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Judson Grenier oral history interview, "Recollections of the Academic Senate: The Early Years", Origins of The California State University, 1986

Author: Grenier Judson: interviewee; Frank, Anne: interviewer; California State University, Dominguez Hills. California State University Archives: publisher; California State University, Fullerton. Oral History Program: publisher;
Publication venue
Publication date: 17/10/1986
Field of study

Oral history interview with a primary focus on the origins of the California State University System and the 1960 master plan for California higher education.Transcripts and cassette tapes of oral history interviews with various individuals involved in the formation of the California State University system.CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES Oral History Project on the Origins of the CSU System, Phase II Adjunct Interview JUDSON GRENIER RECOLLECTIONS OF THE ACADEMIC SENATE: THE EARLY YEARS Interview Conducted by Anne Frank October 17, 1986 Processed in cooperation with CSU Fullerton Oral History Program 1995 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 1996 by the Board of Trustees of The California State University PREFACE The purpose of Phase II of the California State University Oral History Project is to record and make available to researchers using the California State University Archives the reminiscences of individuals who participated in development of the CSU system. 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 that stressed systemwide planning in the allocation of resources and programs, the California State Colleges sought to offer Californians quality higher education at reasonable cost. Key to the success of the State Colleges was the decision to implement a Master Plan adopted in 1960 that divided higher education into three distinctly separate segments. The 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 Community Colleges vocational training and college preparation. The present California State University, starting from a base of fifteen campuses and 95,000 students in 1961, has grown to where it provides a wide variety of innovative programs to more than 320,000 students on 22 campuses. It is the largest system of higher education in the United States and is known as one of the strongest institutions of higher education in the country. In September 1979, the Board of Trustees created the California State University Historical Archives, to be housed on the Dominguez Hills campus. Since its establishment, the Archives, as a systemwide project, has been supported by the Chancellor's Office through the funding of a professional archivist. The Archives currently houses a collection of materials from a variety of sources. These include the Chancellor’s Office, the CSU Academic Senate, and private individuals such as former Chancellor Glenn Dumke and former Trustee Paul Spencer. 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 gather individual recollections and oral histories of the system. Phase I of the CSU Oral History Project, conducted from 1986 to 1989, and funded by the Chancellor’s Office, covered the formation and early years of CSU through 32 interviews with participants within and without the system. These interviews, housed at the CSU Archives, have proven useful to research into higher education in the 1950s and '60s. A major quality is their standardized format, developed at the Oral History Program at CSU Fullerton. Phase II is an ongoing oral history project that is decentralized but administered by the CSU Archives. Its intent is to assure that the reminiscences of retiring chancellors, principal staff members, Academic Senate chairs, Student Association presidents, trustees, and local campus presidents be recorded as closely as possible to their retirement date and that this be done routinely as a regularized process. Phase II also seeks information on the growth of the CSU during two mid-decades, 1964-85. The project has three long-range purposes. First, it will help to increase interest in the history and accomplishments of the California State University. Next, it will be a tool in aiding the acquisition of additional materials concerning the System now in private hands. Finally, it will create needed documentation for understanding the System's historical role in state and national education; many issues it has confronted have become matters of national concern, such as meeting the needs of a multicultural student body and finding adequate resources in a time of scarcity. Oral history can provide background information on these developments that is not available in bulletins, brochures, and minutes. Funding for the project is provided by the Office of the Chancellor, Dr. Barry Munitz. We thank the interviewee for generously giving of his time. We also acknowledge the pioneering work of the CSU Fullerton Oral History Program in providing a model. Transcribing was performed by Garnette Long, who in the process contributed many wise editorial suggestions. Lawrence B. de Graaf Tim Gregory Judson A. Grenier Acting CSU Archivist Project Co-directors MEMBERS, CSU ARCHIVES ADVISORY COMMITTEE Betty J. Blackman William D. Campbell Lawrence B. de Graaf Robert C. Detweiler David E. Leveille Gloria Lothrop Barry Munitz Lyn Olsson John Pfau Teena Stem Helene Whitson Samuel Wiley Donald R. Gerth Harold Goldwhite Tim Gregory Judson A. Grenier IV CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES ORAL HISTORY PROJECT ON THE ORIGINS OF THE CSU SYSTEM This is an interview with Dr. Judson Grenier for the California State University Chancellor's Archives Oral History Pilot Project, by Anne Frank, at the California State University Archives, located at California State University Dominguez Hills Library, on Friday, October 17,1986, at 1:15 p.m. AF: Dr. Grenier, would you tell us your impressions of the effectiveness of the statewide California State College Academic Senate when you first came to California State Dominguez Hills in 1966? JG: Well, we were so busy in getting the college off the ground, finding proper facilities, and getting to know our students that most of us didn't pay any attention to the Academic Senate when I first got here. As a matter of fact, I think the first academic senator that represented our institution was Don MacPhee, who was already an administrator. So, my first impressions, at least during the first year or so, are not really very strong ones of the Academic Senate. Then, shortly thereafter we began to get involved in the student problems— such as the Free Speech Movement— that swept the university. I guess the entire University system became politicized, and we all then became very much aware of what was going on at the statewide level. So, at any rate, the first year there was very little interest, but after that our interest more or less took off. My impressions of the statewide Academic Senate were that it was not very effective or influential. AF: When do you think people began to notice it and take an interest in the statewide Senate? Was it in the 1960s or in the 1970s? JG: Well, again it may just have been my taking little interest in the first year or so, but I generally feel it was true of the faculty as a whole. When Ronald Reagan ran for governor and defeated Pat Brown and assumed the governorship, he almost instantly began to take actions which he had promised he would do during his campaign. That helped politicize the institution. For example, he cut the expenses of all state agencies 10 percent. He froze hiring of new faculty and all state employees for that matter. Here we were, an institution just trying to get off the ground with the core faculty, and it was quite a problem for us to continue to function with a freeze on hiring. He proposed charging students tuition, and we were fearful if that proposal was GRENIER 2 enacted our student enrollment would be cut in the bud before we ever got started. So, there were many issues that came up almost simultaneously when Reagan assumed the governorship. I think that is probably the moment when we all began to take a much greater interest in politics, generally. AF: In 1966, too, the statewide Academic Senate took a poll of the faculty on collective bargaining. What were your perceptions of faculty attitude towards collective bargaining at that time? Was there much interest in it or an awareness of any need for it? JG: Again, this was the year we were all getting started and most of our focus was on local matters. I feel that there was a general sense already in 1966 that the Academic Senate statewide and the faculties locally were not being consulted to the degree that they should be. I have forgotten the results of that first poll on collective bargaining, but I think it was defeated. AF: Yes, as I recall it was defeated, but there was a feeling that the trend was towards more interest in collective bargaining. JG: Right, there was more interest, but as I recall our faculty voted against it on our first go-around. Later, after all the confrontations and the student troubles and two years of salary freezes, collective bargaining became much more popular. But this first time around it was defeated. AF: Whom do you remember as being the dominant members of the statewide Academic Senate during the 1960s? You have answered this to a certain extent, but what would you pinpoint as the major issues that were discussed during the sixties? JG: There are certain issues which have been with us since the very beginning and probably still are to some extent: essentially, what the role of the faculties are in the system and on the individual campuses, to what extent authority should be formally delegated to faculty, and the faculty be made solely responsible for those particular areas. The Academic Senate, of course, felt that there should be particular areas delegated to faculty, most particularly, responsibility for developing the curriculum, the academic programs, for determining standards for granting degrees, for determining admissions requirements for entering students, things of that sort. We felt these GRENIER 3 were traditional faculty roles and should be formally delegated, but they never were. The Board of Trustees and the Chancellor refused any kind of formal delegation of authority. I think this was in part because our system was so new, and it was created by the Legislature and the Legislature was looking at it very carefully. I don't think the Board of Trustees wanted to do anything that might cause the Legislature to say, "Hey, you sold out the store," or, "You aren't performing your responsibilities the way we intended you to." You see, the University of California, which has a history that goes all the way back to the 1860s, is a mature institution. It is self-confident, it knows where it is going. It doesn't have the Legislature looking over its shoulder as we did. I feel that the Regents of the University of California have had long experience in working with faculty, had trust in them and were willing to make that kind of a formal delegation of authority. But the University of California has constitutional status. That is, it is an entity independent of the Legislature. Its whole reason for being, its whole governance mechanisms are spelled out in the constitution. So, it has that much of an independent authority that if it wants to delegate authority to whomever it wants to, it can do so. But this system being relatively new and coming out of the tradition of teacher education just didn't have that kind of security and self-confidence. So, throughout the sixties and into the seventies, and I would suspect even to some extent today, that is the principal issue that is at stake. Now along with formal delegation of authority, such as being responsible for the curriculum, the faculty also wanted to be consulted on the things that it considered critical to the existence of itself and of the state universities and colleges. Now, there is nothing more critical than who will be a president of an institution and who will be the vice-president of an institution, and who will be deans of an institution and who will be department chairmen in the institutions. The faculty wanted a consultative role in all those cases. On the lowest level, on the departmental level, the faculty wanted the right to select departmental chairmen. They wanted department chairmen to be one of themselves, to come out of the ranks, to think like themselves. They wanted it to be considered to be something like a caretaker role, where the chairmanship would be rotated regularly, every three years, say, so that no one member of the department would become accustomed to governing, would become accustomed to being the authoritarian figure in that department. They wanted it more of GRENIER 4 a collegial system where everyone has a responsibility of serving for a particular time and then that's it. Then you become a teacher again because that is what you primarily are. They also wanted to be able to select, or at least participate, in the selection of deans of schools and ultimately all the way on up to the selection of the president itself. Because the president is the principal faculty member of every institution, they wanted someone who thought like themselves, with the same standards and values, who was steeped in the academic traditions. They didn't want some president imposed on them from outside, like someone from a foundation or a government agency brought in from Washington to head up the university who knew nothing about traditional educational values. So, at any rate, that is still a continuing struggle all the way from our own selection of presidents down to how you choose a departmental chair. Those issues have been with us since the very beginning. AF: Any others? JG: Other things that have been with us since the very beginning are obviously what might be called the benefits or the fringe benefits of being a faculty member. This can range from something as simple as how much you earn, in other words, faculty salaries, or, how a person is promoted into a given rank, what the standards and criteria for promotion are, what the standards and criteria for gaining tenure at an institution are, to what extent is it necessary to publish in order to be promoted. These are supposed to be teaching institutions, that's what the Legislature would have us believe, with promotion depending on how well we teach. Yet as professionals, we have been taught that we should practice what we preach; we should work in our fields. We feel you can't teach well unless you're constantly doing that thing that you are teaching. So as professionals we have been brought up and trained to believe in research and publication. Now, these two things can come in conflict. If these are primarily teaching institutions and we are not given any money to do research, should we then be promoted based upon the research we do? Or should it solely be on how well we teach? That's been an ongoing issue. It is more than just one issue, because according to the act creating the California State University system, we are encouraged to do research in areas related to teaching. Now that was written into the legislation by the University of California lobbyists, essentially. They did not want the California State Universities moving into high-level research. But frankly, there isn't any research that I can think of that isn't related to GRENIER 5 teaching if people are doing research in their own fields. And yet, from the very beginning, the Legislature has refused to fund research in the California State University system. So there we have it. We are encouraged to do it. If it's related to teaching we should be doing it, but we are not being funded for it. Every year the Academic Senate would request funding for research-related teaching, and every year the Board of Trustees would agree, and every year the Legislature would turn us down. After a while we just stopped doing it. But the issue is still a live one. Another thing that has been with us probably almost since the beginning is that faculties feel that there should be a distinction in the staffing formulas, that is the relationship between students and teachers, for teaching classes on the undergraduate level and on the graduate level. We feel that classes on the graduate level should be smaller, to begin with, and we feel that faculty should be given greater unit load credit for teaching graduate classes because it involves much more individual supervision than teaching a large lecture class of undergraduates. Teaching on the graduate level demands supervising internships, independent studies, and all sorts of kinds of things that traditional staffing formulas do not provide. So that is another issue that has been with us since the 1960s, and is still an issue today. Early on in the system we were given greater recognition for teaching graduate courses than we are now. Another related topic is to what extent faculty should be given time away from teaching to pursue their field, either to improve themselves or to catch up with new developments in the field. Or to complete a research project that has been underway for some time. Now, the traditional way that this is done is through sabbatical leaves. On the University of California level, as I recall, in the 1960s, faculty members got a sabbatical about every four years. I mean they would get a term off, at least every four years, some of them even more frequently than that. Naturally, we wanted to have the state legislature provide funding so that faculty in this system as well could have periodic sabbaticals. Well, they adopted a procedure instead that we would be eligible for sabbaticals every seven years. But the funding was not provided to make that a very workable system, so that even today there are many more faculty who are eligible to receive sabbaticals than are funded to receive sabbaticals. So, this whole sabbatical question is another issue, a 1960 issue that has been with us for more than twenty years. Those are some of the things we talked about when I first joined Cal State Dominguez Hills back in 1966. GRENIER 6 Very shortly thereafter the student crisis seemed to overshadow everything else. It took the spotlight. Not as much here at Dominguez Hills although we did have student disturbances. But at places like Berkeley and at San Francisco State and at other institutions within our system there were crises of various kinds. The presentation of the play, The Beard, at Cal State Fullerton, as I recall, was a lively topic, and the student-faculty sculpture show down at Long Beach presenting nude figures in various poses got everybody upset, and the trustees upset and the governor upset. But more important than anything else were pressures by students around the state for more relevant curriculum, for nontraditional grading methods, for ethnic studies programs, particularly Afro- American or Black Studies. This, coupled with increasing pressures against the Vietnam War which grew after Lyndon Johnson escalated the bombing of North Vietnam, became the focus for politics in the presidential election of 1968. You may remember Eugene McCarthy ran against Lyndon Johnson in the primary in New Hampshire and came very close to defeating him, after which Johnson withdrew from the race and it became essentially a three-way race between Robert Kennedy, McCarthy, and Hubert Humphrey. That whole political situation, with the escalation of the war in Vietnam, became an extremely hot topic here at Dominguez Hills as it was everywhere else. When in the spring of 1968 Martin Luther King was assassinated, and then shortly thereafter Robert Kennedy was assassinated on the eve of winning the California primary, both of those disasters.brought things to a halt here on campus. We held memorial services and canceled student honors convocations and things of that sort. At any rate, what I'm saying is all the traditional issues were overshadowed by the confrontations that blossomed in the late 1960s. AF: I see what you mean. You mentioned earlier about delegation of authority being an important issue. It's probably a theme one can see throughout the history of the California State University system. You mentioned department chairmen. When you came to Dominguez Hills how were department chairs chosen? Has this changed? JG: There weren't any. AF: There weren't any? Oh. JG: As a matter of fact, as I recall, the first year there weren't any. There were very few of us all told, and we were organized essentially by GRENIER 7 schools and we met by schools. There were no department chairmen. Then, slowly but surely the larger departments,

CSUDH Gerth Archives & Special Collections

James Jensen oral history interview, "Representing the California State University in Sacramento: Twenty Years as a Liaison-Lobbyist", Oral History Project on the Origins of The California State University System, Phase II, 1997

Author: Jenson James: interviewee; Grenier, Judson A.: interviewer; California State University, Dominguez Hills. California State University Archives: publisher; California State University, Fullerton. Oral History Program: publisher;
Publication venue
Publication date: 19/03/1997
Field of study

Jenson was head of Governmental Affairs of the California State University.Transcripts and cassette tapes of oral history interviews with various individuals involved in the formation of the California State University system.CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES Oral History Project on the Origins o f the CSU System, Phase n JAMES JENSEN REPRESENTING THE CSU IN SACRAMENTO: TWENTY YEARS AS LIAISON-LOBBYIST Interview Conducted by Judson A. Grenier March 19,1997 Processed in cooperation with CSU Fullerton Oral History Program 1997 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 1997 by the Board of Trustees of The California State University PREFACE The purpose of Phase II of the California State University Oral History Project is to record and make available to researchers using the California State University Archives the reminiscences of individuals who participated in development of the CSU system. 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 that stressed systemwide planning in the allocation of resources and programs, the California State Colleges sought to offer Californians quality higher education at reasonable cost. Key to the success of the State Colleges was the decision to implement a Master Plan adopted in 1960 that divided higher education into three distinctly separate segments. The 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 Community Colleges vocational training and college preparation. The present California State University, starting from a base of fifteen campuses and 95,000 students in 1961, has grown to where it provides a wide variety of innovative programs to more than 320,000 students on 22 campuses. It is the largest system of higher education in the United States and is known as one of the strongest institutions of higher education in the country. In September 1979, the Board of Trustees created the California State University Historical Archives, to be housed on the Dominguez Hills campus. Since its establishment, the Archives, as a systemwide project, has been supported by the Chancellor's Office through the funding of a professional archivist. The Archives currently houses a collection of materials from a variety of sources. These include the Chancellor's Office, the CSU Academic Senate, and private individuals such as former Chancellor Glenn Dumke and former Trustee Paul Spencer. 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 gather individual recollections and oral histories of the system. Phase I of the CSU Oral History Project, conducted from 1986 to 1989, and funded by the Chancellor's Office, covered the formation and early years of CSU through 32 interviews with participants within and without the system. These interviews, housed at the CSU Archives, have proven useful to research into higher education in the 1950s and '60s. A major quality is their standardized format, developed at the Oral History Program at CSU Fullerton. Phase II is an ongoing oral history project that is decentralized but administered by the CSU Archives. Its intent is to assure that the reminiscences of retiring chancellors, principal staff members, Academic Senate chairs, Student Association presidents, trustees, and local campus presidents be recorded as closely as possible to their retirement date and that this be done routinely as a regularized process. Phase II also seeks information on the growth of the CSU during two mid-decades, 1964-85. The project has three long-range purposes. First, it will help to increase interest in the history and accomplishments of the California State University. Next, it will be a tool in aiding the acquisition of additional materials concerning the System now in private hands. Finally, it will create needed documentation for understanding the System's historical role in state and national education; many issues it has confronted have become matters of national concern, such as meeting the needs of a multicultural student body and finding adequate resources in a time of scarcity. Oral history can provide background information on these developments that is not available in bulletins, brochures, and minutes. Funding for the project is provided by the Office of the Chancellor, Dr. Barry Munitz. We thank the interviewee for generously giving of his time. We also acknowledge the pioneering work of the CSU Fullerton Oral History Program in providing a model. Transcribing was performed by Garnette Long, who in the process contributed many wise editorial suggestions. Lawrence B. de Graaf Karen Jean Hunt Judson A. Grenier CSU Archivist Project Co-directors MEMBERS, CSU ARCHIVES ADVISORY COMMITTEE Betty J. Blackman William D. Campbell Lawrence B. de Graaf Robert C. Detweiler Donald R. Gerth Judson A. Grenier James Highsmith Gloria Lothrop Ellis McCune Barry Munitz Lyn Olsson John Pfau Teena Stem Tom Träger Brad Wells Helene Whitson IV CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES ORAL HISTORY PROJECT ON THE ORIGINS OF THE CSU SYSTEM This interview of Dr. James Jensen was conducted in his home north of Tucson, Arizona, on March 19, 1997. The interview is one of a series in Phase II of the California State University Oral History Project. Jim Jensen served for twenty years as head of Governmental Affairs of the California State University and was, in effect, the system's chief lobbyist, stationed in the capital (Sacramento). The interviewer is Judson Grenier, Professor Emeritus of History. JG: Where were you bom and raised? JJ: I was bom in Albert Lea, Minnesota, which is right on the Iowa border, about a hundred miles south of Minneapolis, and stayed there until I was a sophomore in high school. At that time, the place my dad worked went bankrupt, so he moved to Minneapolis to work for Minneapolis Moline in the fall of 1941. The family then went to Minneapolis. I went through high school at Roosevelt High School, which is in south Minneapolis. From there, I started at the University of Minnesota. JG: Would you mind telling me when you graduated from Roosevelt? JJ: In 1944. JG: Okay, because I graduated from there in '47. JJ: From Roosevelt? JG: Yes. JJ: I lived on 34th Avenue and the [Minnehaha] Parkway. Thirty-fourth is a street that went out to the airport. JG: I lived down by Minnehaha Park. Well, that's very, very interesting. JJ: And you have your doctorate, as I recall, from Minnesota. JG: No, I got my B.A. from [University of] Minnesota. JENSEN 2 JJ: Oh. That's where I got my B.A., too. JG: So you graduated from high school in '44. That was close to the end of the war. JJ: Well, I was all set to go in the Navy in the V-5 Program, but I was colorblind, so they wouldn't take me. I registered for the draft, and two months after I was eighteen, November 20th of '44,1 was drafted into the Army. From there I went to Texas for basic training, and ended up in the infantry. I was sent over to the Philippines, made a landing there on Zamboanga. The atom bomb was then dropped, which ended the war. I then went to Japan as an occupational troop for a few months, then came back to the University of Minnesota. Let's see, that would be in the fall of '46. I then graduated in '49. Pat and I were then married and I went out looking for a job. International Harvester offered me a job in their administrative training program. I went home and we talked and I thought, Gee, do I really want to sell trucks and refrigerators (chuckling) and things like this? In the summertime I had been a counselor at a YMCA camp in northern Minnesota, and enjoyed working with kids. My entire family were teachers, so I decided to become a teacher. The University of Minnesota had a special program then. One who had a baccalaureate could go back for a year and get a teaching credential. I taught in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, which is just outside of St. Paul, for two years, and we then migrated to Merced, California. JG: What was the reason for that move? JJ: Basically, we had relations in Merced. My uncle was an M.D. there. He invited us out to stay there and to vacation a little. So we got there, I talked to the superintendent, and was hired as a teaching principal. We stayed in Merced for twelve years until I moved on to the University of California. I became interested in decision making and decided that the school districts really didn't have much power. The real action in the school was in the legislature. The only major action by the districts is hiring the school superintendent. Criteria for receiving a teaching credential, minimum salaries, and the curriculum is dictated by the state. I took a leave of absence, went back to Berkeley and got my doctorate in Educational Administration and in Public Administration. My dissertation is entitled: ''The Study of Influence in the California State Legislature's Education Committees.’’ I went to Sacramento and interviewed a number of people. About that time, there was a shift in power and a new chairman of the Education JENSEN 3 Committee was appointed. The senator asked me to come to work with him for a couple years, and I did. JG: When was that, roughly? JJ: That was in 1965. So I was with the Senate Education Committee from '65 to '67. I worked for Richard Dolwig (R) and also for A1 Rodda (D). JG: Oh, you worked for A1 Rodda, too? JJ: Yes. The University of California then offered me a job as an assistant dean and also to do some teaching. I went there for two years. JG: In what field? JJ: Basically, political science and education administration. I did some studies and decided that if it was going to be publish or perish, I was going to perish. After I'd been there a couple years, a friend of mine became pro tern of the California Senate. So he put together a nonpartisan coalition. JG: Who was that? JJ: Howard Way (R) from Exeter. He put together a vote of thirteen Republicans and eight Democrats, (twenty-one votes). He then became pro tern. He asked me to become his chief executive officer and the consultant to the Senate Rules Committee. I liked Sacramento and that type of work, so we moved back to Sacramento. I worked for him for a year. I basically ran the California State Senate, because technically everything has to be approved by this five-member Rules Committee. Anyway, Howard got dumped when another senator put together twenty-one votes. So I was out of a job. I went to consult for the State Department of Education. Glenn Dumke and Harry Brakebill called me and asked me if I'd like to interview for the position as the lobbyist for the California State Colleges. JG: Who had been the lobbyist before you? JJ: A man by the name of Bill Storey. He had been in the Legislative Analyst's Office and was a very good budget analyst. The problem was that Bill wore his partisanship on his sleeve. JENSEN 4 JG: He was a Democrat? j j ; Yes. He made the unforgivable error of shipping a final report down to the central office for approval, and it was very, very anti-Reagan. He was asked to leave, and that's how I happened to get the job. JG: How did Dumke and Brakebill know you? Through your work? JJ: Basically, they had contacts with the University of California and other people who had seen my work in Sacramento, and my name just sort of surfaced. The two of them interviewed me. They then brought me in front of all the vice chancellors to be interviewed. JG: Was that on Wilshire? JJ: Yes. I was then offered the job. A friend of mine was the lobbyist for the University of California, and he said, "Jim, before you take the job, do these five things: number one, get an academic position”— which I asked for— "get a car; get an expense account; and make sure that in the hierarchy you only report to Glenn Dumke. Otherwise there could be a problem if other people in the Chancellor's Office try to get a handle on the legislative decision making." So I did that. JG: The office was already underway in Sacramento? There was a physical office there? JJ: Yes. Oh, you mean for the lobbying office? JG: Yes. JJ: There was a lobbying office on 10th and L Street. So I went in. Bill Storey left and he went to work for the Coordinating Council. I think he's still there, as far as I know. Bill had replaced Les Cohen. JG: You mean in the Postsecondary Education Commission? JJ: Yes. Bill had replaced Les Cohen. He had a nervous breakdown and he left the office. JG: Of course, you had this great network of acquaintances that you had built up over your years there. JENSEN 5 JJ: That was a big help, right. The California Legislature, in those days when I was there, to a great extent was becoming more partisan, but it was a lot nonpartisan, and since I had been the Senate Education Committee Consultant for two years and had run the Senate for a year, I basically knew everybody in Sacramento, and they knew me too. JG: Ronald Reagan was governor at the time. JJ: Right. JG: I noted that you were introduced to the board at its January 1971 meeting, so you must have come on shortly before that. JJ: I came on shortly before that, I think around the first of the year, maybe Christmastime, something like that. JG: So you had an office in Sacramento and you didn’t have an office in the Chancellor's Office? You just reported directly to Glenn? JJ: Right. JG: Of course, Harry Brakebill was his right-hand man and he probably made as many decisions as Glenn did. JJ: Oh, that’s right, and basically, having lived in bureaucracies, I wouldn't call Glenn unless it was something that was highly personal. I would always call Harry first and let him know what I was going to ask of Glenn. JG: That's very interesting. Okay, could you tell me a little bit about how the office worked, or what your life was like or what your schedule was like? Alex Sherriffs once told me that when he was Educational Advisor to the governor, there were probably 500 education bills each year, altogether, and that there was no way he could keep track of them all. But in the case of the CSU, there would have been roughly how many bills affecting us? JJ: Oh, about 300 or 400. JG: Really? Each year? JJ: Yes, because we got involved also in peripheral areas. For example, personnel matters, building code areas, this kind of thing that a JENSEN 6 department head under Alex didn't get involved with that much. But the California Legislature, to a great extent, was a bill factory. They would just crank out bills. What we did— and I sort of worked on this— at one time we brought every bill to the trustees. Don't ask me why, Judson, but the lobbyist for the CSU reported to the Gifts and Public Affairs Committee [of the Board of Trustees]. I don't know how that ever happened. JG: Public Affairs. Of course, there was no Governmental Operations Committee then— there is now— in the Board of Trustees. JJ: That's correct. JG: But there wasn't then at that time. The person who was head of the Gifts and Public Affairs Committee when you started out was . . . Do you recall? JJ: It was Karl Wente. JG: Karl Wente, right. Did you have any problems working with him? JJ: No, Karl was a very, very nice man, and liked to be kept apprised of what was happening, that type of thing, but I had no problem with him at all. JG: I noticed that you prepared for that committee, first of all, a summary of all legislation and where it stood at that particular moment. But you also prepared this . . . JJ: That was the status of it, right. JG: But you also prepared a report on the budget actions relative to various budgets and support budgets. [Shows Jensen "1981-82 Legislative program Status Report" and "Summary of Legislative Budget Actions Relative to the CSUD 1981/2 Support Budget" as examples of Jensen reports to the trustees.] JJ: Right. Did you ever read Aaron Wildovsky's book, The Politics o f the Budgetary Process? JG: No, but I certainly will. JENSEN 7 JJ: He's a professor of political science and he was on my doctoral committee at Berkeley. His thesis, which I think has been proved over and over, is that budgetary process is one of political decision making. He took the national scene and ran through a bunch of examples there. The reason I brought that up is because, to a great extent, the decisions that are made in the budget, once they get into the legislature, become a part of the political process. We would try to keep track of a number of issues that were of major importance, and then would try to lobby them if it was going against us. JG: Did you consult regularly with . . . How did you know what the position of the Chancellor's Office would be on all these items? JJ: Basically I worked with Lou Messner and Dale Hanner, and Ed Macias when he was there. I had talked to Glenn when I took the job and I said, ''Glenn, I can't be blindsided, so I want to know when people are making decisions that are political which affect us." He had sort of an unwritten rule that anybody who came to Sacramento had to check in with my office. JG: Oh, great! JJ: They would tell us why they were in Sacramento; if any major decisions were made, they would let me know. Sometimes they'd make a mad dash for a plane, but they would call the next day so we would know what had happened. And it was sort of a two-way street. It wasn't as formal as that, but as we would be in the halls and there would be political decisions about money, about the budget, whether it be capital outlay when Harry Harmon was there or anything like that, we would call the Chancellor's Office; or if they were coming up, we would brief them and try to keep the two-way street there, Judson. JG: So everyone from the Chancellor's Office who came to Sacramento checked in with you? JJ: Well, they were supposed to. I won't say everybody did. JG: Did you then go to the Legislative Committee meetings with them? JJ: No. If they were going there on a budget issue, I wouldn't go with them, but if it was a position on a bill, then I would go. Except on the budget, no one in the Chancellor's Office could speak for or against a bill without my permission. If they wanted to speak as an individual, JENSEN 8 fíne, but they could not stand up and say, "We support this or we oppose that." The other thing that happened is that a lot of the issues became tradeoffs. You can't be against something and all of a sudden someone may ask, "If we would do this to the bill, would it be okay?" We would then check with the appropriate Chancellor's Office in Los Angeles: with Mansel Keene on personnel matters, Hariy Harmon on capital outlay, Norm Epstein and his staff on legal questions, and so on. We really spent a heck of a lot of time on the phone, Judson. JG: Yes, I would bet. All those vice chancellors and assistant vice chancellors that you had to deal with. Boy! JJ: We then had a formal system. An analysis of a bill was written and sent forward to Governmental Affairs. At times we worked very closely with the Academic Senate on certain issues. Assemblywoman Teresa Hughes (D) at one time wanted to mandate that such and such a course be taught. It related to minority education. A person could get a degree from a California State University only if they took this course. The Senate felt very strongly about that because they felt that curriculum was a collegial matter. Faculty and the administration should set graduation requirements, not the legislature. JG: What would a typical day be like for you in Sacramento while the legislature was in session? JJ: While the legislature was in session? Basically, we would have the major bills assigned. On our Friday staff meetings, we would assign certain people to meet with the committee consultant ahead of time. Then I, Scott Plotkin, or another assistant would go to committee and testify. We, at one time, worked out sort of an informal agreement in my office. Since I was the older staff member and had worked in the Senate, I would handle most of the Senate bills. The younger staff, because the Assembly members were younger than the senators, would work with the Assembly staff in testifying to the Assembly. JG: How large a staff did you have working with you? JJ: At the end I had . . . let's see, eight. JG: Eight full-time staff? JJ: Yes. That included clerical. JENSEN 9 JG: And when you started out, how many? JJ: Four. JG: So these people were trained to work with legislative affairs. JJ: Definitely. JG: Am I right in my assumption that you didn

CSUDH Gerth Archives & Special Collections

Louis H. Heilbron oral history interview, "Reflections of the First Chairman of the Board of Trustees", Origins of The California State University, 1986-1987

Author: Heilbron Louis H.: interviewee; Grenier, Judson A.: interviewer; California State University, Dominguez Hills. California State University Archives: publisher; California State University, Fullerton. Oral History Program: publisher;
Publication venue
Publication date: 1986
Field of study

The first part of the interview focuses on 1959-1963 and the second part on 1960-1961. Heilbron was a member of the California State Board of Education and the first chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the California State Colleges ( California State University).Transcripts 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 Louis H. Heilbron Interviewed by Judson A. Grenier An Oral History Project of the Archives I» U U Archives CSU, Dominguez Hills CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES Oral History Pilot Project on the Origins of the CSU System LOUIS H. HEILBRON: REFLECTIONS OF THE FIRST CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES Interviews Conducted by Judson A. Grenier in 1986-87 Processed by CSU, Fullerton Oral History Program July 1987 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)1987 by the Board of Trustees of The California State University 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 and final preparation were performed by Shirley de Graaf, background research and proofreading by Catherine Davis, the 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 CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES ORAL HISTORY PILOT PROJECT ON THE ORIGINS OF THE CSU SYSTEM This is an interview of Mr. Louis Heilbron (LH) conducted by Dr. Judson Grenier (JG). Mr. Heilbron was a member of the State Board of Education and subsequently chairman of the Board of Trustees of the California State College system. Dr. Grenier is professor of History at California State University, Dominguez Hills. This interview occurred in three parts, August 18 and 19, 1986 at Mr. Heilbron*s law firm on the 27th floor of 333 Bush Street, San Francisco, and January 5, 1987 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Long Beach. JG: Mr. Heilbron was a member of the state Board of Education at the time of passage of the Donahoe Act, which created the California State College system. For one year he served as chairman of both the state Board of Education and the new college Board of Trustees, and then for two years as chairman of the trustees. By prior agreement, this interview focuses on the years 1959-1963. Mr. Heilbron requested that there be a follow-up interview concentrating on the planning year (1960-61) after he had the opportunity to review the minutes of those meetings. He placed no restrictions on questioning other than to decline to offer critical evaluations of his peers on the Board of Trustees. JG: I wonder if we could start out with a very brief biographical sketch. If you could tell me a little bit about where you were born and reared. Are you a San Francisco boy, or . . . LH: No. I was born in Newark, New Jersey, but I was brought out to California at the age of fifteen months. I couldn’t stand the climate there. In fact it was very doubtful whether I could survive there because of what was called ’’the summer sickness.” Actually my father had originally come from Sacramento, and my grandparents were settled in San Francisco, and the logical place to return to was San Francisco. JG: Did you go through the school system, the public school system, here? LH: Yes. HEILBRON 2 JG: I think Governor Brown [Edmund G. "Pat”] mentioned to me that he knew you in high school. LH: That’s correct. We went to Lowell High School. He was ahead of me by a year. And I think we shared one class together, the history class. That’s where we met. His wife to be was in the same class as I was, both at Lowell and at UC [University of California.]. JG: He told me you were valedictorian of the class. LH: That’s correct, yes. JG: And then you went on to Berkeley, University of California, and got your bachelor’s degree there, or . . .? LH: Yes. I got both my bachelor’s degree and my law degree there— my law degree from Boalt Hall* JG: Did you become a professional attorney then, right after graduation from law school? LH: Not quite. I did a special job for the Department of Social Welfare after graduation, and became secretary of that department. I’m talking about the state Department of Social Welfare. My project was the rewriting of the indigent law that had remained in California without substantial amendment for many, many years. It, of course, was the beginning of the Depression, after 1931, and transients were coming into the state, relief problems were beginning to manifest themselves, and a change in the indigent law seemed to be called for. So I did that work. I drafted a new indigent law, which became the Indigent Law of 1933. But in the course of that work I became rather well acquainted with the relief problems in the state. And when it became necessary to acquaint Washington with these problems for the purpose of borrowing funds from the Reconstruction Finance Corporation [RFC], they didn’t have many people around who were familiar with the situation. So the opportunity came to me, as a very young man, to go back to Washington to negotiate with the RFC for the first loan for relief for California. I did that first with a member of the state Department of Finance, and then alone in the final negotiation. We then had to create a new relief administration for unemployment relief for the able bodied, as distinguished from the run of indigents that we had been dealing with before— able-bodied people willing to work but who could not find work. And when I was back east I saw Harry Hopkins chairman of the New York Relief Administration, who later became head of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and more or less modeled our legislation after the New York legislation. I served HE I LB RON 3 as Assistant Relief Administrator in the state of California for about a year. But I had had a previous commitment to the law firm that I finally associated myself with, and have been associated with since early 1934. When the time came that their opening was available, I left the state service and went into the practice of the law. JG: With this firm? LH: With Heller, Ehrman, White and McAuliffe, yes. JG: When do you think you first became interested in higher education and its challenges and problems? LH: Well, I suppose I became interested in higher education when I was a student at the University of California. I engaged in a number of student activities, and enjoyed that participation and relationship with the university administration. But I didn’t become formally interested in higher education until about the time I got appointed to the [state] Board of Education by Governor Brown. I had been interested in parts of the educational process, particularly as related to students, when during my Boalt Hall years I was assistant to the Dean of Men at the university— particularly in relationship to fraternities and graduate students. Then, for some time in the 1950*s, I believe, I was president of the Public Education Society, a kind of watchdog society for the school district of the city and county of San Francisco. But that program was limited to elementary and secondary school problems, and not to higher education. So, 1 would say that I had a pretty open mind with reference to higher educational problems when I became an appointee to the Board of Education. 1 had more or less imagined that its jurisdiction would relate primarily to the elementary and secondary problems with which I had been dealing before. JG: You were an old friend of Governor Brown. Is there any particular reason that he decided to appoint you to the board? LH: Well, you’ll have to ask him about that. JG: Did he call you over the phone, or how did he contact you? Was this done routinely through letters, or . . . ? LH: There was an opening on the board, and people interested in my appointment, I believe, communicated with him. He had other candidates, I’m sure, and evaluated them, and maybe made a glaring error, but he decided to appoint me. HEILBRON 4 JG: The board met in Sacramento periodically, on a regular basis? OH: The board met in Sacramento, but it also met in other parts of the state, because its supervision was statewide, and it wanted to make its presence known. JG: When Governor Brown became Governor for the first time— the election was in . . . LH: 1958. JG: In 1958. So he took office in January of 1959, and is that when he appointed you to the board? LH: Very shortly after he took office. I don’t recall the precise date. I think I attended a meeting in February, but I don’t recollect specifically. JG: Who was the president of the board when you first came on? Do you remember that? LH: No. I could recollect it very quickly by a look at an agenda. A very interesting gentleman who served on the Board of Education for many years. JG: And Roy Simpson was superintendent? LH: He was superintendent. JG: When you first got on the board were your impressions favorable? Did it seem to be functioning effectively, or not so? LH: Well, I think our board, consisting of a number of new appointees by Governor Brown, asked questions that hadn’t been asked for a good many years, and insisted on reviewing every function. I think it was generally interested in changing some emphases with reference to the educational program. For one thing, we wanted teachers in the schools to teach in their majors, and in certain permissible instances, at least in their minor subjects. But we were concerned about too great a concentration on methods education with reference to the teaching of the educational program. We were most interested in the teacher-training program, and we worked closely with the legislature to improve teacher-training. And I think the [Sen. Hugo] Fisher Bill was the outcome of that series of discussions. JG: Right. That really did emphasize majoring in what you were going to teach. They say that the state board, HEILBRON 5 though, had to cover so many fields, that it had very little time to look at state college problems. Do you think that’s fair? LH: I think that’s certainly fair, with reference to the scope of the higher education problem. The board tried to deal as best it could with the state colleges. It devoted an entire day, for example, in its two-day sessions to the state colleges. And then, I believe, once in a while went to a three-day program. The colleges were taking more and more time. And it became quite difficult to supervise education from K-l through 12, and then through higher education. JG: The state Department of Education under Roy Simpson wasn’t very large was it? It wasn’t a very large staff, as I recall. LH: It occupied an entire building in Sacramento. And it seemed to have a great many employees. JG: What kind of a man was Roy Simpson, as an administrator? Was he easy to work with, or autocratic, or how would you characterize him? LH: I found Roy Simpson a man of a great deal of integrity. He was a conservative, old line educator. He believed in making the appointments [himself]. He was experienced politically, and experienced in relationship to a board which more or less had gone along with him for years. Yet he adjusted to an inquiring board rather well, as well as anyone could expect. He guarded his administrative prerogatives rather well, and his staff was his staff. And he was an administrator, without question. JG: Would you say he tried to shape the trustees* agenda to his favorite topics, or . . .? LH: Well, Roy was able to get most of the issues before the board, but I found when I became President, that some of the major issues were at the end of the agenda, and by the time the tired board got to them they didn’t get the attention that they merited. So that was easy to remedy. I simply took the agenda out of order, and took what I thought were the primary issues, and made them a matter of first consideration no matter whether they dealt with K-12, K-3 or the colleges. JG: Of course there was no CSC system. So each of the college presidents was sort of a little king in his own area, wasn’t he? HEILBRON 6 LH; I referred to them as, Mduchies." And they were. They made their own pitches to the legislature— I’m sure, with support from Roy Simpson— but they were on their own, and got their own budgetary requirements the best they could from the legislature, with the help of the representatives from the district where their college was located. JG: I understand one of the more powerful of the presidents was Julian McPhee of Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo. He is said almost to have had his own political machine in Sacramento. LH: Without question, Julian McPhee was the most effective of the presidents with respect to obtaining legislative support for Cal Poly’s program. And as a matter of fact— and this perhaps anticipates a question you might ask later— Julian McPhee wanted to be sure that Cal Poly would be exempt, as much as possible, from any system-wide control because of its particular mission. Because of the way it dealt with its mission, it did not want to become just another liberal arts college. He was quite effective in maintaining the position of that college. I think to the advantage of the system as a whole. JG: When you first got on the board, early in 1959, there already was a lot of talk about creating a state college system, wasn’t there? There had been a restudy in 1955 that suggested a separate board, and the Liaison Committee [between the UC Regents and the Board of Education] was beginning to grapple with that too, weren’t they, about that time? LH: By the time that I was on in 1959—60, the Liaison Committee had gone pretty far with reference to the consideration of a possible new system, or a report on whether a formal study should be made regarding the future of the state college program. JG: How did that Liaison Committee work? Did that involve just the Chairman and the vice-chairman, the president and vice-president of the two boards, state and UC, or . . .? LH: They had appointed their membership before I came on the board. And I don’t think that there were any changes on the Board of Education [representation] to that committee. They had not put in their report at the time of my coming on the board. I don’t recall much agenda time being devoted to Liaison Committee progress-reporting. That came a little later. JG: Then the legislature called for establishment of a Master Plan Survey Team that Arthur Coons headed up, which began HEILBRON 7 its work, I believe, in the summer of 1959, not too long after you got on the board. Did you have a chance to meet those people? LH: Yes. I talked with Coons, and with several of that board— Dean McHenry, who was, I think, quite influential in the final results. JG: Did Coons interview members of the state board in preparing their survey? Did you have input into the final recommendations? LH: I had considerable input in what finally developed in the legislation. But you’re now talking about the survey period. JG: Yes, the survey itself. LH: I believe I was interviewed by him. But I’m not certain that there was a great deal of input from the Board of Education. JG: What were some of the pressures, as you can think back, to create a separate system? To put all these fifteen— or how ever many there were— colleges into a single system. LH: Well, I might backtrack a little bit first, to say that there were people on the board who felt that it could manage the whole system, with perhaps an increase in board membership. There were people on the board who wanted to retain jurisdiction over the colleges. And there were colleges that were rather favorable to that idea, because actually there wouldn’t be much system-wide control if the Board of Education continued. They were used to a loose tie [to the state], and that was a possibility. But, the legislature was confronted with numerous bills for new colleges, for expansion of old colleges, for the authorization for junior colleges to become senior colleges, and pretty soon even the delights of log-rolling were impossible to pursue. The legislators realized that there were too many proposals and counter-proposals, too many pressures for new colleges, and it would be better if there were order in the system. And the attitude of the legislature was: higher education, you put your house in order, or we’ll put it in order. Now what they had in mind if the higher education group did not produce, I don’t know. But that was the attitude, and that was the reason for the resolution, I believe, in June of 1959, that authorized the formal study, and which started the survey team. HEILBHON 8 JG: How about Governor Brown? Was he sympathetic to the survey? LH: Yes. Governor Brown was most interested in improving the higher education situation, and he wanted reform to come out of it. And he was most supportive. JG: Because whatever was done was going to cost the state more money— and I’m sure people were aware of that— you had to have a sympathetic administration to undertake something like these reforms. Now, so far as the Master Plan Survey Team’s recommendations, you remember that the first one was to restrict admission to the upper one-third of the high school graduates. Were you supportive of that recommendation? LH: I don’t recall taking up each one of these recommendations in the board, but it may well be that we did. The idea of the university having the upper 12 1/2 per cent, and the state colleges having the upper third, met with the general approval of those of us who were dealing with the emerging Master Plan, because it assured, or appeared to assure, the qualitative condition of the student body. It meant a better student mix, and it contributed to the idea that these colleges were to be, for the most part, strong liberal arts colleges. JG: You probably were just at the beginnings of the baby boom. It was just beginning to reach college age in 1960, so looking down the road a piece you could certainly tell that there were going to be many, many, thousands of youngsters applying for admission. I suppose that may have been a factor too, do you think? In restricting it to a third? LH: Well, of course, the so-called restrictions had to be viewed with reference to the purpose of the master plan as a whole. At that time there were around 85 junior colleges, which not too long later became 100 junior colleges, and that was the place of certain entry. A high school graduate could go to junior college, and a person of eighteen years of age who was not a high school graduate could go to junior college. He would have that opportunity, or she would have that opportunity. If that person wished to continue and use the junior college as preparatory to the state colleges and the university, that was also his privilege. The open door was the junior college. The assurance of opportunity was the junior college. So when you got to the state colleges, with their so-called pool of one-third, you did increase the educational qualifications, but you also provided for an

CSUDH Gerth Archives & Special Collections

Hector Lee oral history interview: Developing State College Policies in the 1950s, Oral History Project on the Origins of The California State University, 1988

Author: Lee Hector: interviewee; Grenier, Judson A.: interviewer; California State University, Dominguez Hills. California State University Archives: publisher; California State University, Fullerton. Oral History Program: publisher;
Publication venue
Publication date: 23/06/1988
Field of study

Oral history interview with a primary focus on the origins of the California State University System and the 1960 master plan for California higher education. Lee was held academic administration positions at the Sonoma and Chico campuses.Transcripts 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 Hector Lee Interviewed by Judson A. Grenier An Oral History Project of the Archives California State CSU Dominguez Hills University Archives CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES Oral History Pilot Project on the Origins of the CSU System HECTOR LEE DEVELOPING STATE COLLEGE POLICIES IN THE 1950*8 Interview Conducted by Judson A. Grenier in 1988 Processed by CSU Fullerton Oral History Program 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 © 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. It is the largest system of higher education in the United States and is known as one of the strongest institutions of higher education in the country. In September 1979, the Board of Trustees created the California State University and Colleges 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. iii 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 other important individuals 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, proofreading and index by Lynn Finger, and final preparation by Shirley de Graaf. 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 HECTOR LEE 1961 CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES ORAL HISTORY PROJECT ON THE ORIGINS OF THE CSU SYSTEM This interview with Dr. Hector Lee (HL) was recorded in his office in Nichols Hall on the campus of Sonoma State University on June 23, 1988. Dr. Lee was the first dean of the college at Sonoma, and before that served fourteen years as dean of instruction at Chico State College, from 1947 to 1961. He also was chair of the state college conference of deans. The interviewer is Judson Grenier (JG). The interview is part of the ongoing investigation into the origins of the California State University system. JG: These interviews usually begin with a little biographical material. Would you tell me where you were born and reared? HL: I was bora in Decatur, Texas. You* 11 find a Texan wherever you go. But I grew up in southern Utah. My mother married a farmer there, so I grew up on my stepfather’s farm in Millard County, Utah, and went to the schools there. I eventually went to the University of Utah. I got my B.A. at the University of Utah, and my M.A. at the University of California, Berkeley. JG: Let me slow you up. What was your bachelor’s in, was it in English? HL: Yes, it was. JG: What, then, motivated you to go to Berkeley for your master’s? HL: I had several contacts. One of the Berkeley professors came as a visiting professor at the University of Utah. I read papers for him. So he gave me a fellowship in the subject A department. I taught subject A. JG: The ground floor. HL: Yes. I got a lot of good experience there. I took my master’s there. I didn’t like the program at Berkeley too well. It was too impersonal. As a matter of fact, when I went in to take my master’s oral I had to introduce myself to the three professors who gave it to me. I had never had a course from them. And they didn’t care whether they passed me or not. I didn’t like that. So I went to the University of New Mexico for my Ph.D. in American Studies. LEE 2 It was one of the first programs in American Studies. The University of Iowa had one, and one or two other universities, but I headed for Texas to study under some special Americanists there. Frank Dobie for one. JG: Yes, I know of him. HL: But Frank Dobie was not taking graduate students, and he happened to be in England that year anyway. So I went back to New Mexico. I was the first Ph.D. that the University of New Mexico granted. JG: In American Studies? HL: In anything. JG: In anything! HL: Of course, being the first, I was subjected to much attention. Everybody wanted to be on my committee, and everybody wanted me to study in his field. It was all right. I did the job, but I had to offer five fields of specialization: English language and literature, American language and literature, American history and biography, American anthropology, and American folklore. That was quite a strain, but I survived it, and I think quite well. I have remained on very good terms with the University of New Mexico ever since. My old mentors, of course, have died off. But that’s the way of the world. So with that new Ph.D. . . . I was an instructor at the University of Utah English department. I had a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship to the University of New Mexico to study American Studies, because the University of Utah and the Rockefeller Foundation got together and they decided they wanted to stimulate regional studies in the inter-mountain area, around the University of Utah. I was selected to spearhead that. So my adventures at the University of New Mexico were in training to establish and operate what I came to call the Utah Humanities Research Foundation. JG: You established that? HL: I established that. JG: At the University of Utah? HL: At the University of Utah. And for two years we gave small grants to encourage research in Utah and regional history and culture, including folklore. I taught the first folklore there, of course. We developed an archive of regional material. It was a rather elaborate archive. LEE 3 When I left there in 1947 my office was taken over by somebody else, and he lost, or destroyed, or removed, much of the archive, but part of it survived, and the University of Utah library has it now. But I started as the first editor of what I called the Utah Humanities Review, which later became the Western Humanities Review. It is still one of America’s leading humanities review journals. I’m rather proud of that, because I think we gave it a good start. JG: So you left there in 1947? HL: In 1947. I was involved in the Utah Centennial television series and other programs in 1947. Then I came to Chico to teach a summer session at Chico State College. JG: Who asked you out for that? HL: The director of the summer session was a fellow named Crawford, who was also head of the department of education at the time. He had been to the University of Utah recruiting for the Navy during the war. He recruited me. So I knew him. The dean there said "Crawford wanted somebody for summer session, would you like to go?" I said, "Sure." So I went down and taught, among other things, American folklore at Chico State College. And folklore was a new and exciting field in those days, so I had a big enrollment and the course went very well. The president took a liking to me. JG: Who was president at that time? HL: Aymer Hamilton. An old dictator. JG: I’ve heard that. HL: Oh, yes, he was. So he offered me a professorship, and the head of my department at Utah said, "I can’t match that. I could go associate professor for you, but I can’t go full professor." I went back and I said, "I think I’ll go back to Utah anyway." And Aymer Hamilton was not accustomed to have anybody say "No." Nobody had ever said "No" to Aymer. They were developing— it was just after the war when the college was growing— and they were expanding a little, and so they said, "I think we can make a position as dean." So I came aboard as dean of instruction. That’s what we called it. In those days, as you know, the state colleges were in the Department of Education. JG: Yes. LEE 4 HL: And they were primarily teacher education institutions. So whenever we offered a major it would be in the teaching of English, the teaching of science, the teaching of history. This was all right with me, because I had always believed that teacher education was an important role for collegiate institutions. So we got along very well. I spent my first year or two at Chico, actually, binding up the wounds of the faculty. JG: What wounds were there to bind? HL: Oh, Aymer would fire people without explanation if he didn’t like them. He took a dislike to a couple of ladies who taught reading, so he abolished the department to get rid of them. He was getting old and quite ruthless, but we got along very well. We had a fine team there. You may have heard of Harlen Adams; he is still extant. I don’t whether you know him or not. JG: I don’t know him. HL: He has retired long since. He was the so-called executive dean. A good man for Chico State. JG: I know Charles Adams, but not Harlen. *HL: The others are either dead or gone elsewhere. JG: So you began as dean of instruction? HL: I began as dean of instruction in 1947. I always taught one class. Or I did until the school got so big and matters became so important, administrative matters, that my secretary would have to come into a meeting and tap me on the shoulder and say, "Time to go to class.” And I’d have to say, ”What*s the lesson for today?” So I thought that was no good. So I hired a folklorist and a very good English teacher, so I didn’t have to do much in my other fields. JG: When did Chico begin to branch out into other majors than teaching majors? HL: About that time. All the state colleges were anxious to grow and develop. The GIs were coming back, and they wanted a variety of programs. We could see a great future for the state college system if we could grow beyond the teacher education scope. So there was constant agitation. You might be interested in this. At that time we had what we called a deans council, or a deans conference, in which the deans of all the state colleges met twice a year. We developed policy for the presidents. LEE 5 This was under the state Department of Education, remember. So the presidents were, by and large, old school administrators. They kept things under strict control, as an elementary school principal could. They made the contacts with the Department of Education, under whose aegis we were operating. JG: The deans conference never directly met with the Department of Education? HL: No, not at that time. We met by ourselves. We developed educational policy. General education programs, new curricula, and that sort of thing. We would recommend these policies to the presidents. Then the presidents would have their meeting with the Department of Education representatives, and those policies which they thought proper they would advocate and promote. One of the problems that we quickly encountered was the problem of budgeting. Each president would go to the Department of Finance and lobby for his own budget. As a result some of the colleges were prosperous, and some of them were not. JG: Which ones were the most prosperous? HL: Well, I would say those with the most aggressive presidents. Paul Leonard was an aggressive president for San Francisco State. And I think San Francisco State did very well in the budget process. Chico was not doing too well, because Aymer’s policy was to get along with the people in Sacramento. And he could handle matters at home even if the budget was a bit stringent. But he liked to get along with the Sacramento people. JG: Was Roy Simpson superintendent? HL: Roy Simpson was superintendent. JG: Was Joel Burkman . . . HL: Joel Burkman was in charge of finances. And our budgets all had to go through Joel Burkman, and he had to approve new programs and supplies and equipment, and things like that. So each of us deans worked directly with Joel Burkman. JG: Oh, you did? HL: Whenever we could. He was all right. He was reasonable. He was kind of tight, we thought. So we developed something, the deans conference did, that you ought to know about, I think. We called it the Faculty Staffing Formula. Have you heard of that? LEE 6 JG: I certainly have. But go ahead and tell me about it. HL: It happened that for about— and I’ve forgotten exactly— but I think it’s about six years, or maybe seven, I was chairman of the deans conference. That is, I was chairman of the academic deans. And an attempt or two had been made prior to my coming on to develop some kind of a formula that would make more equitable the budgeting for the various colleges, and it had always failed. So the deans and I said, "Let’s make it work." So we developed a rather elaborate and complicated formula. We had some deans with some science and mathematics training, and they knew about that sort of thing. I was chairman and directed it along with James Enochs, who coordinated things in the Division of State Colleges. We developed a formula, and I had it written up here— I was looking for it before you came, but apparently I discarded it. I’m shedding the things from my office now. Roughly what it was, was this. The staffing budget was to be based on the actual courseload need as postulated by a formula which recognized the different kinds of instruction involved, with a teaching factor for each, the size of the class. Take for example, composition, freshman composition, or any composition course in English. Twenty-five students was stipulated as the average for a class size, and thirty students were the breaking point; you were entitled to the teacher-load credit for the number of units the course carried. So the total composition teaching load was figured at an average of twenty-five students per section, and for each you were entitled to three units of teaching time— that is, if it were a three-unit course. In science labs there was another factor to be computed. Supervising a three-hour science lab equalled, as I remember it, one unit of teaching time. The Department of Finance demanded that this be worked out in terms of a theoretical work week. State employees had a work week of forty hours. So my job was to figure out how to make a professor’s work week look like forty hours. JG: Were you able to do that? HL: Yes. By adding up all the teaching units, which I’ve started to tell you about, supervision of student teaching, for example. Five students to supervise, I think, equalled one set of teaching units. So all of this was worked in. And each college worked out its own staffing formula based on its actual academic needs. Then we took those budgets to the state Department of Finance. We had some meetings with them, and explained the formula to them. And they said, "This sounds good." So they adopted it. Now, it was so complicated that the legislature never did understand it. So they passed it LEG 7 without question. Each section of the staffing formula was worked out first by the various deans; each dean took on the part that he was most interested in or competent in. We had some very able deans in those days, as I’m sure they also have today. I’d say they made a very strong committee— Don Watson of San Diego, Chester McCorkle of Cal Poly, Mitchell Briggs of Fresno, Rex Bell of San Francisco, Stephen Walker of Sacramento, Homer Balabanis of Humboldt. JG: Was Alan Post [Legislative Analyst] up there then? HL: Alan Post was there. He was reasonable. JG: He would understand it. HL: He was all right. He was on our side. And for nearly twenty years that faculty staffing formula worked. And some of the undernourished colleges received staff that they needed to do the job. It was all based on the job that needed to be done. Now to get this up to forty hours a week I think the number of teaching unit equivalents added up to about thirty or so hours. The full teaching load was theoretically four three-unit sections of twelve teaching units. But then there was preparation time to be added to that, you see. And paper grading time to be added to that. And then I put in a factor— I mean we— put in a factor for committee work and for advising. So theoretically each professor had an advising duty, and committee work time allowed. So we got it up to forty hours, all right. We had this rationale all worked out. I’m sorry I don’t have a copy. JG: Do you know what year that was? HL: It was about 1957, or 1958. Just before the transition. JG: Right before the transition. HL: Yes. And it was working very well, except that someone in the Sacramento office had to oversee it. I was brought down on loan from Chico to work up the rationale and to work out the details under the direction of Jim Enochs, who supervised the implementation of it. If you get a chance to talk to him . . . JG: I have talked to him. HL: You have talked to him. He was about third in line, I think, on the academic side. There was a fellow named Douglass— I’ve forgotten his first name, under Roy Simpson. LEE 8 JG: Was that Aubrey Douglass? HL: Aubrey Douglass. Then, I think, co-equal with Jim Enochs was a fellow named Semans. JG: Hubert Semans. HL: Hubert Semans, and Jim, and then I worked under Jim to work out this formula for him. JG: On lo

CSUDH Gerth Archives & Special Collections

Robert Wert oral history interview, Origins of The California State University, 1988

Author: Wert Robert: interviewee; Grenier, Judson A.: interviewer; California State University, Dominguez Hills. California State University Archives: publisher; California State University, Fullerton. Oral History Program: publisher;
Publication venue
Publication date: 23/06/1988
Field of study

Oral history interview with a primary focus on the origins of the California State University System and the 1960 master plan for California higher education. Wert represented the independent or private institutions on the Master Plan Survey Team in 1959.Transcripts 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 Robert Wert Interviewed by Judson A. Grenier An Oral History Project of the Archives California State University Archives CSU Dominguez Hills CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES Oral History Pilot Project on the Origins of the CSU System ROBERT WERT CREATING THE MASTER PLAN: AN INDEPENDENT COLLEGE PERSPECTIVE Interview Conducted by Judson A. Grenier 1988 Processed by CSU Fullerton Oral History Program 1989 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 © 1989 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. It is the largest system of higher education in the United States and is known as one of the strongest institutions of higher education in the country. In September 1979, the Board of Trustees created the California State University and Colleges 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 other important individuals 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, proofreading and index by Lynn Finger, and final preparation by Shirley de Graaf. 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 CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES ORAL HISTORY PILOT PROJECT ON THE ORIQINS OF THE CSU SYSTEM This interview with Dr. Robert Wert [RW] was conducted at his hone in San Raphael on June 23, 1988. Dr. Wert represented the independent, or private institutions on the Master Plan Survey Team in 1959. And subsequently he served as first chairman of the Coordinating Council from 1960 to 1962. The interviewer is Judson Grenier [JG]. JG: We usually like to start these interviews with a little biographical material. I wonder if you could tell me where you were born and reared. RW: Yes, sure. I was born in a little place called Harrison, Idaho, which was a lumbering town. JG: Harrison? RW: Yes, in the panhandle of Idaho on Lake Coeur d'Alene. I moved to Spokane, Washington at about one year old and grew up there. I went through Catholic elementary school and Jesuit high school, two years of college there at Gonzaga University, a Jesuit institution, and transferred to Stanford, and graduated from Stanford in 1943. JG: That was right during the war. RW: Right during the war. I had been in a navy V-7 program which allowed me to graduate before going to Midshipman school. And after graduation I did go to Midshipman school and was transferred out of the line navy to the Naval Supply Corps and sent to the Harvard Business School for a year, where we combined a full academic year's work in business and the supply and disbursing work for the navy. After that I went to sea on a destroyer escort, the Ulvert M. Moore, E442, which I mention because it was commanded by Franklin Roosevelt, Jr., the son of the president of the United States. We were at sea about a year in the Pacific, and the war then ended. I returned to Spokane where I was in a family lumber business for three years. After three years, for various reasons, my wife and I decided to move back to Stanford, where I went to graduate school. I finished up an M.B.A. in 1950. I was one of the earlier Ph.D.s in higher education under Dr. W. H. Cowley, with a Ph.D. in 1952. I went to work immediately as assistant to the president at Stanford and remained in that job for three years. The Carnegie WERT 2 Corporation of New York, an educational foundation, aaked me to join them, and 1 did so in 1954. We lived in Connecticut and I worked in New York for five years, having the general supervision of the Carnegie Corporation’s Granting Program in the fields of higher education and the improvement of undergraduate education. After five years of incessant traveling, mostly in the United States visiting college and university campuses, we returned to Stanford, where I became Vice Provost and Professor of Education. That was in 1959. Shortly after returning to Stanford I was asked to become a member of the Master Plan Team for Higher Education, and that brings us up to the topic of the day. JG: Could I back up and ask a few things? Did you by any chance know Leo Cain when he was at Stanford? RW: Yes. Not well, but I knew him. JG: Did you have any opportunity while you were Vice-Provost at Stanford to look into the operations of the state Board of Education, or the state Department of Education? RW: No, not really. JG: So you had no prior experience with that operation? RW: The only prior experience I had with Sacramento was that very soon after we came back to California in 1959 Governor Brown appointed me a member of the State Scholarship Commission. And 1 served on that commission all during the Master Plan Team period. I resigned the commission at the time I was appointed president of the Coordinating Council for Higher Education because I couldn’t hold two state offices at the same time. JG: Why do you suppose Governor Brown appointed you to the State Scholarship Commission? RW: I really don’t know. The only inkling I have came from Elinor Heller, a long-time Democratic National Committeewoman from Atherton, who was a personal friend of mine. And I know that Brown had checked thoroughly with her. Now whether she or her husband, Ed Heller, then a regent of the University, had put my name in to Brown I don’t know. JG: But it might have been? RW: It might have been, yes. WERT 3 JG: When did you first get wind that . . . well, as you know, it was the legislature that asked the Liaison Committee between the Board of Regents and the Board of Education to set up this Master Plan Survey Team. Was there anything in the wind in the field of higher education to indicate that something like this was necessary? RW: Yes, there was, indeed. The competition between the state colleges and the University and the junior colleges— I use the old-fashioned terms, 1 believe they were accurate terms for the time— before the state legislature and the governor’s office, and in general throughout the state, was becoming nearly out of control. Every state college was up in the legislature doing its own lobbying, the University branches that existed then were doing the same. The junior colleges were going up there in small armies. It seemed very clear, even to those of us well on the outside of the state systems, that we were approaching nearly a state of anarchy, and that this unbridled, unsupervised competition was going to be deleterious to the health of the higher educational systems in the state if something were not done. So that many of us who were reasonably informed but outside the publie-supported institutions, knew. JG: Were the private institutions concerned about this rivalry, that they might be affected by it as well? RW: I don’t recall any grave concern. I think there was a kind of a, well, not concern, but a general knowledge that all was not well. The private institutions in those days, I think, did not pay significant attention to the public institutions. JG: They weren’t surprised when a favored legislator could get a state college established in a place like Turlock? RW: Well, they may have been, but I didn’t hear much about it if they were. JG: Did you know Arthur Coons before? RW: Yes, I had known Arthur when I worked at the Carnegie Corporation. He came into our office every time he came east. I was responsible for making either one, for sure, or possibly two grants to Occidental College during the five years I was at Carnegie. So both at the college, and in New York I somewhat. did get to know Arthur. Not well, but JG: Glenn Dumke Carnegie. also was at Occidental when you were with WERT 4 RW: That * s correct. He was dean of the faculty then. And I got to know Qlenn somewhat, too. JQ: Do you think your Carnegie work helped acquaint you with many of the educational leaders? RW: No question. I did nothing but travel and go to educational meetings. As you already know, I knew Clark [Kerr], I knew Glenn Dumke. I had known Clark Kerr for quite a few years. JG: How did you meet Clark Kerr? RW: Clark, as I remember, was on the board of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, which was allied to the Carnegie Corporation. As president of the University of California he was around our office quite a bit. In any event, I knew Clark quite well by the time I came to California. JG: Were you a specialist in higher education? RW: Yes, I was. You might be interested; my thesis was a history of the reorganizations of Harvard University in the nineteenth Century. The thesis was read not only in the school of education at Stanford, but also by the history department. JG: Good. So you’d been interested in the organization of higher education over three hundred years? RW: That’s right. JG: Did you know that there was a Master Plan Survey Team being set up before you were called? RW: No. I don’t believe I was aware of it. I have forgotten now who originally got in touch with me, but I had always surmised that Clark Kerr was the person probably behind it. JG: Because you didn’t know Roy Simpson at that time? RW: No. In any event, I have forgotten whether Clark or someone else called me and asked me if I would be able to serve. I checked with President [Wallace] Sterling at Stanford, and Provost Terman, and they said, "Fine, no problem." So when asked I said, "Great, I’ll serve. I’ll be glad to." JG: Who called you? WERT 5 RW: I don't really remember who called me. If anybody did, I think it was Clark, but I'm not positive. JG: Was it understood that you were to represent the point of view of the independent institutions? RW: That's correct, I was to represent the private institutions. JG: Were you also to be kind of objective? RW: No, I think that role came upon me, and I might say came upon Arthur Coons, who was chairman, because we really didn't have any access to Brown. And I always saw myself, and I know Arthur saw himself, as being objective people, listening to arguments from all sides but favoring no one in particular, being opposed to no one in particular. And inasmuch as we had nothing in particular to ask for, and in view of our own backgrounds, it seemed a very appropriate role to play at the time. And since, I might say. JG: In his book Arthur Coons said he told Kerr and Simpson that he didn't want to be a representative of the private institutions of higher education because he was going to be chairman of the committee, and he thought he might have to put forward his own Master Plan. RW: In that he was absolutely correct. I think it would have tainted his position as chairman, if he also represented someone. JG: But at that point the committee agreed unanimously that you would be the person. RW: I had forgotten that, that does recall it to me. JG: So apparently you had widespread support across all the segments. RW: I'm glad of that. I might say just incidentally, that Arthur and I did not press for anything on behalf of the California state independent colleges until the last meeting of the committee. I don't recall if either of us ever asked for anything. We asked for an expansion of the California State Scholarship Commission and a new California state graduate fellowship program at the last meeting of the Master Plan Committee. And both were approved by our colleagues. JG: Let me ask you about some of the other members of the committee? WERT 6 RW: Yes. JG: Do you have any recollections of the segmental representat ives? RW: Oh, sure. JG: The roles that they played. RW: Yes. JG: The community college representatives? RW: Henry Tyler, of course, was looked upon by me, and I assume the rest of the committee, as the representative of the California Junior Colleges, and a member of the committee just as Dumke was or McHenry was. The others, I certainly remember all of them, sure. JG: Did you consider Dean McHenry to be more or less Clark Kerr’s spokesperson? RW: I considered Dean to be a representative of the University of California, and as such, the spokesperson for the president of the University, or the Board of Regents, or whomever he was representing from day to day. JG: He told me that occasionally he had to make a phone call. RW: He did occasionally. And then, of course, Dean has been noted for many years of taking copious notes, all of which he now tells me are in the Bancroft Library. Some day I would like to go over and read them if I can decipher them. JG: And Glenn Dumke representing the state colleges. There was also a specialist in higher education, Arthur Browne. RW: Yes, I knew Arthur as well. I don’t know how the other members of the committee perceived it, but it seemed to me, I looked upon Arthur and Tom Holy from the University of California as the staff people, and certainly not as voting members of the committee. They were there at every meeting. They certainly could be influential with their bosses, so to speak, but I did not consider that they were voting members of the committee as the rest of us were. I just want to make that differentiation. It seemed to me that was the way it was. JG: Did you take votes? RW: Not really. We didn’t have to. WERT 7 JG: You reached a consensus most of the time? RW: It was pretty clear what it was going to be, yes. JG: Was Keith Sexton also a kind of staff person? RW: Yes, Keith was there at every meeting, as I recall. He was, of course, representing the legislature. And Dorothy Donahoe was a primary legislator of higher education for the legislature. Keith later on, of course, I put on as chief of the staff of the Coordinating Council, so I knew him well for years. JG: Now you decided early-on that your meetings were not to be open to the public. Do you think that was a wise decision? RW: Yes. JG: Why? RW: I don’t think we could have accomplished what we did if we had been in constant wrangling in public meetings. These matters, in my opinion at the time and now even more, just could not have been adjudicated as easily, or as well, in public meetings as they could have in the kinds of meetings we held, where there was a great amount of give and take, and no posturing. JG: To some extent, that is what James Madison said of the Constitutional Convention. RW: I understand, yes. I also understand the general view of the state of California about open meetings, and I’m certainly not opposed to that view when it comes to public bodies. But I have never quite considered this plan the public kind of work that it became later in front of the legislature or in front of the Liaison Committee, where the meetings were public. JG: Occasionally you would have visitors, such as members of the legislature or Governor Brown’s staff, or someone like that? RW: Sure. We just didn’t open it up to anybody who wanted to come and argue. We were in the position of a working committee. I think it’s a mistake even to think of the Master Plan committee as the equivalent of a legislative committee, which has to operate in public except for personnel matters. We were not that. We were a working, hard working I might add, committee due to make a report to the public agencies of the state of California, where WERT 8 all the debates and all of the open hearings and so on could be held. JG: Where did you usually meet? RW: We met all over the state. It was a different place nearly every meeting. We met at state college campuses, university campuses, motels, airport hotels, in Sacramento, everyplace. JG: What about the role of technical committees? Did they play a major role? RW: The technical committees developed a great deal of factual information. We had them, as you recall, in all sorts of areas, ranging from the economics of higher education to admissions, and so on. They developed a great deal of information and data which we used during the course of our own study, even though the technical reports were not finished, as I recall, until well along in our deliberations. But what we would do is get in touch with the chairman of the committee, for example, Arnold Joyal, then president of Fresno State, and the chairman of the economics committee. If we had an economic question we didn't know the answer to, and it seemed important, Arthur Coons or somebody would get Joyal on the phone and say, "Now have you come to this particular thing? What do you think about it?" And he would get whatever opinion was then available from Joyal on behalf of the committee. And we would incorporate that thinking. But by and large, I would say that mo

CSUDH Gerth Archives & Special Collections

Lyman Glenny oral history interview, Origins of the California State University, 1988

Author: Glenny Lyman A.: interviewee; Grenier, Judson A.: interviewer; California State University, Dominguez Hills. California State University Archives: publisher; California State University, Fullerton. Oral History Program: publisher;
Publication venue
Publication date: 24/06/1988
Field of study

University System and the 1960 master plan for California higher education. Glenny was a professor at Sacramento State College and part of the restudy of higher education in California in 1955.Transcripts 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 Lyman Glenny Interviewed by Judson A. Grenier An Oral History Project of the Archives California State University Archives CSU Dominguez Hills CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES Oral History Pilot Project on the Origins of the CSU Syst LYMAN GLENNY STATE GOVERNMENT AND THE STATE COLLEGES BEFORE THE MASTER PLAN Interview Conducted by Judson A. Grenier in 1988 Processed by CSU Fullerton Oral History Program 1989 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 <g) 1989 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. It is the largest system of higher education in the United States and is known as one of the strongest institutions of higher education in the country. In September 1979, the Board of Trustees created the California State University and Colleges 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. iii 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 other important individuals 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, proofreading and index by Lynn Finger, and final preparation by Shirley de Graaf. 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 LYMAN GLENNY May 1955 CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES ORAL HISTORY PILOT PROJECT ON THE ORIGINS OF THE CSU SYSTEM This interview of Dr. Lyman Glenny (LG), former professor of government at Sacramento State College, and a member of the team which produced the 1955 Restudy of Higher Education in California, was done at his home in Walnut Creek, California, on June 24, 1988. The interviewer is Judson Grenier (JG). JG: I’d like to start out with a little biographical material. Could you tell me where you were born and reared? LG: That would take an hour in itself. But I’ll tell it to you briefly. I was born in Trent, South Dakota, a very small town near the Minnesota border in South Dakota. I lived in eight different states, and went to sixteen different schools before I got through high school. JG: Really? LG: Yes. So I was in future shock before most people were in future shock. My mother was what they called a traveling manager for Bell Telephone. And all that meant is that she took her family from one little town to another. My two older sisters, quite a bit older than I am, took care of the switchboard when they got out of school in the afternoon. And my mother would go out and sell telephones to the farmers. Then at the end of six months we would move again. Then she remarried— my father and my mother separated before I even knew who my father was— and married an accountant for a big construction company out of Minneapolis. He did the same thing. He moved from one project to the next, and he often didn’t stay for a full six months even. So we kept moving just the same as we had. It was a very peripatetic life, and very frustrating in so many ways to me. I was the original 97-pound weakling when I was a kid, very, very thin. I weighed 117 when I got out of high school. JG: May I ask where you graduated from high school? LG: I graduated at Duluth Central High School in Minnesota. JG: I was reared in Minnesota. LG: Oh, were you? Well, I lived in Minneota, and Cloquet, and Minneapolis, and St. Paul, and Duluth. Those are five of GLENNY 2 the places I was, anyway. I started school at Minneota, Minnesota, in the first grade. The second grade was in Hot Springs, South Dakota, and Rushville, Nebraska. Third grade was in Rock Island, Illinois; fourth grade was in Moline [Illinois], and Rock Island. Fifth grade was in Minneapolis and East Moline. And the sixth grade was in Minneapolis, for the most part. I only went about six months that year. The seventh grade was in St. Paul. That’s the way I went. JG: When did you graduate from high school? LG: In 1936. JG: Those were Depression years. LG: Yes, they sure were. My stepfather— of course, the construction business closed up during the Depression— and he lost his job about 1930, and then from there on we were pretty destitute all the time. JG: Those were rough years. LG: We got marooned up there in Duluth. One of the worst places to be during the Depression, as you no doubt know. So it was a very trying time. JG: My uncle was a high school teacher in a little town called Marble, just west of Duluth, about fifty miles. I know the climate you were in. LG: Yes. JG: So what happened after you graduated from high school? LG: I graduated from high school. I worked in a gasoline filling station in Minneapolis for two years, night shift from twelve midnight to eight in the morning. I came back up to Duluth and went to the Duluth State Teachers College. And there I spent three years before the war came along. I did a lot of handy jobs, from janitor to dishwasher, various things to make a living while I was going to school. My family had moved to California. I had two younger brothers— we all grew up together. I have older parts of the family, too, that I didn’t keep in touch with, and they were brought up, really, before my time. So we were really two families. So this latter family— my two brothers and my mother— went to California about 1940. And I stayed in Duluth to finish school. Then the war came along and I got drafted— one of the first draftees before the war started. GLENNY 3 JG: In that first year of the draft, before the war started? LG: Yes, so I didn’t finish college until after I got out of the army, almost five years later. JG: You were in the army that long? LG: Yes. I was in cryptographic and teletype— I was a signal officer at Rheims, France for the latter part of the war. Then they wouldn’t let me go home because there weren’t very many signal officers around. So I had to stay an extra six or eight months there. JG: Were you dealing with codes or monitoring radio transmissions? LG: It was cryptographic translations and forwarding, relaying from the headquarters in Paris to the armies in the front lines. We were the relay point for the European armies. JG: Were they intercepting enemy tank transmissions? LG: No, nothing at that operational level. It was always with army headquarters, and SHAEF headquarters. JG: Oh. Five years is a long time to spend in the army. LG: Yes, it was. I was in Camp Crowder most of the time, and was an officer related to the teletype and cryptographic schools there. I helped to write a couple of manuals in Washington during that time. They invented these new cryptographic machines, and they were closely related to operations with the teletype machines. So I went in and learned a new machine and wrote a manual for the new cryptographic machines. I had an interesting time. JG: It was an educational experience. LG: Yes, it certainly was. And it was a good administrative experience, too, because I was in administration of the school most of that time. So I was there for three years before I went overseas. I got in France in time for the Battle of the Bulge. JG: So when the war ended you were in France? LG: Yes, I was in France. We stayed, we were attached to a separate battalion, a signal battalion, and we stayed until the redeployment got more than half finished. So we were the communications center for redeployment. GLENNY 4 JG: So when did you return to the states? LG: I returned to the states then, in 1946. I immediately went back to Duluth State Teachers College to finish my degree there. I had three majors: one was really a combination of political science and economics, and one in English literature, and the third one in education. JG: Oh, you could major in Duluth in subjects other than education? LG: Yes, you could by that time. It started, I suppose, in the early thirties, to be able to do that. The school was about 800 students then. I spent practically all of the year after I returned from the army working on getting Duluth made part of the University of Minnesota. JG: That’s very interesting. LG: I represented the students in hearings down at St. Paul. JG: Because, of course, now, it is a well-established branch. LG: Yes. So that is how I spent my senior year, plus working out these majors that I was involved in. JG: So in addition to studying you were engaged in academic politics? LG: Right. JG: That’s good. LG: I never got out of it, I guess. JG: When did you graduate, then? In 1947? LG: I graduated in 1947. Then I went to the University of Colorado for a master’s degree. There were two people there that I highly respected in relation to public administration. One of them, Reithmeyer, was in local government— county and city government. And there was an economist there that I also respected— a fellow by the name of Crockett, from Utah, who went back to the University of Utah right after I left Boulder. So I was a reader for him in economics, and at the same time was pursuing a public administration master’s degree. I finished that and my dissertation at the end of one year. That dissertation was on ’’Federal Grants-in-Aid and Their Influence on State Administration.” I was always interested in state government and local government. GLENNY 5 JG: You got through the program i*n one year, then? LG: Oh, yes. JG: That was rather unusual. LG: Then I went to the University of Iowa. Practically the only book that had been written on state government, as a textbook, was written by a chap by the name of Kirk Porter there. I had known about this before I took my masters— well, I knew about it before the war that he had written the book back in 1938, and I was familiar with that. So I made it a point to go there, although I had inquired of the University of Wisconsin, and Stanford, and I’ve forgotten what other university. I applied to three different universities, anyway. And Stanford accepted me, and would have given me a grant of a couple of thousand dollars at that time, which just paid the tuition. In fact it was a tuition grant. I was married, and I didn’t think there was enough money, so I didn’t go. But I’d remembered this chap at Iowa, so I went there. When I got there he was almost senile. He was still lecturing. A very nice chap. JG: This was Porter? LG: Yes. He was still working at his job, but he would make a point by putting his hand up and forget to take it down. Then he would want to make another point and would find his hand up there and he would look up and bring it down and start over again. It was that kind of thing that was rather disconcerting. And he was not always as logical, I think is the right word to use here, as he might have been. But he was absolutely superb in a small seminar on state administration, which was the source of his 1938 book. He was just absolutely great on that. He was one of the best teachers that I’ve had. The best teacher I’ve had was at Duluth, Frank Bourgin. He was a graduate student in political science at the University of Chicago. He taught for a year at the University of Minnesota and then came up to Duluth. I became one of his students. He was really one of my early mentors. Just recently— you may even have read about it in Time magazine and the Nat York Times and elsewhere— he got his doctor’s degree at the age of seventy-seven, because Merriam, who had been his advisor at Chicago, had turned the dissertation down. JG: That used to happen. LG: And Schlesinger . . . JG: Yes, I read that story. GLENNY 6 LG: Well, this was my teacher. He was a great teacher. No doubt about it. He had between twelve and seventeen students collected from all the social sciences, who really gave him opportunity to exercise his talents. These students were all bright people. It was a lot of fun. It was a really good education. JG: Now, in Iowa what was your dissertation? LG: It was on roughly the same thing. That is, on federal grants-in-aid again, and the influence on state administration there. But I selected only four or five grants-in-aid and pursued them in depth in the state. They were the ones that I figured from my Colorado experience would have had the most influence, probably, on any state. And particularly, in those days, on establishing a civil service system in the state. It is really these federal grants-in-aid that started most of the civil service systems in the states. JG: That’s interesting. LG: Yes. It was interesting to me, too. JG: What year did you finish your dissertation? LG: Well, it took me two years there. JG: That’s still awfully fast. LG: I really worked hard. JG: So you got your Ph.D. then in . . . LG: In 1950. And I came to Sacramento State. JG: How did that happen? LG: Harold Stephenson had been the head of education at Duluth, and then later on was dean of education or held a higher administrative position at the University of Wyoming. And he heard about me somehow. I’ve forgotten what the connection was. But he wrote to me and urged me to come to Sacramento. JG: But he wasn’t in Sacramento? LG: He was in Sacramento by that time. I had known him quite well at Duluth. He was insistent that I come. I wasn’t anxious to come to California at all, not at all. But there was a surplus of Ph.D.’s left from the war years at that time. So I had two offers: one was from DePauw GLENNY 7 University for

2,800, and one from the University of Iowa for

2,900, which I was already making there. It began to be fairly desperate, so I decided I would take the job at Sacramento State. I did it very reluctantly. JG: Did you come out and look at it? LG: No, I didn’t have that opportunity. Well, they said it was a new college, the new campus was going to be built. It wasn’t even started yet. JG: Was it in a junior college when you came out? LG: Yes, it was over in the city college. JG: It hadn’t been going very long, had it? LG: No, it started in 1948. So it was only two years old. JG: How large a faculty did it have when you arrived? LG: There were 25 of us who arrived that year. And we made 75 total. So 50 had come in the first two years. About 25 per year for the first three years. JG: Fifty percent growth in one year. LG: Yes, right. JG: So did you come out as a professor of political science, or public administration, or what? LG: I came out as an assistant professor in public administration— well, we call it "government” there. JG: Who was head of the department? LG: A fellow by the name of [George] Bemis was head of the Division of Social Sciences. It was that small. And it later broke up into departments. I can’t remember exactly when. George Bemis had worked for the legislature in a good many ways. A chap by the name of Samuel Wood was also one of the other public administration-political scientists on the faculty when I arrived. JG: Is that one of the things that attracted you about Sacramento, the fact that it was a state capital? LG: Yes, it did. It was fairly persuasive with me, because that’s where my interests were. It was a nice thing to have happen if I had to take a job someplace, to be in a state capital. GLENNY 8 JG: You had all those resources there, the state archives and all those things. LG: And we used the state. Already in place when I arrived was a program in public administration in which we were putting students in state positions for internships. JG: Now was Sacramento State able to offer master’s degrees? It wasn’t able to offer master’s. LG: I’ll tell you of master’s a little bit later. JG: Okay. But it was able to offer bachelor’s degrees in public administration? LG: Yes. It would be in government, with an emphasis in public administration. JG: So they had gone beyond teacher-training, too, by that time? LG: No, they never had it. JG: Oh, they never had teacher training. They started out in 1948 with a full curriculum. LG: They started out with the whole array of a comprehensive college. They had professional schools like law enforcement and welfare. JG: Who was president there then, when you came on? It wasn’t Guy West? LG: Yes. He was the first president. JG: Oh, that’s right. He came out of teacher education, didn’t he? LG: He came out of teacher ed. He was a registrar or admissions officer in one of the other state colleges, and was made president at Sacramento. I never thought of him as being a very effective president. But in hindsight I don’t think anybody has been an effective president of Sacramento over all those years, until Don Gerth came. And I think he is. But I think he is the first one, out of all those years. JG: He came from our school [CSUDH]. LG: Yes, and I had known him when he was up at Chico. GLENNY 9 JG: When you got there what was the state of the faculty, s

CSUDH Gerth Archives & Special Collections

John M. Pfau oral history interview: Creating New Institutions, Origins of the California State University, 1987

Author: Pfau John M.: interviewee; Grenier, Judson A.: interviewer; California State University, Dominguez Hills. California State University Archives: publisher; California State University, Fullerton. Oral History Program: publisher;
Publication venue
Publication date: 1988
Field of study

Oral history interview with a primary focus on the origins of the California State University System and the 1960 master plan for California higher education. Pfau was the first president of California State University, San BernardinoTranscripts 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 John M. Pfau 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 JOHN M. PFAU CREATING NEW INSTITUTIONS Interview Conducted by Judson A. Grenier in 1987 Processed by CSU, Fullerton Oral History Program February 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. 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. Sundstrahd, 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 JOHN M. PFAU February 1962 CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES ORAL HISTORY PILOT PROJECT ON THE ORIGINS OF THE CSU SYSTEM This interview of President John M. Pfau (JP) was conducted at his home in San Bernardino on July 2, 1987 as part of the CSU oral history project. The interviewer is Judson Grenier (JG). JG: Usually in these interviews we like to start out with some basic biographical information. Would you mind telling me where you were born and reared? JP: I was born in a little village in Austria-Hungary which is now a part of Yugoslavia. At the end of World War I when Yugoslavia was created that part of Hungary was annexed to Yugoslavia. It’s only about five miles south of the Hungarian border near the Danube River. Then when I was three my parents migrated to the United States. They went straight to Chicago, where I was raised. I went to the University of Chicago and received all three of my degrees there. JG: All three? JP: All three in history. Back in the glorious [Robert] Hutchins days. JG: Those were the Hutchins days. JP: Oh, those were glorious days, I want to tell you. Stimulating, you can’t believe. He had that place hopping all the time. JG: When did you get your Ph.D.? JP: In 1951. I got my bachelor’s in 1947, my master’s in 1948, and Ph.D. in 1951. And while I was working on the Ph.D. . . . Did you intend to take a few notes or anything? JG: If you mention a name I will. JP: Oh, I see. I got a part-time teaching job at North Central College just outside of Chicago. I did that for two years. And then, just as I was finishing, it was the worst possible time to get a job. Right after World War II the wave of veterans hit. the colleges and universities just as I did, and sure enough, we were all getting out at about the same time and enrollments were either stabilizing or dropping on the campuses. As a result a PFAU 2 lot of us were out there looking for scarce teaching jobs. But at any rate I did get one. JG: This was 1951. JP: In 1951. At the Chicago Teachers’ College. I was there for four years. I became am assistant dean. At that time the same thing was going on there as was going on here in higher education, as far as teachers’ colleges were concerned. The state was beginning to pick up part of the budget, although the Chicago Board of Education still operated it. But at any rate, in that context I was put in charge of setting up a new campus on the north side of Chicago, which I did. And that eventually became what is now Northeastern Illinois State University. After a while the state said, well, we’re paying for it, we’re going to run it. Now it is just like here. It’s a state board of trustees that runs, I think, six state universities, now, or seven, something of that sort. JG: I see. JP: Then in 1959 I came here to Chico. JG: Why did you make that change? JP: I always wanted to come to California. I really did. And we kept looking around and finally things began to pick up. Job opportunities were beginning to appear. All of a sudden there were four campuses that I was negotiating with. Glenn Kendall came through first. And you know how it is, a bird in the hand. JG: Had you visited Chico before you accepted? JP: No. I had visited San Francisco State where I was also being considered. In fact, there I met with the faculties in every department. I was being interviewed for what, in those days they called chairman of the social sciences— that’s the dean now— and that’s the position that I got up at Chico. JG: Who interviewed you at San Francisco? JP: Glenn. That’s where I got to know him. JG: Glenn Dumke? JP: Yes. I met him in Chicago. He interviewed me there, and then invited me to come to the campus. I spent the whole day there meeting with the geography department, the history department, the political science department. In PFAU 3 fact I met with all the departments in the Social Science Division. JG: Was Lyle Gibson in the geography department then? JP: Yes. Oh, yes. He still remembers my coming up there. JG: Really. JP: But at any rate, I was at Chico for two years as chairman of the social sciences. JG: So all the social science departments were housed in that same division, and you were the chair of it? JP: Chairman, yes. - JG: It’s like a deanship today. JP: Yes, exactly. They just changed the title later on. Then Sonoma was opening up. And . . . JG: This was in 1961? JP: Yes. And Amby Nichols invited me to come to be the chairman there, and to be on the planning staff. That was an awfully tempting offer and I took it. While there I participated in the planning, mostly curriculum. JG: Where were they holding classes? JP: They were in two-story garden apartments. A complex of apartments. My office was a bedroom. My secretary was in, I guess it was the living room or some weird arrangement. But they were in these garden apartments for several years while they were designing and building a new campus. But I hadn’t been there more than six months when I got a call wanting to know if I would be interested in becoming a candidate for one of the new state college presidencies. Of course I was interested. JG: Who was the call from? JP: It was from Glenn. He was at this time the vice-chancellor. JG: Vice-chancellor, and Buell Gallagher was chancellor. JP: That is correct. I was appointed six months after I was up at Sonoma, in January of 1962. JG: The summer of 1961 at Sonoma. PFAU 4 JP: Yes, that’s correct. I started at Sonoma in the summer of 1961, and was appointed president at San Bernardino in January of 1962. JG: That’s interesting. Just to kind of flesh out the biographical data, you met your wife and were married in JP: Oh, excuse me. We were students at the University of Chicago together and were married in 1942. I have two daughters, both grown and married now. JG: Then when you got to Chico, is that when you began to make contacts with other people from around the system? JP: Not an awful lot. You know, in the normal course of events I met a fair number of people. By the way, one of the things that happened while I was up there— we’ll get to that later I suspect from the topics you’ve listed— is that Glenn Dumke made his tour of the state talking to all the faculties about the proposed new Master Plan. And I, of course, renewed acquaintance with him there. He also was the one who recommended me for the chairmanship at Sonoma. JG: Oh, really? JP: Amby Nichols told me that. I didn’t know that until later, but Amby apparently talked to some of the presidents, including Glenn, about whom he should be looking at for dean and chairman of this, that, and the other. And Glenn Dumke recommended me to Amby Nichols for his planning staff. JG: So even though Glenn didn’t act fast enough to appoint you to a position at San Francisco, still he was influential in your getting the other appointments? JP: That’s right. And I don’t know whether Glenn Kendall ever got in touch with Glenn Dumke. In those days they used to share an awful lot. In those days it was the presidents by and large who made the appointments. JG: Yes. JP: It was a little less so, quite a bit less so at San Francisco State because obviously he asked me to meet everybody in the whole division of what is now called the school of social sciences. But at the other campuses this was still the old regime, and it was pretty much the president who made the appointments. PFAU 5 JG: Now you came out of the teachers* college experience, and you also had the experience of starting a brand new campus. JP; Well, one in Chicago, and then I was part of a planning staff for five or six months at Sonoma, too. Although at Sonoma my experience was limited to library development and curriculum development. Not just in the social sciences but the entire curriculum. We met as a planning staff. Day in and day out the planning meetings would go on, planning the basic curriculum as well as within the separate disciplines as much as you could with the limited number of people that were there. Of course this would all be fleshed out by faculty when they got there, and modified as they went along. JG: But it was certainly a big plus for you to have had that earlier experience at Illinois when you were assaying to start a new campus. JP: That*s correct. Yes. JG: So you arrived in Chico in 1959, which was a really hot time in the state college system. Things were in flux and a great deal of change was in the air. JP: Yes, in fact I was a little surprised when I got here at the tensions that had developed already. Not just at Chico, but throughout the state as a result of this plan to take the campuses out from under the Board of Education and set them up under a separate board of trustees. There were a lot of mixed feelings about it depending on whom you talked to at the time. A lot of the faculty, although not all, a lot of the faculty were enthusiastic about it. Some of the faculty, especially the older faculty and the faculty in the departments of education tended to be a little uncomfortable. The presidents, who had been working under the Board of Education, were also a little uneasy about what could happen, and not without reason. I remember when Glenn came to describe to the faculty at Chico what the overall plan was going to be, and how the new system was going to be structured, how it was going to work. JG: Did he come alone, or were there other people with him on that visit? JP: I honestly don’t remember. I think he was alone, but I can’t be sure. But he was the only one who spoke. Glenn Kendall also added some comments and raised some questions. Their concern was: look, right now it*s true we’re under the Board of Education. But there are some advantages because the state Board of Education is so PFAU 6 concerned with high school and elementary education that ■at their meetings they hardly have any time for the state colleges. So they pretty much leave the administration of the state colleges to Roy Simpson and J. Burton Vasche. Does that name ring a bell for you? JG: It sure does. JP: And we*re on pretty good terms with them and know where we stand. On the other hand, here comes a new board. It’s going to be sandwiched in-between the University of California and its regents, which are very influential and powerful in the state, and all these community colleges. The new system could easily become the orphan. It has no tradition. It has no base there, no context to speak of. We could just see in terms of budget, for example, the money being siphoned off for the University and we would get what’s left, that sort of thing. And, I think, while it wasn’t articulated there, obviously there was some concern that the nature of the colleges would be altered in ways that these men really weren’t too keen on. JG: ' Did you have any chance when you were at Chico to observe the functioning of the division of higher education in the state Department of Education, or any of the relationships between them? JP: No. I came there in 1959, and by 1961 the new Board of Trustees was already functioning. JG: I have heard some comment that Mr. Vasche was not a very dynamic administrator. That he tended to let things happen. JP: By reputation, I’ve heard people comment. And as I say, some people, some of the old guard presidents thought that was a virtue. From some points of view it was. He left them pretty much to their own devices. I don’t know whether that was a negative factor in terms of getting resources for them, because he was not a very aggressive person, I just don’t know. JG: Some of those budgets show that the University had about half the population and was getting twice the budget all told, which seemed to be quite an inequity. JP: Yes. Well, I thought Glenn Dumke did a very— well, 75 percent of the faculty was convinced before he even opened his mouth— but he did a very effective job of laying out how all this was going to be set up. He believed that it was very important to move in that direction. PFAU 7 JG: Now here is a man, Glenn Dumke, who as a historian comes out of the liberal arts tradition, rather than out of the education tradition as so many of the college presidents had. So it’s kind of symbolic that as the state colleges make this final break with the past, with their teacher education past, that they are being led, in large part, by a liberal arts trained [person]. JP: I think it was more than symbolic. I think the new board was committed to changing the nature of the colleges. Not to abandon teacher education, but not to leave teacher education as the central or primary function of the institution with other departments more or less added on, but rather to make them general campuses with much more of an emphasis on the liberal arts. Sure, they were going to continue with career type programs. In fact when Leo [Cain] and I were appointed we were told what we had to start with. It was a basic liberal arts curriculum, with teacher preparation and business administration added. We were to take it from there and build on that. They included a basic liberal arts program as the curriculum. You know, history, political science, chemistry, physics, mathematics, English, foreign languages, and things of that sort. JG: Let me go back to 1959. From your perspective, what do you think, the 75 percent of the faculty who supported it thought that they would gain as faculty members from the changeover? Do you think they thought they were going to get time to do research, better teaching schedules? Why did they favor this? JP: Well, for a variety of reasons, two of which you have already mentioned. There was a big battle going on about whether or not faculty members in these institutions should be allowed to do research. As close as they could come to getting any kind of grudging concessions from the legislators was that they could do research as long as it was directly related to teacher education. Of course, they were glad to get that. But then they wanted to expand on that as to what ought to go into research that improves teacher education— pedagogy only, or content? It became an elastic term, and the faculty kept pushing and pushing, with all kinds of resistance from not only the legislature} but from some of the presidents who were oriented toward teacher education. JG: Was there a faculty council or senate at Chico when you got there? JP: Yes, there was. PFAU 8 JG: So Dr. Kendall had permitted that? JP: Yes, although it was not yet well established. He felt free to accept their advice or reject it. And he frequently rejected it. Of course, a prime example of somebody who rejected the faculty council, or senates, whatever you want to call them, was— I see you smiling already— Julian McPhee. I can remember him delivering an oration among the presidents, saying, ”Hell, I won’t even recognize them, and I tell them that. As far as I’m concerned they don’t exist.” But of course he was the extreme example. The others all— I shouldn’t say all, I didn’t even know them all— but the ones that I knew and what I heard from the various campuses was that some of them felt that they more or less had to go along with the idèa. But they didn’t want it to become what we think of ordinarily as a full-blown academic senate or faculty senate. That they would treat it as a council. The councils would give advice, and it was up to the president to decide whether it was sound advice or ac

CSUDH Gerth Archives & Special Collections

Leonard G. Mathy oral history interview, "Developing a Faculty Role in Academic", Origins of The California State University, 1987

Author: Mathy Leonard G.: interviewee; Grenier, Judson A.: interviewer; California State University, Dominguez Hills. California State University Archives: publisher; California State University, Fullerton. Oral History Program: publisher;
Publication venue
Publication date: 1987
Field of study

Mathy was the first chairperson for the state Academic Senate.Transcripts 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 Leonard G. Mathy Interviewed by Judson A. Grenier An Oral History Project of the Archives W W W Archives CSU, Dominguez Hills CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES Oral History Pilot Project on the Origins of the CSU System LEONARD MATHY DEVELOPING A FACULTY ROLE IN ACADEMIC GOVERNANCE Interview Conducted by Judson A. Grenier in 1987 Processed by CSU Fullerton Oral History Program November 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. It is the largest system of higher education in the United States and is known as one of the strongest institutions of higher education in the country. In September 1979, the Board of Trustees created the California State University and Colleges 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. iii 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 other important individuals 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, proofreading and index by Lynn Finger, and final preparation 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 LEONARD MATHY c. 1963 CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES ORAL HISTORY PROJECT ON THE ORIGINS OF THE CSU SYSTEM This interview of Leonard Mathy, professor emeritus of economics at California State University, Los Angeles and the first chairman of the state Academic Senate, was conducted in his home in Tujunga, California, on July 16, 1987. It is part of the ongoing oral history of the origins of the California State College system. Interviewer is Judson Grenier. JG: We like to start out these interviews with a little background material. I wonder if you would tell me where you were born and reared? LM: I was born in Chicago, and completed high school in Chicago. I went to a Lutheran university for my first year, and found that a little stultifying. JG: What was that called? LM: Valparaiso University, just outside of Chicago. I soon managed to get to the University of Illinois. At the University of Illinois I completed an A.B. in the field of economics and then went on to graduate study for a master’s degree and Ph.D. JG: Could I ask you what your father did for a living? LM: My father was a salesman. I soon learned that that wasn’t anything that I ever wanted to do, because that’s a pretty sleazy occupation. He was an honest man, but I think anyone who’s in that field has to make some compromises I wouldn’t care to make. I think it was for that reason amongst other things, that I enjoyed the thought of being an employee of the public rather than of private enterprise. JG: Did you have any siblings? LM: Yes, three sisters; two older and one younger. JG: But at least your parents prized higher education enough to encourage you to . . . LM: Yes, they did, and those were hard times, in terms of the Depression years and so on. I managed, after at least my first year or two at the university, to get scholarships. My graduate work was almost entirely paid for by the state of Illinois. MATHY 2 JG: What made you choose economics as a discipline? LM: Well, I was interested— you see I hate to tell you my age— but I was interested in why economies had fallen apart and why people were unemployed, why things were so desperately bad. So I started reading in economics in high school, and declared early on I was going to be an economics major. I never varied from that objective. In fact, it may be kind of embarrassing, but some of my high school contemporaries called me the "professor." (laughter) At that time I didn’t have the objective of being a professor, but I would lecture them on economic problems at any time. JG: Were you a member of any economic school in those early days? LM: I leaned toward socialism. JG: Did you? LM: Yes. I had some thought that we had to find some other solution, and so I read socialist literature at the time. And also quite a lot of conservative works. By the time I got to my first course in economics I had read quite a bit. I didn’t change my mind at all with respect to my first courses in economics. I enjoyed it and went on from there. JG: So you got your B.A. in economics from Illinois, Urbana said . . . LM: And after that I went on to the master’s degree and the Ph.D. JG: At Illinois? LM: At Illinois. Yes, I know that there is some advantage in going from one institution to another in terms of getting a diversity of experience, but I had university scholarships, and that carried me through, and I very much needed them. JG: What was the subject of your dissertation? LM: I did a study of certain economic development problems in Latin America, on the west coast of Latin America. In retrospect, a miserable study. I would like to destroy it, but at the time I thought it was all right. JG: Well, then armed with a Ph.D., what did you do then? MATHY 3 LM: I, of course, never intended to do anything other than teach. I taught for a while on an instructorship at the University of Washington. And then obtained a position here at Cal State Los Angeles. JG: How did that come about? LM: I had an acquaintanceship with a person I knew who was here, and he encouraged me to apply for a position, and I did. I was fairly naive at the time, being inexperienced with respect to universities and colleges, and didn’t realize the difference between a teacher-training institution and the university, for example. Those differences I learned when I got here. JG: Who interviewed you for the position? LM: I was interviewed primarily by the president, and the man I knew, Floyd Simpson. JG: Who was the president? LM: Howard McDonald. JG: Howard McDonald. He became president around 1949, as I recall. LM: Yes. He was in 1948 or 1949. In 1949 I think. JG: So you came on board, what, in the fall of 1950? LM: Of 1950, yes. JG: Where was Cal State Los Angeles located then? IM: It was on the city college campus, the Vermont Avenue campus of the city college. It was a curious institution at the time. It was established in a somewhat unusual way. It was legislation that provided for the establishment of a College of Applied Arts and Sciences, distinct from the other teacher-training institutions that existed in the state college system. JG: So it was, in essence, a liberal arts college from the very beginning? LM: No, it was not. It was a strange phenomenon. The applied arts and sciences seemed also to imply that we would not be doing liberal arts work. We would be doing occupational, how-to-do-it things. There was always a good deal of controversy in the faculty at our campus, in particular, because many of the faculty were in the MATHY 4 teacher-training orbit. They had their credentials, and they were focusing on teacher—training. Some of the rest of us from university backgrounds were not wholly happy with the idea of the occupational slant that seemed to be implied in the title. So there were philosophic differences in approach. The people with the teacher-training approach, of course, emphasized that aspect, and also that we were teaching-oriented. We were not to be research-oriented. Those of us who came out of university backgrounds thought that research was a lot more important, and tended to play down the importance of teaching-training and the significance of teaching, as such. Although we all declared righteously that good teachers were, of course, vital to the process. But those conflicts were there. It was troublesome for some of us who came out of the university approach to have both the teacher-training emphasis and the occupational emphasis. That seemed to denigrate the whole idea of scholarly research and the liberal arts. I, in particular, got caught up in that almost from the beginning and was fighting in every direction. As a consequence I spent my whole career in faculty organizations and in the senate, and God knows what else in the process of trying to change things. JG: Well, how long did it take you to realize that the changes were needed? LM: It didn’t take very long. You see, I was elected president of the faculty association, I think, in 1952. I had been making waves almost immediately from the time I came. And, of course, none of us had tenure. There was a feeling that you could "disappear into the night" if you became too vocal. So anybody who made waves, or made noises, would readily be elected and selected to do these things. JG: When you say "none of us had tenure," was there no tenure? LM: Well, you see, since the college had been established just a few years before, no one had been there long enough to achieve tenure. JG: I see. LM: They would gain tenure upon entering the fifth year of employment. But none of them had been there that long. So it was a kind of interesting faculty. Some of them were vocal and expressed their interest and seemed to have courage, and others were biding their time. JG: But there was already a faculty association? MATHY 5 LM: Yes, there was a faculty association. These associations existed throughout the system. The presidents had them. Those presidents who were in position at that time generally had been in office for a long period of time. They were in the state Board of Education under the direction of Roy Simpson, superintendent of education [Superintendent of Public Instruction] or whatever his title was. And as they served at his pleasure, presidents seemed to be fairly secure. Most of them were rather tyrannical in their moods. It was clear that if you crossed them you might not be there very long. I met many of them because of my statewide committee assignments, many of which I have long since forgotten. I remember meeting these men and being a little bit appalled by some of them because of the cavalier way in which they spoke with the faculty, and their attitudes toward the faculty and their responsibilities. They didn’t generate a great deal of admiration. JG: What was McDonald’s leadership style? Was he authoritarian like some of the others? LM: He came up, of course, through the superintendent role, and he was kind of a paternalistic dictator. He was a very gentle man, but on the other hand he had certain values. For example, there wasn’t anybody who was a known homosexual on the faculty. They would probably be gone the next day. If faculty members misbehaved vis-a-vis their sexual relationships they probably would not be there very long. On the other hand, he was a kindly gentle soul, of course a Mormon, dedicated to the church and apparently a powerful figure in the church. By some coincidence we had a number of Mormons in the top administrative jobs in the college, and some of us chafed at that. We chafed at that and considered it more than a coincidence. We were not impressed with the competence of some of them. And so it was kind of an uneasy time. But as far as McDonald was concerned, he was a very kind man. More so than most of his contemporaries in the other state colleges* JG: This is a grouping of the presidents in 1960 [displays photograph.] Right after Carl McIntosh was appointed at Long Beach. LM: Yes. JG: Did you, in your meetings around the state, come into contact with any of them? LM: All of them. Every bloody one of them. MATHY 6 JG: Which of them didn’t impress you as being strong presidents? LM: In terms of what I would hope a president to be in a college— not one. Wait a minute here. Who is this? JG: That’s Glenn Dumke. When he was at San Francisco. LM: With the exception of Glenn Dumke. I knew Guy West, I knew [John] Wahlquist. McPhee, a genial dictator if there ever was one. Roy Simpson I knew. J. Burton Vasche, vice-superintendent for the state colleges. JG: What kind of people, what kind of men . . . LM: Langsdorf. [William] Langsdorf was a fairly decent type, and his values were reasonably acceptable. JG: By that you mean liberal arts-oriented? LM: Yes. And . . . JG: Such as the idea of the academic community? LM: Yes, and more a university-oriented person. JG: How about Malcolm Love at San Diego? LM: Malcolm Love was a powerful figure. You wouldn’t want to cross him. And, I guess, is generally credited with being the strongest of the presidents. One of the strongest, perhaps, apart from Dumke. I knew him, again in serving on various committees. He had a kind of presence and power. You didn’t want to cross him unless you were going, to pay the price. But he built, I think, a fairly substantial faculty and gained a good deal of recognition in the community. He had the support of the community— he was a strong president. JG: Do you feel that each of these presidents had a kind of independent fiefdom? LM: These presidents occupied their positions with the calm self-assurance of a dictator who has no risk to run. JG: And Mr. Simpson and Mr. Vasche were not risks that they had to run. Is that right? LM: Well, they were generally responsible to Simpson. And I suspect none of them would want to cross Simpson in any way. But in their own rights they occupied their positions for many, many years, as you know. If you look MATHY 7 at their tenure you will see that they seemed very secure. Firm in what they were doing and running state colleges as teacher-training institutions primarily. In my contacts with all of them I never came to admire any of them. I recognized that Love was a tough man, a very tough guy. Langsdorf I liked as a person. But . . . JG: None of them were strong supporters of academic senates? LM: No, I think they were mostly in the teaching-training orientation, state college backgrounds. Durake was a breath of fresh air in that whole group. I first encountered him when he came to our campus for some affair. He was then a dean at . . . JG: Oxy? LM: Oxy, yes. And he came out of UCLA in the field of history, with a Ph.D. So he came from the academic tradition. And I felt very comfortable with him because of his orientation and perspectives on what academic life is all about. So he was something new and different on the scene. JG: Going back to the Los Angeles situation. Did the faculty association function more or less at the will of the president, or did it have an independent status? LM: We tried to make it independent, and we tried, as early as we could, to have it became known as a senate. We wanted to have certain powers of the faculty that senates presumably enjoy. We got none of these things. We served there largely as an advisory body to the president. We could caution the president, or push for certain things and so on. But we served essentially as an adjunct or arm of the president rather than an independent agency. Although those of us who were in it wanted to be a senate in the sense that we knew senates to be, and we kept working toward that end. JG: Were you delegated any responsibility such as curriculum development? LM: We worked on that, yes. We had committees and so on. So those kinds of things we did, which you would normally expect. Later on 1*11 show you some documents that were illustrative of the kinds of things we did at that time. Here for example is an occupational master’s degree program in the division of business and economics. In order to get a master’s degree approved at that time we had to very carefully avoid the notion that there would be any research involved. MATHY 8 JG: Oh. LM: Or it would never fly. It had to be carefully structured as an occupational degree. Not research-oriented. JG: That’s because of the mission of Los Angeles as an applied arts and science college? LM: Well, the mission of the state colleges, see, it was a state college activity, establishment of the master’s degree, relatively new development at that time. you the Because, that is, That was a If you look at those papers you will see the slant that was given. Of course, later on that occupational emphasis became muted, and even forgotten. But watching the recent efforts to get what would be an occupational Ph.D. in education was an experience in de.ia vu for me. It’s that same old business of declaring that you are not going to do research, that you promise on the bible that you won’t think of it, and that this particular degree has a special orientation that is unrelated to research. JG: So in this particular case the Los Angeles faculty were proposing to the state Department of Education that it offer a new master’s degree program. LM: Yes. In the first place we had to achieve the right to offer master’s degrees, and the rationalization for offering such degrees was that they would be different. They would be "occupational master’s degrees." Once that was approved, why then we began to submit conc

CSUDH Gerth Archives & Special Collections

Donald R. Gerth oral history interview, "Researching Higher Education in Transition", Origins of The California State University", 1987

Author: Gerth Donald R.: interviewee; Grenier, Judson A.: interviewer; California State University, Dominguez Hills. California State University Archives: publisher; California State University, Fullerton. Oral History Program: publisher;
Publication venue
Publication date: 07/07/1987
Field of study

Transcripts 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

CSUDH Gerth Archives & Special Collections

Ambrose Nichols oral history interview, "From San Jose to Sonoma State: An Academic Odyssey", Origins of The California State University, 1988

Author: Nichols Ambrose: interviewee; Grenier, Judson A.: interviewer; California State University, Dominguez Hills. California State University Archives: publisher; California State University, Fullerton. Oral History Program: publisher;
Publication venue
Publication date: 24/06/1988
Field of study

Oral history interview with a primary focus on the origins of the California State University System and the 1960 master plan for California higher education. Nichols was the first president of Sonoma State College.Transcripts 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 Ambrose Nichols 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 AMBROSE NICHOLS FROM SAN JOSE TO SONOMA STATE: AN ACADEMIC ODYSSEY Interviewed by Judson A. Grenier in 1988 Processed by CSU Fullerton Oral History Program November 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. It is the largest system of higher education in the United States and is known as one of the strongest institutions of higher education in the country. In September 1979, the Board of Trustees created the California State University and Colleges 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. iii 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 other important individuals 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, proofreading and index by Lynn Finger, and final preparation 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. Dundee 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 Sonoma State College President Ambrose Nichols (left) joins Assemblyman William Bagley Chancellor Buell Gallagher (with shovel), and Senator Joseph Rattigan at dedication of Rohnert Park campus on September 23,1961. CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES ORAL HISTORY PILOT PROJECT ON THE ORIGINS OF THE CSU SYSTEM This interview with Dr. Ambrose Nichols (AN), the first president of Sonoma State College, and prior to that a long-time professor at San Diego State College, was conducted at his office in Rohnert Park on June 24, 1988. It is part of the ongoing research project into the origins of the California State University. The interviewer is Judson Grenier (JG). JG: I do have a copy of the vita that you let me have, but usually it is fairly routine in these interviews to get a little more background information. So I wonder if you could tell me where you were born and reared? AN: I grew up in Corvallis, Oregon, and moved to San Jose [California] in 1926. So I had the rest of junior high school and senior high school, and my first three years of college at San Jose. JG: You started out in the Corvallis public schools, did you, and then moved to San Jose when you were in junior high? What did your father do for a living? AN: He was an educator. He was principal of a high school in Corvallis. I have no memory of that. He taught what was then called manual training, and later was called industrial arts. He really made his career in industrial arts and vocational education. We moved to San Jose because he became the city director of industrial arts and vocational education, which later led to his being principal of the technical high school in San Jose, and doing student-teacher supervision in industrial arts at San Jose State Teachers College, as it was called then. My first year in San Jose I went to the training school junior high on the campus of San Jose State. Then after graduating from junior high I went to San Jose High School, which was then also on the campus of San Jose State. They were all in that same Washington Square, along with lots of open space, and the public library and some tennis courts and so forth. It’s remarkable how that campus has changed. JG: Your association with the state colleges goes back a long way then? AN: Right. I went to San Jose State from 1931 through 1934, then transferred to [U.C.] Berkeley and got my bachelor’s degree at Berkeley in December of 1935. NICHOLS 2 JG: Was there any reason for your transfer? AN: Yes. I was wanting to be a chemist, and as you may or may not know, in those days the teachers colleges didn’t offer bachelor’s degrees in subject matter fields. You could take a pre-secondary program, with the idea that if you wanted to become a chemistry teacher at the public school level you could get a pre-secondary, and then you had to go to Stanford or Berkeley to get the secondary in the fifth year. JG: I see. AN: So many people transferred after two or three years, and I was one of those that transferred to Cal. JG: Once you had your degree in hand, what then? AN: I was lucky enough to get a chance to go to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin. I was there from January of 1936 to June of 1939. So I finished up in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin. JG: Those were heady times at the University of Wisconsin. AN: Yes, they were. JG: A lot of ferment in the air. AN: Exactly. Glenn Frank was president, and then Dykstra, who later came to UCLA, was president at the time I finished. At my graduation in June of 1939 one of the speakers was H. V. Kaltenborn. Remember that name? JG: I certainly do. He had such a rapid speaking voice, were you able to understand him? AN: Yes, and he was kind of high-pitched. He was in fine fettle. He talked about Hitler, of course, and about what was going on, his experiences. JG: You graduated right before the war started in Europe? AN: Right. That very summer. Those graduate years, of course, included Edward VIII*s abdication, it included Anschluss, it included lots of things. The invasion of Albania [by Italy]. JG: Let me ask you what your dissertation area was? AN: It was inorganic chemistry. And I did a paper on rates of oxidation of manganese compounds by gaseous oxygen— NICHOLS 3 so-called auto-oxidation. And nobody is the least bit interested in that at this time, and very little at that time. It is one of those things that I was absorbed in for those couple of years I was doing my research. I had a wonderful experience at Wisconsin, and cherish that connection. I was a teaching assistant in the inorganic chemistry program, which supported me through those graduate years. In fact, I got married before ray last year. I married a girl I met at San Jose State. We’re still married, we’re celebrating our fiftieth anniversary in another few weeks. JG: That’s wonderful, congratulations. AN: Well, we think we’re going to make it. JG: Yes, you will. After you graduated then, with your degree, where did you go? AN: I went to San Diego State. And that was a great good fortune for me, because I had some interviews and opportunities, but nothing worked out by the time I was ready to leave Madison, so we came home to California, and we spent some time with my parents in San Jose, and then we spent some time with my wife’s people in Santa Barbara. But while we were in the Bay Area we went out to Berkeley just to kind of browse around the campus, and my brother-in-law and I were walking across the campus, and he said, ’’Are your records on file at California Hall?" And I said, "I think they are, but maybe we had better check." We went in, I identified myself, and said I was hoping to find a chemistry teaching position at the college level, and the receptionist, Alice Greer— I’ll never forget her— she said, "Just a minute." She went in to see Herman Spindt, who was the placement director there, and pretty soon she came back and beckoned me in, and Herman Spindt was talking with Walter Hepner, the president of San Diego State, who needed a chemistry teacher. So we made an appointment to go down and see him. He had a summer home in Soquel. So my brother-in-law and sister drove us down to meet the Hepners. He climbed down from the water tank that he was repairing, and we had an interview sitting on a bench out in his yard. This was in the time of Culbert Olson, who was governor, and he was at war with the legislature, and the budget hadn’t been passed even though it was the fifth or sixth of July, something like that. The position had been filled back in February and the person . . . in fact, I’m not sure but what there were two people over the interval who were appointed. But when the budget wasn’t passed— and this was a new position that was in the budget— the person who had been given a provisional NICHOLS 4 appointment withdrew, so they had a vacancy at that late date, and I just fit the slot. That’s the story of my life right there. JG: An amazing story. So you joined the staff at San Diego State when it was still a teachers college? AN: No, the transformation from the state teachers colleges to the state colleges was in 1935. So I went to San Jose State when it was San Jose State Teachers college, but I was appointed to San Diego State College. JG: It had already begun to move into fields other than teaching? AN: Well, how much real change this meant in the coursework that was offered I don’t know. I think they had the equivalent of a chemistry major and a history major and other majors, but they just had to be treated . . . at least at San Jose we were indicated in the registrar’s office as pre-secondary in history or in physics or in mathematics, whatever. Of course, there were many people who were getting credentials and degrees in elementary education and special secondary credentials, and so on. JG: How about during the war years? AN: Well, I was at San Diego State in 1941, and when the war started in December we all were scurrying around to find out where we fitted into the operation. And by July of 1942 I had a position as a physicist at what was then called the U. S. Navy Radio and Sound Laboratory. It’s now called the Naval Electronics Laboratory. But at that time it was concerned with both underwater sound and radar and all sorts of electronics as far as naval communications and operations was concerned. And it so happened that right at that time radar was just being installed in the fleet, in many cases, and so they established a radar operators school. We operated in Point Loma, just inside the gate of the Fort Rosecrans Reservation. And I taught radar operation from 1942 to 1943, beginning about July. But during that year everybody else was leaving San Diego State to go into some kind of service, so they wanted me to come back and teach three days a week. JG: So you were teaching in two places then? AN: Yes. I was teaching chemistry, and serving as acting department chair in the fall of 1942 and the spring of 1943. So I would go to the campus on Monday morning, and at noon I would get in my car and eat my lunch on the way, NICHOLS 5 and arrive at the laboratory at one o ’clock, and I would work through the rest of the day schedule. But then on Monday night I would do a practical watch supervision exercise from 7 p.m. until 1 a.m. to make up the time that I was away. And then I would come in all day Tuesday. Then Wednesday I would do the same thing, the campus until noon. Of course, it was a crazy schedule, but there were a lot worse things to be doing in 1942. And I had some wonderful experiences. We had students from bootcamp, we had students from ships that were coming in for repair or maintenance. We had marine officers, we had naval officers, we had ratings, we had boots, we had a complete spectrum of naval personnel at the lower level. But at a certain point, that spring of 1943, the navy decided that its instructors should be uniformed personnel rather than civilians. So I started scurrying around again, and ended up being appointed to the Radiation Lab at Berkeley, which was part of the Manhattan Project, doing uranium chemistry, and various things, all which were classified at the time, and all of which is obsolete at this point. I was at the laboratory then from 1943 until 1945. And when the war was over I was brought back to San Diego State. So that’s the war interval. JG: So you arrived back at San Diego State just as the G.I. Bill began to pump large numbers of veterans into education. AN: What were you doing at that time, if I might ask? JG: I was in high school. AN: You, then, were going to college with a lot of veterans? JG: I graduated from high school in 1947, so I had the pleasure of being taught with veterans. AN: It was a marvelous period. San Diego State had an enrollment of about 2,400 at the time I went there in 1939, and the enrollment dropped. I think in about 1943 it was less than 1,000. Then by 1944 it began to come up again, and by the time I came back it was maybe 1,500. And by the end of that year it was about 3,000. We had drafts of students coming in as their eligibility cleared, and as they had the right number of points to be discharged. So we had a lot of expansion, and we had temporary labs built out beyond the permanent structures. JG: In 1946 if you could have guessed the maximum enrollment San Diego State would attain, what would you have guessed? NICHOLS 6 AN: I have no idea. I would have said about 5,000 or 10,000 at the outside. The idea of its having 32,000 just blows my mind. And, of course, the campus when I was there included only the quad building and the lab school, which is now— at least the last time I was there— still mainly physics and astronomy. The administration building wasn’t built yet. It was in the quad facility. So it was a small patch. There was parking everywhere. And there was even a parking shed that had been built by and for faculty. So if you were part of the original group you could have a shelter for your car on the campus. JG: Were you chair of the department? AN: Eventually. I went through that cycle. I was acting chair during the time that Dudley Robinson, who was the head of the department, was in the navy. Then we went into a new pattern, with schools that were then called divisions. Dudley Robinson was an old-timer. I think of myself as sort of an old-timer, but he just died within the last year or so. He was the head of the chemistry department all the way through those years. Then he became head of the school of physical sciences. Then I took a turn as chair of the department, and we rotated on a two-or three-year cycle. But department chairmen were quite different in those days from what they are now. JG: Who was president of San Diego? AN: Walter Hepner. He was president, I think, from 1935 to 1952. And then Malcolm Love, and he was president from 1952 to something like 1971. JG: Had you known Malcolm Love before he became president? AN: No, I hadn’t. JG: Where was he brought in from? AN: I believe he was president of the University of Nevada. And where he was before that I’m not sure. JG: Was he a popular president? AN: Yes, I think he was. Actually, as far as I’m concerned, both Walter Hepner and Malcolm Love were remarkably fine presidents and people. They were totally different in their style. Hepner, as did many of the presidents of that era, had come up through public school administration. I believe he had been superintendent of the Fresno schools. And, in fact, it turned out that my father and he had known each other through administrative NICHOLS 7 conferences and so forth, because my dad had been a high school principal. My dad also knew Roy Simpson, because Roy Simpson, the state superintendent, had been superintendent in Gilroy, I believe. So they would go to meetings and see each other. But getting back to Hepner, he was a very open individual, as far as I was concerned. I felt that although he was a strong president in the sense that his decisions were his and nobody else’s, a lot of the things that more recently would be processed in different ways he handled directly himself, as most presidents did in those days. I thought he was a very fair man, a very thoughtful man. And I kept in touch with the Hepners. They lived in La Jolla after he retired, and we saw them a number of times. I had a great deal of regard for him. Malcolm Love came in and he was very successful, I think. He was responsible for the creation of the [faculty] senate at San Diego State. JG: Could you tell me about that? AN: It*s kind of an interesting story. The word ’’senate” means all sorts of things to different people depending on your history and context. But the faculty in the state college system, I think, ranged from people who were very zealous in representing faculty viewpoints and faculty rights and privileges to many who were not at all concerned. So there was not a groundswell of development effort, but I think there was a trend in the direction of more formal recognition of faculty participation and consultation. And the ACSCP [Association of California State College Professors] was organized, and AAUP [American Association of University Professors] was organized. JG: This was in the mid-fifties, or the early fifties? AN: In the mid-fifties. Of course, there had been AAUP for many y

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