness. What was the topic of your dissertation?
DG: At the Ph.D. level, it was the governance of higher
education in California.
JG: How did you become interested in that topic?
DG: Because I was recruited to join the faculty at San
Francisco State by the then president of San Francisco
State. I decided to go in spite of all these dire
warnings from the department in Chicago that I shouldn’t
leave, I should take a Ford Foundation Fellowship, which
I’d gotten to go to India. That I shouldn’t leave,
because if I left, I wouldn’t finish. They recited the
statistics to me about the odds of ever finishing. And
they were grim, but I decided to come to California
anyway. So, out of all that, all the warnings, I decided
I would pick a very manageable topic that I knew I could
do on the scene in California, where I knew I wouldn’t be
trapped and have to go to Washington when I was young and
didn’t have any money and would have to go here and there
for material. I knew that if I wrote on the government of
higher education in California, the material would be here
in California. And it struck me as an interesting thing
to do. I was sort of fascinated with the topic.
JG: There had been little or nothing written on it?
DG: At that point in time, social scientists by and large had
not gotten involved in writing about higher education as a
public enterprise.
GERTH 3
JG: What year did you come out to San Francisco State?
DG: 1958.
JG: 1958. So you taught full-time while finishing up your
Ph.D.?
DG: No, actually, between the time I was first appointed— I
had worked in the admissions office in Chicago as a
graduate student— between the time I was interviewed, and
the time I actually got appointed in a technical sense, I
was asked if I’d be willing to take a different job than
straight teaching as director of admissions— in those days
they called it "Associate Dean of Students for Admissions
and Records"— for the princely sum of $8,112 a year. I
remember the figure; that was more money than I thought
there was in the whole world.
JG: Yes.
DG: And I thought about it a little bit and said yes. So I
was a member of the government department at San Francisco
State and taught, but my principle job, the thing that
paid me, was being associate dean.
JG: You came out in 1958 . . .
DG: I was 29.
JG: . . . and Glenn Dumke had already been named president by
that time.
DG: He was, yes, he was president when I was appointed, and my
dean was a fellow named Ferd Reddell. Ferd is still
around.
JG: Yes.
DG: Of course, Glenn is. They’re both retired.
JG: So, what were the sources that you used for the study of
the California state college part of higher education?
DG: A lot of interviews. I went back into the historic
material, I spent time here in Sacramento. It’s when I
first visited this campus on one of my trips up here. I
used the state archives, the state library, all kinds of
musty old records from the state Department of Education.
I did a lot of interviewing, because nobody had been
collecting the material. I used the Bancroft at Berkeley
. the Bancroft Library. There was a woman there named
Mae Dornan, who was then the librarian at Bancroft. I
GERTH 4
don’t think she was the head— the head was James Hart— but
she was the one who did a lot of the work, and worked
with graduate students. She was very helpful. What
else? . . . I used the records of the regents, I used the
records of the state Department of Education. In those
days, the chancellor’s office didn’t exist.
JG: Right. That was a pretty heady time in higher education
here in California.
DG: Oh yes. While I was doing the research . . . then the
Master Plan started.
JG: Right.
DG: So, one of the by-products of this was that I got
involved. My expertise, or my specialization in this
topic, caused people to draw on me for the Master Plan.
JG: That’s very interesting. Did you ever interview Roy
Simpson?
DG: Yes.
JG: Did you ever observe any of the meetings of groups such as
the Council of Presidents?
DG: No, those were private. I tried to, and I was told I
couldn’t. I attended the state Board of Education— I
think the first state Board of Education meeting I ever
attended may have been on this campus. It was either here
or Fresno. I think it was here.
JG: Was that in 1958 or 1959?
DG: 1958.
JG: What was Roy Simpson’s leadership style?
DG: Oh, he was very quiet. He would come to the meetings
rather well prepared, as I remember now. He was not
deeply involved in the substance of the issues about the
state colleges. He had his chief, an associate
superintendent named J. Burton Vasche, who became the
founding president of Stanislaus and died fairly soon
after that. And it was Vasche and a couple of his people
who were the people who were deeply involved in the
substance of the issues. The two people who were really
the most involved were Jim Enochs, spelled E-N-O-C-H-S,
he’s the retired vice-president at Sonoma now— lives up in
Oregon— and Dorothy Knoell, who is with the California
GERTH 5
Post-Secondary Education Commission [CPEC], here in
Sacramento.
JG: I did interview her.
DG: They were the two people who were most deeply involved in
the substance of the issues. Vasche sort of coordinated
the whole thing. As I recall, Vasche had four
professionals; he had Enochs, Knoell, a fellow named Don
Youngreen, who was his chief fiscal type; he was an
accountant. I don’t know what’s happened to Don, I’ve
lost track of him. And a guy named Art Browne, who ended
up doing a lot of the staff-work for the community
colleges on the Master Plan. That was the whole division
of higher education [Division of State Colleges and
Teacher Education]— that and some clerical staff— and a
few technicians: Clarence Lust, who’s on the chancellor’s
staff now, Boyd Horne, who has just been named an
assistant vice-chancellor was just a young kid then we
all were— Clarence was the fellow who did all the
enrollment projections, did all the technical stuff.
JG: I see.
DG: It was a very small staff. So, Vasche was a very busy
guy. But the real substance at that point in time would
have been carried by the other two. Simpson was the man
who sat at the table. My impression always was that he
was fairly well briefed— my impression was that he was
supportive of his presidents, and I think he regarded them
just that way. When the presidents met— they didn’t meet
with Roy Simpson with any regularity— my understanding is
that they met with Vasche.
JG: Did the division of higher education exercise any real
authority over the colleges, or were they virtually . . .
DG: My impression at the time was that, yes. On curricular
affairs, yes. All of our appointments went through there;
my appointment went through there. Our appointments in
those days all went to the state board; both the original
appointments of faculty and tenure decisions went to the
state board. Now I’m not sure maybe the presidents made
the original appointments and simply reported them. I
know tenure went to the state board, and I know that
appointments of administrators went to the state board.
JG: How would the state board have time to concern itself with
all those . . .
DG: I don’t know that they did. I think they got a list and
they approved them on a motion.
GERTH 6
JG: Was it your impression that the state board devoted much
time to higher education as opposed to other levels?
DG: No, no, no. The real governing board, in my judgment, for
the California state colleges at that point in time was to
be found in the monthly meeting of the presidents. I am
told that was commonly understood. I’m doing all this
from memory; some of the detail on this is in my
dissertation and in my book [An Invisible Giant], But I
am told that the business managers met with some
frequency. In those days, you had common titles for
administrators on all campuses, and a common
administrative pattern for all campuses. There were nine
campuses, and all but two, Humboldt and Chico, had the
same administrative pattern. Humboldt and Chico were
smaller; they had a modified one. The business managers
would meet with some frequency, and periodically would
meet with the presidents. I am told that there was a
great deal of muscle in the business managers’ group.
There were other groups that met with some frequency: the
deans of students did, the deans of instruction did, the
executive deans— in those days they were building
types— did. The muscle, I think, was in the presidents
and in the business managers.
JG: Who were the strong presidents in the system when you did
your study?
DG: Oh my goodness . . . Guy West to a certain extent— he was
the president here at that time. Malcolm Love, without
question, at San Diego. Going up and down the state,
Julian McPhee was certainly very strong.
JG: Yes.
DG: Glenn Kendall was strong, although he used restraint—
Glenn would use restraint in the exercise of power— and I
watched that over the years. I ended up working with him
for two years.
JG: Was this picture of the group taken just about the time
you did your study? (Shows a photograph.)
DG: Yes, it’s a little afterwards, because Fred Harcleroad is
in it, and Carl McIntosh. I would say Malcolm Love and
Kendall had a kind of strength. Of course, Dumke because
of the Master Plan. The presidents were all pretty strong
in those days. [Ralph] Prator came on the scene in
1958— that was when the system started to grow. Bill
[William B.] Langsdorf was fairly new. I would say
particularly Julian McPhee and Malcolm Love, and then to a
certain extent Kendall. There was a certain potency among
GERTH 7
all of them. There were a couple whom I personally
regarded as fairly weak.
JG: Were there any clusters? Were there any groupings within
the Council of Presidents— people who tended to think
alike?
DG: You ought to ask Glenn Dumke that question. I don’t know,
because I wasn’t in the group. By the time I got in the
group, I was sort of an adjunct to the Council of
Presidents in 1963-64 when I was on the chancellor’s
staff, and I used to meet with them then. But not in the
days when I was at San Francisco State, from 1958 to
1963. By that time, there was a difference. There were
really three groups by 1963. There were the sort of "new
order" types who were committed to the arts and sciences,
the "comprehensive state college," as envisioned by then
chancellor Dumke. There were the old "teacher education"
types, and their relatives; McPhee would have been in that
group, at Cal Poly. And then there were some who were
waiting to see how things would go. It’s not unlike
today, where the issues are very different, but where
there are three groups of presidents . . .
JG: Yes.
DG: . . . the ones who take a definitive stand here, another
group taking a definitive stand there, and a third group
waiting to see how it all turns out.
JG: When you did your study, the state colleges were still in
the process of evolution, were they not, from teacher
training schools to full-scale liberal arts colleges?
DG: Oh yes. I was appointed director of admissions at San
Francisco State in 1958, and I shall never forget, my
first or second year there, I went to a place called
Galileo High School which was not distant from the campus,
in the city of San Francisco. And I got there, was met by
the— in those days the San Francisco city schools all had
what they called "educational counsellors," and somebody
was on the head counsellor’s staff who worked with kids,
getting them ready for college— and the educational
counsellor met me. If I recall correctly, her name was
Miss Marini. We didn’t talk much. She met me, and we
walked down a hall, and she marched me into a room. There
were all these lovely young ladies, high school seniors.
And she said, "All these students are interested in San
Francisco State; this is Donald Gerth, Director of
Admissions," or whatever. And I said, "Thank-you," and
gave my little pep talk about San Francisco State. She
stayed. I turned to her, and I said, "Isn’t it unusual,
GERTH 8
that these are all girls?” And she said, right back to
me, as if it were fact, in front of this entire group,
”Not really, because people who go to San Francisco State
want to be elementary school teachers.” This was 1958.
And I said, ”0h no,"— by this time, because of my
research, I knew the history of the system backwards— I
said, "That changed in 1935." Actually it had changed
earlier in the twenties, in terms of secondary credential
preparation. But I said, "We became state colleges in
1935." And she said, "No, you’re new to California, you
don’t understand, only people who want to be grade school
teachers go to a state college."
JG: Oh my.
DG: And I just wasn’t going to have a debate with her. Now
that was atypical in 1958, but deeply symptomatic. And
internally . . . this was certainly true at San Francisco
State. Now San Francisco State was founded just before
the turn of the century, so it had a significant history
as a teacher education institution, a teachers’ college.
At San Francisco State, the combat level, the tension, the
strife, between those who felt they had a commitment to
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