26 research outputs found
Louis H. Heilbron oral history interview, "Reflections of the First Chairman of the Board of Trustees", Origins of The California State University, 1986-1987
No full textThe 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
C. Mansel Keene and Lois R. Feldheym oral history interview, "Formulating the System's Personnel Policies", Origins of The California State University, 1987
No full textC. Mansel Keene was a former executive for Faculty and Staff Affairs and Lois Feldheym was an associate in the office.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
C. Mansel Keene
& Lois R. Feldheym
Interviewed
by
Lawrence B. de Graaf
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
C MANSEL KEENE
and
LOIS R. FELDHEYM
FORMULATING THE SYSTEM’S PERSONNEL POLICIES
Interviews Conducted by
Lawrence B. de Graaf
in 1987
Processed by CSU Fullerton Oral History Program
1988-1989
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
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PILOT PROJECT ON THE
ORIGINS OF THE CSU SYSTEM
This is an interview with former vice-chancellor for Faculty
and Staff Affairs, C. Mansel Keene (MK), and an associate in
the Faculty and Staff Affairs office, Lois Feldheym (LF). It
is being conducted by Lawrence B. de Graaf (LD), taking place
August 6., 1987 in Dr. Keene*s home in Westwood.
LD: This is a bit of an unusual situation, two in one, so I
will look at one or the other of you when I*m specifically
addressing a question. If I sort of stare at the wall in
between it means the question is fair game. It is common
to begin these with a biographical background, so Mansel,
let's begin with you. When and where were you born?
MK: I was born in Roseville, California on January 20, 1912.
LD: Have you lived in California most of your life?
MK: All except for five years when I was on duty in
Washington. So I*m a Californian, northern and southern.
LD: Did you have all your schooling in and around Roseville?
MK: I went through the schools in Roseville, then I went to
Sacramento Junior College back in the late twenties, and
then stayed out a year and worked, and then I went to
Stanford and got an A.B. and a Ph.D. in psychology.
LD: In psychology. What career did you have in mind at that
time?
MK: When I began I thought I was going to be a chemist, but
the more chemistry I took the more I preferred
psychology. So I became a psych major and stayed on and
got my doctorate ultimately. I say ultimately because I
got into a research project with five hundred subjects,
and I followed them for three years and I had enough data
to choke a horse, as it were. Then I had the chance of a
part-time job on a research project at the University High
School in Berkeley, which in those days was the practice
teaching arm of UC Berkeley. It was administered jointly
by the University of California and the Oakland public
schools. So virtually all practice teaching at the
secondary level was done there. And many of the faculty
taught in the education department as well at U.C.
KEENE/FELDHEYM 2
I went there ostensibly for a half-time job for one year.
It became a full-time job for two years as a psychologist
and statistician, analyzing their data. They had a
counseling study of adolescent development, adolescent
attitudes, and so on. There were two going on at the high
school at the same time, one by a Dr. Jones, who was at
the Institute of Child Welfare, which was a more
scientific study. Ours was more anecdotal, because we
captured the counselors1 reports and they were not as
structured, let’s say, as a psychological interview would
be. I stayed with them for two years, and then one of my
original teachers at Sacramento Junior College was
retiring, and I was offered the job to replace him. So I
went on to Sacramento Junior College.
LD: As an instructor in psychology?
MK: As an instructor in psychology.
LD: When was that?
MK: That was in 1931. No, sorry, in 1938, the same year I was
married. And today is our anniversary, forty-nine years.
So an interesting part of that was we timed our marriage,
which isn’t too flattering to my wife, I suppose, on the
basis that the president was an old codger and he despised
unmarried young men who caused problems with the girls. I
never saw that I would have any of those problems, but
Mary and I decided to move up our marriage date a little
bit, so we went to Sacramento as a young married couple.
I was there for two years and became a part of the
counseling staff in the second year, and then in the third
year Pearl Harbor came along and I took leave to try to
wrap up my degree before I might be drafted. So I was at
Stanford, and everyone was recruiting psychologists to
help the military services. I was determined to be 4-F
because of a bad leg I had, although no psychologist I
know ever went out anywhere where a leg good, bad, or
indifferent would have bothered them.
I took my exams, passed those and my orals, but still
hadn’t put all my dissertation together. I was offered a
job on the staff of the office of the Secretary of War, in
the Civilian Personnel Division, to head, a field office,
since authority for personnel actions had not been
delegated. There were offices of the secretary of war
scattered around the country and around the world,
wherever there were concentrations of civilian employees.
The only way that a person could be hired or promoted in
the War Department, which was then both the army and the
air force, was to have their personnel records run through
what became virtually a paper mill in these various
KEENE/FELDHEYM 3
sub-offices of Mr. [Henry L.] Stimson’s office. I was
hired to head the office in Sacramento. I went first to
San Francisco to learn something about the procedures in
the regional office. Secretary Stimson, I guess, became
overwhelmed or advised that this was pretty much a paper
process and he issued an order called Orders M which
delegated to the lowest feasible level within the services
the authority for personnel actions. So we on the
secretary’s staff suddenly became teachers of the
personnel people in all the posts, camps, and stations.
The OSW staff had never done very much, if any, personnel
work on their own. They had always been busy typing up
documents coming to us. We then went out and became
teachers. Remember, I had had no courses in public
administration, but I found, because of my teaching
experience, it was a little easier for me to do this than
some of the others. So they thought they would send me to
Washington for some super training. But there was
apparently a bad telephone connection, because when I got
there the only way I knew that I was a member of the
faculty was that they chewed me out for not going to the
faculty meeting that night. No one had told me, including
the man I worked for in San Francisco, that I was going
back to Washington to be a faculty member in the training
course. So we trained people, military and civilian, for
the War Department.
LD: Was this basically in public administration?
MK: In public administration: how to handle people, and how
to recruit them, and how to do classification of jobs, and
how to determine the category and level of their jobs. At
that time it was determined that we had better put what we
had done in a training manual. So I stayed over as one of
a small team out of the original group to develop a
training manual for the War Department to be used around
the country. And then they eliminated small offices one
of which I had been hired to head, leaving five area
offices. Our office in San Francisco covered from Hawaii
through Colorado and Wyoming, so we had a large part of
the western states. We gave courses then in San Francisco
for the various services, and went around to other areas
to do the same kind of training. Then it became evident
that even if the personnel people were trained, we weren’t
sure how well these people were doing in putting our
training into effect. So we moved over into an inspection
function and developed a team of individuals to go out to
the posts, camps, stations, and other military
establishments to determine what was happening. Am I
going into too much detail?
KEENE/FELDHEYM 4
LD: It’s interesting. I can see where this background fits
into your subsequent personnel work at the state colleges.
MKi Then I became the overseas representative because they
were having problems where civilians were hired overseas.
So I was in Panama and I was in Hawaii, and got into the
thick of the problems between the air force and the army.
The major command of the Pacific was under the army, and
the air force was restive under that command. My job was
to try to work with those two groups and bear the scars
myself rather than allow them to continue to bicker.
LD: Did you stay with this War Department work all the way
through the war?
MK: I was with it until late 1944 when they wanted me to come
into Washington. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go into
Washington. At that time a woman who was doing the same
kind of work with the U. S. Civil Service Commission in
San Francisco was being hired to become the director of
personnel for MGM. They had decided that if they had a
big studio maybe they needed personnel policies. I was
hired to replace her in San Francisco. Shortly after that
a woman called— I was trying to hire a staff— and said she
understood I was hiring, and I said, "Yes.” And she said,
"Can I be interviewed?" I said, "Well, get on your
velocipede and hurry over here." And that was Miss
Feldheym. She has worked for me almost continuously until
I retired. I was with the Civil Service Commission in San
Francisco for several years, then came to Los Angeles to
head up a branch office of the commission. We have a lot
of government laboratories down here, and the commission
office previously had been nothing more than a group of
postal clerks on detail from the post office to give tests
for the postal service, primarily, to fill clerk and
carrier jobs. I was down here for about two years, 1955
and 1956. In 1956 I was asked to go to Washington to
become the chief of the Standards Division. The Standards
Division developed the job standards for positions within
the occupational structure of the federal government, as
well as the tests, all of the written tests that people
take, plus the qualification requirements for filling
jobs. We did that for five years. At that time Buell
Gallagher contacted me, as the first chancellor of the new
state college system. He asked me whether I would like to
come to California. We had been working at a forced head
of steam and had eliminated a backlog in the standards
area. I had read about the Master Plan for Higher
Education in a Time magazine article. It sounded very
magnificent. So I went up to New York to be interviewed
by Gallagher. He flew east. He was still partly on duty
at CCNY, and we met up there and talked philosophy, not
KEENE/FELDHEYM 5
details. You would have thought that if anybody had
enough sense, they would have recognized that one should
know the details of the position being filled. Because he
didn’t tell me, I don’t know if he even knew, that one of
the things we were going to have to do within a very, very
short deadline was to completely redo Title Five [Title 5
Education, of California Administrative Code] to do with
the hiring, firing, what level authority for personnel
actions would be placed at, and everything else. I did
not also learn in our lengthy interview that he was an
ardent believer that the more pieces of paper you got from
people, the more control you had and so on. Of course, my
philosophy had taught me the hard way that the less paper
that was required and the more people were held
accountable for personal actions with some kind of a
review or overview from the headquarters of the system the
better the operation would be.
LD: This whole philosophy is something I want to get into in a
minute. But first maybe a little biographical background
for you, since we have now got you into the scene here.
Where were you born and how did you happen to wander into
personnel work? [Laughter]
LF: I was born in San Franciso, and I am a Californian. I
have lived here all my life, except for the time that I
followed Dr. Keene to Washington and then came back out
here. A very uncelebrated background: I went to
Stanford; I started out to be a social worker; it didn’t
really take, and I ended up in speech and drama.
LD: I might add at this point, to be a female student at
Stanford in those days was not exactly uncelebrated, was
it?
LF: Well, I would like to tell you that it was after the days
of the five-hundred girls.
LD: Oh, I see.
MK: You understand, though, the reason she is doing that, is
it makes her younger, [laughter]
LF: I graduated in drama with an idea that I would go into
television, but it was wartime. I graduated in 1941-42.
In that period all the television was picked up by the
military. I think differently from the kids today; I was
without a job for three months, and I panicked. So I
ended up going into a low level job in the federal
government, which in those days was a CAF-1 temporary. It
was with the Division of Disbursement.
KEENE/FELDHEYM 6
MK: They made 1,260.00 a year. That was in 1942. So I did that work
for a while, and it was pretty dull, pretty boring, not
very challenging.
LD: CA is clerical assistant?
LF: No, the CAF stood for, in those days, the clerical,
administrative, and fiscal occupational group. They have
since changed those words. But anyway, I was getting kind
of tired of all that. My brother was a military officer
at Fort Mason. He had a job analyst who worked with him
in personnel work and job classification for his civilian
employees. I saw him one night, and he said, "Well, if
she can do that, you can do that.” So I had lunch with
that girl, and she was the one who told me about a lot of
people hiring. This was about 1945, and there was a
shortage of men— I have to admit it. And so she gave me a
whole list of names of people to call. Mansel’s was the
first on the list. And when I heard this, "Get on your
velocipede and get over here,” I thought that ought to be
somebody nutty enough to work for. I have to tell you
another anecdote. I was interviewed by one of the women
on his staff, and she. said I was hired because I was
wearing such a crazy hat. So that was the kind of an
organization I joined. I didn’t know ....
LD: Was that a reflection on the person that hired you?
LF: No. [laughter] But I didn’t know what the hell personnel
was all about in those days. Yet they were hiring
trainees with potential, and I guess, you know, degrees.
So that’s when I started as a trainee with Mansel in
1945. Do you want me to go on?
LD: And you have been with him ever since then?
LF: I have followed him pretty much, since we worked in San
Francisco, and I followed him to Los Angeles. And then I
followed him to Washington, although in those days I
didn’t go quite so soon. I remember people in Washington
saying, because I guess we were kind of critical about the
Washington office when we were here this side of the
Rockies, that I really ought to go back to Washington and
either put up or shut up, you know, do the work there. So
I went back for what I thought was two years, and at the
end of five years I decided that if I didn’t get out then
I would be there the rest of my life. Just about that
time Mansel came back to California. So I was lucky to
get a job with him in the CSC.
KEENE/FELD HE YM 7
MK: I think I would like to say here that one of the reasons
that Lois and I got along together was that we didn’t get
along always intellectually, and I was very, very hep on
no "yes men" or "yes women." And so frequently we had
very strenuous discussions, in which I was found wrong in
a number of cases. I’m not going to be that honest to say
what the percentage was. But Lois had the ability to
disagree when she felt it to be necessary. A number of
people came down to Los Angeles with me when I headed up
this commission office. And then we brought some people
in from the field when we were in Washington. No one but
Lois had quite the intestinal fortitude to tell me when I
thought I had a hot idea that it probably wasn’t that
good.
LD: But she did.
MK: Yes, and she saved
Researching British university sport initiations
No full textThis thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The study of sport initiations is in its infancy. So far, the North American-centric research has focussed on ‘exposing and condemning’ morally unacceptable initiation activities, which are referred to as hazing. Hazing moral panics in North America has resulted in universities utilising sport initiation empirical research to construct anti-hazing policies; policies proven to be ineffective in banning sport initiations. The purpose of this research is to address some of the gaps in the knowledge of sport initiations. A two stage ethnographic research approach was utilised to collect information on British university sport initiations. An international student embedded himself as a student-athlete within a British university to learn the cultural meanings of a foreign sport culture and to possess an emic perspective. Semi-structured interviews were then conducted with key policy actors possessing differing organisational cultural perspectives (differentiational and fragmentational), specifically university staff and sport - rugby union, football, and track and field - club members from multiple higher education institutions. The researcher’s ethnographic confessional tale of his experience as a self-funded international student is combined with the data from interviewee participants to construct British university sport initiations as a resistance research topic.This study is part-funded by The National Organisation for the Treatment of Abusers (NOTA)
Donald Leiffer oral history interview, "Executive Officer of the California State Colleges", 1980 and 1987
No full textLeiffer was a political science professor at San Diego State, worked for then governor Edmund "Pat" Brown and became the first executive officer of the newly formed State Colleges before the hiring of the first chancellor.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 Leiffer
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 LEIFFER
EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF THE
CALIFORNIA STATE COLLEGES
Interview Conducted by
Judson A. Grenier
1980 and 1987
Processed by CSU, Fullerton Oral History Program
March 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 © 1987 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 300,000 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,
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
mmmm
ili
n B
» ■ »
i l l l l l l M l l i
I M b M
¡i¡i¡l¡iilli
-' .■-'•':">i«V:-:<':.v ^ : ' r :n < --;h : WêïÆm§0&kC;- "■*
imM
Hfl«
llip
DONALD LEIFFER
ca. 1960
iliifl
wSÊSÊm|||||1
IÄ # # ||Ì|P|ft§§ì;|
m m h u h i
&lK2
ib ib iii
PÄ M||äff|i■ ■ ■ pppplll
l l l l l l l
■Â
t t É
P;
§j
MÊÈÊ iiisiiiiiiliiili
8|
||
ij§§
W
WÊÊÊÊÊmmmmm. fml|5,500 dollars a year or better, we would accept it. If
it were below that, we would reject it. The offer did
come through for a full professorship at San Diego State
at the salary of 100 more
than the top salary paid to any state college president.
I felt this was a matter of importance, not from a
LEIFFER 7
personal point of view, but from the status of the office
that was being created, and that whoever held that office
had to be in a position vis-a-vis the state college
presidents who were a pretty independent group or he would
be ineffective in his role. This committee did not go
along with this thought at the time, and that concluded
it, and they held some other interviews.
We returned to San Diego, and my son enrolled as a
freshman at San Diego State, and I enrolled as a returning
alien in the faculty corps. I had a telephone call from
Lou [is H. ] Heilbron asking if I would come up for an
interview. I agreed to, but before I did, I talked with
my friend John Carr, who was not only a member of the
board, but was Director of Finance for the State of
California. I said that if this offer is given to me,
what kind of support will I get from the Department of
Finance, because I think it’s critical. And he said,
”What kind of support do you think you need?” I said,
HTwo things. One is that the amount allocated of
something like $250,000 for this office for a year is an
impossibly small item and we can not not operate. We
cannot have a central office, with the responsibility for
the administration of this program of this magnitude, with
that amount of money.” ”H
Walter W. Stiern oral history interview, Origins of The California State University, 1987
No full textOral history interview with a primary focus on the origins of the California State University System and the 1960 master plan for California higher education. Steirn was a former state senator.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
Walter Stiern
Interviewed
by
Lawrence B. de Graaf
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
WALTER STIERN
THE STATE LEGISLATURE AND THE
CALIFORNIA STATE COLLEGES
Interview Conducted by
Lawrence B. de Graaf
in 1987
Processed by CSU Fullerton Oral History Program
1988-1989
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.
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
WM H H mmrnrn
&&&&&& mm
mÊèèèêë
■ ■ H
H
■ H | g g | » ig » ilsg
• îv.-:- il . -.-;—.<. ' •.• ';’
■H
'mÆËËmmiwM
■— ■ m m HHHHH
H
WALTER STTERN
ca. 1972
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT ON THE
ORIGINS OF THE CSU SYSTEM
This is an interview with former State Senator Walter Stiern
(WS). It is being conducted by Lawrence de Graaf (LD) in Mr.
Stiern’s home in Bakersfield, California on September 18, 1987.
LD: Walter, first we want to get a few biographical insights
down. You were born in 1914 in San Diego?
WS: That is correct, in a school teacher family. My father was
a schoolteacher. He started teaching in San Diego, and
then came back to Bakersfield in 1920, which is his home
city where he grew up and went through school. My mother
was also a Bakersfield person. They met in San Diego,
married, and I was born down there but came back here when
I was a child five years old. My father taught in the
Bakersfield city schools, in what was called Kern County
Union High School, which is now Bakersfield High School.
He was a manual arts teacher. It was one of the biggest
high schools in the state of California. The high school
when I was in it was 6,000 students, on an eleven-block
square campus, a very large school in a city where you
wouldn’t expect one that size. He taught forty-four years
before he retired. His name was Walter Stiern, and it was
kind of a "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" when he left that high
school. I chose the field of veterinary medicine. I ran
into the problem of no veterinary school in the state of
California, so I had to go out of state.
LD: Oh, that’s why you went to Washington.
WS: The only school on the Pacific slope, this side of the
Rocky Mountains, was Washington State College, as it was
called at that time. It is now Washington State
University, at Pullman. I graduated from that institution
in 1938 and came back to Bakersfield to practice. Then I
had a reserve commission and found myself pulled into the
army when the United States went to war with Germany and
Japan and that commission was activated. I had the unique
experience in being a veterinarian in the United States
[Army] Air Corps, which became the United States Air
Force. It was a strange place for a veterinarian.
LD: Yes, did you practice your trade there?
WS: Well, veterinarians in that segment of the military are
part of the medical department of the army; veterinarians,
STIERN 2
like dentists and nurses, were under the surgeon. I was
heavily into food procurement for the military and the
allies of the military. I did that in this country for a
number of years, and then finally went to the China-Burma-
India theater, and did that there, which is a much
different experience of gathering food. The theory at that
time was to try to subsist locally and take a load off the
United States, because we were pushing food into Murmansk,
where we reversed lendlease to the Soviets and other allies
at that time. I had the unique experience of being in
India, which made a tremendous impression on me. The thing
that made the impression on me was coming first-hand to
grips with poverty, ignorance, and disease, which is a blow
to somebody who has never seen that kind of thing before.
I was connected with the University of Calcutta School on
Tropical Disease, and I was also procuring food for
American and allied troops in India. I was also tacked
onto an operation which was made up of mules that were used
to move supplies into Burma for our unit that was known as
Merrill’s Marauders. So I was doing two things in that
part of the world. When I came home I was deeply impressed
with the idea that I sure didn’t want anything to happen in
my country that would ever put you in a position of
experiencing these horrible things you see in India. I did
a lot of thinking about that. I went back into practice
when I came home, but I got to thinking about how do you
keep from having things like that happen, where can you use
your education and what you have to the most good? I came
to the conclusion that would have to be in the California
legislature, that you would have to capture one of those
120 seats if you were going to do anything about it in the
state of California, unless one went to Congress. I looked
at where I was in age, and how many years I had to go if I
had tried for Congress. So I tried for the state
legislature, and I won a state senate seat up there,
replacing a man in this area who was very elderly and
senile and who was some eighty-three years of age, and
wanting to run again to represent this area. I went to
spend four to eight years thinking maybe that’s all I was
going to be there.
But I got terribly, terribly involved with education,
particularly with higher education, and I spent by far most
of my time in that area. I guess a mentor, a little bit to
me, was Assemblywoman Dorothy Donahoe, who was a
Bakersfield woman. I found myself getting into not just
committees that affected the economy of this area, like
agriculture and the need for water resources, but I spent
an enormous amount of time on education. I finally wound
up by being the chairman of the subcommittee of the Senate
Committee on Finance that handled the budgets for higher
STIERN 3
education, which included the budgets for the University of
California, the California State University System, and
then the separate organizations like the Maritime Academy
and the other state-owned special schools. Then I spent a
lot of time in scholarships and grants and that type of
thing. I found it very, very satisfying, and I stayed
there to a point where I thought it was time to change and
rotate out, because that is the way the system works. You
replace somebody, and somebody will replace you, and I
think that’s what keeps it vital. The legislature has to
work with balanced budgets, which Congress does not, and
so we have to be prudent the way we work. We put enormous
amounts of money into schools, and schools are like a
sponge. With the growth of California it takes more and
more money and planning for the future. When I came back I
decided not to go back into practice. I kept myself busy
with a lot of things that I am doing: writing, and I’m
going to do some lecturing out at Cal State with students
in political science and high school teachers coming back
for advanced work in economics on how the state plans
things out, and how they work. That will take a lot of my
time.
LD: I’ll bet, yes. Some additional questions. You were in
World War II in the Army Air Corps on the China-Burma-India
theater. So is the man I interviewed this morning, Don
Hart. Did you two ever run across each other there?
WS: No. It was a huge theater and there were a lot of people
in it. Don Hart and I are high school classmates. I’ve
watched his career as a businessman with interest. He was
a close friend of former Governor Edmund ["Pat”] Brown, and
was appointed to the Board of Trustees once the system was
put together. He gave a lot of time and energy to that.
Even after he was off the board he also did a lot of work
contributing to it in helping develop the system to where
it is today.
LD: Is there anything in your early career that you can look
back on besides, as you say, your horror at the poverty you
saw in India, that may explain the interest you took in
education?
WS: Yes, because I feel very strongly that every child in the
state of California get what the intent of the California
constitution states, and that is that the first bid on tax
dollars is for the education of the youth of the state to
the maximum of what that might be. If the child is gifted,
wonderful, you do the most you can for that. If a child is
retarded or physically handicapped or has other disadvantages,
that that child be trained and taught to as
STIERN 4
great a degree as that child can be taught. And since
California is a state made up of many ethnic groups and
racial minorities, and is at this moment in the process of
becoming a state which is made up [primarily] of
minorities, that those minorities be trained, taught,
qualified, and made ready to take their proper place in
things if this state is to remain strong. An example is
the Hispanic population which in some parts of California
is already predominant. It will be heavier as we go on
into the next ten or fifteen years. As they get ready and
willing to take over many spots in public service they are
going to have to have have every tool they can gather to
work with, to be successful in doing it. So I am a heavy
proponent that the minorities— I don’t like the term— but
the total of all of the minorities will be the majority in
California, and anybody that doesn’t see that has got their
head in the sand. So you do everything to make a better
education possible, because there are so many of these
families never have had a member of their family on
campus. That’s why I feel so strongly, particularly
towards the community college movement, which was a savior
for myself when I was at that age to do remedial work so I
could go on to a university. I had some problems with
mathematics and I was too young when I went into college,
and it was a lifesaver for me. I recognize what the
community college system can do in making adjustments and
taking care of deficiencies so that you can go on to a
senior university or campus. So that’s why I threw myself
into that area as much as I could.
LD: Now you said that eventually you got the feeling that only
by going into the legislature could you realize some of the
specific needs you felt you had to address. Did you work
your way in in any way, or suddenly in 1958 did you run for
office without having had much prior experience or work in
any political campaigns or organizations?
WS: That’s a good question, because people often say, "How did
you ever get interested in this thing to start with?" It
comes as a surprise to people. I had never held public
office at any level. I had no knowledge of how to run a
campaign. In fact, I wasn’t even a member of a political
party.
LD: Oh, you weren’t?
WS: Not until four years before I ran. And that was surprising
to a lot of people. "Declined to state" was the position I
was in. I voted regularly, but I had not associated myself
with the two major parties. Then when I realized that the
only way that you could possibly win an election was to
associate with one party or the other, the Democratic party
STIERN 5
and its platform seemed to fit the way I felt more than any
other, so I chose that. I never will forget how I ran for
office, if you can believe a person being this naive. I
just wrote a letter to every client that I had, not knowing
what party they were in, telling them that I didn’t know
what their politics were, but that I wanted to serve in the
legislature. I would do my best to serve— at that time
just Kern County was the senate district— but that I would
dedicate myself to the very best I could. On the basis of
a lot of trust from a lot of people, people who trusted me
as a veterinarian, and people who knew my father and
figured I might be something like he was, and I had three
brothers who had good reputations in the community, and a
lot of other things, and a lot of volunteer work, we ran a
primary and a general election for $12,500. You couldn’t
even begin to touch that today, because today it is taking
anywhere from two-thirds to a million dollars to win a
state senate seat. I think it’s horrible, it’s deplorable,
I don’t know what the answer to it is, but that’s the way
it is. So I ran, and I got pretty good support from both
parties.
LD: Did you cross-file?
WS: Yes, I did cross-file. As an example, the Cattlemen’s
Association, which is 99.9 percent Republican, supported
me, endorsed me, and helped me, on the basis that they saw
me as I had been on their ranch, and how I worked with them
as a veterinarian and tried to save them money and tried to
do things the best I could. And in their mind they
transferred, ’’Well, he was that precise about being a
veterinarian helping me with my livestock; I’m sure he
would do the same things if he was sitting in a legislative
seat.” It was some of that kind of a crossover that I got
from some of those kinds of people. I’m not going to tell
you I just swept the Republican pool; I didn’t do that.
But it didn’t hurt to have people on both sides helping you
when you are making a change from an old-timer who had been
there a long time to a new man starting out.
LD: Who was that old-timer who was your predecessor?
WS: Jess R. Dorsey.
LD: Was he a Republican?
WS: He was a Republican, he was a lawyer. He had been in a
long time, and he had one time served in the assembly,
years before he was in the senate. He was a successful
lawyer in Bakersfield, and he was at one time in the
district attorney’s office here. He was a well-known
figure and family. But he got to be quite elderly, and he
STIERN 6
got to be senile and he was forgetful and he wasn’t staying
on top of what the problems of this county were at the
time. It was just one of those things that developed. I
was in a very peculiar situation with this man, in that
even his own party wanted to replace him. They chose a
younger man whose name was Barney Gill, S. B. ’’Barney"
Gill, who was an attorney about thirty-six to thirty-seven
years old. The Republican party ran him against the
incumbent, if you can believe a thing like that. Then I
was running against him, and there was another man who ran
against me on the Democratic ticket. In the primary I came
out easily the winner of the four. A strange thing
happened three days before the general election. This old
gentleman was hospitalized for ten days, and died three
days before the general election day. So I went up against
a man who was dead. There were a lot of stories told about
how Stiern didn’t beat Dorsey, the undertaker did, except
that my totals were enormous compared to his in the general
and the primary. My first bill was one to correct that
situation if it happened ever again. Then I ran seven
times and I was elected seven times. Each time it was
comfortable. I didn’t have any close races. People
trusted me. I know what the reason is. It was the way my
father raised me, and I have always tried to do the best I
can. I never promised anything; you can’t. Any politician
who promises you this and that, watch out for that person,
because you don’t control the rest of the members of the
house you are working in. You can guide and cajole and try
to lead and show reason why they should do this and that
and the other thing, but they may go against you on a vote.
LD: If you didn’t promise anything, did you particularly make
education or educational issues a part of your campaign in
1958?
WS: Education was a part of my campaign, and the need for water
in this part of California and southern California was
another thing.
LD: This was before the state water plan wasn’t it?
WS: That’s right. The battle cry in this part of the state was
supplemental water now, because water was being mined out
from underneath faster than it was being replenished in a
highly agricultural area, the San Joaquin Valley, of which
Kern is the second [largest] agricultural county in the
nation next to Fresno. So trying to get the north and the
south off of dead center where they were, by being a
C
Arnold Joyal oral history interview, "A Presidential View of The Master Plan", Origins of The California State University, 1988
No full textJoyal was a former president of the Fresno campus.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
Arnold Joyal
Interviewed
by
Lawrence B. de Graaf
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
ARNOLD JOYAL
A PRESIDENTIAL VIEW OF
THE MASTER PLAN
Interview Conducted by
Lawrence B. de Graaf
in 1987
Processed by CSU, Fullerton Oral History Program
June 1988
COPYRIGHT
This is a transcription of an interview conducted for the
California State University Archives under a ¿rant 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.
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
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
ARNOLD JOYAL
ca. 1960
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PILOT PROJECT ON THE
ORIGINS OF THE CSU SYSTEM
This is an interview of Dr. Arnold Joyal (AJ), former president
of California State University, Fresno, conducted by Dr.
Lawrence B. de Graaf (LD). It is taking place Monday, June 29,
1987 in Dr. Joyal’s home in Danville, California.
LD: It is customary to begin these interviews with a
biographical background. You were born in the Province of
Quebec in 1902?
AJ: That’s correct.
LD: In a French part of it, or an English?
AJ: I was born in a town called Cowansville, which is in the
so-called Eastern Townships. At that time it was almost
entirely English speaking. As a matter of fact most of
the people who lived there were British Empire Loyalists
who had come over from Nova Scotia and gotten land there,
granted by the government. I was born on such a place, a
big farm that was granted to my great-great-grandfather,
in a house that was built in 1807. The house still
stands. My grandmother was born there, my mother was born
there, and I was born there, I guess all in the same big
bedroom. Now, however, the country is largely French.
The French have encroached on almost all that area, and
the town of Cowansville which was almost exclusively
English-speaking is now heavily French.
LD: When did you come to the United States?
AJ: I was brought over here when I was just a child. My
parents lived in Quebec until I was about three years
old. At the time they moved to Manchester, New
Hampshire. I went to school there and in Haverhill,
Massachusetts.
LD: I see. That’s still a long ways from California. When
did you come out here?
AJ: We came out here in 1920. There’s an interesting story
that I can tell you about that, if you’re interested.
LD: Sure.
JOYAL ?
AJ: My father worked for a shoe machinery company. He was a
kind of superintendent. He looked after the business of
the company in an area in New England and Quebec because
there were quite a few shoe factories there. In 1915 the
company, as a bonus, gave him a vacation trip to the
Panama-Pacific Exhibition in San Francisco. At that time
he was very favorably impressed with California and
particularly interested in the University of California
because he had three boys, all of whom would soon be
wanting to go to college. When he got home he told us
about it, and the family decided they’d move to
California. Another factor involved was the declining shoe
business in New England. About that time the shoe
business was moving to the South and out toward St.
Louis. So the family decided to move to California, as I
said, but postponed the move until after the world war.
In 1920, about a week after I graduated from high school,
we drove out here in the family automobile. That was
quite an experience.
LD: In 1920, I imagine it was.
AJ: We left on the first of July, and we got to Berkeley on
the ninth day of September. We stopped along the way.
Some of the time we camped, and we had a very interesting
experience visiting places like Niagara Falls, the
mountains in Colorado, the Grand Canyon, and so on.
LD: How much of your trip was on paved highway?
AJ: Very little was paved after we left Illinois. Some places
across Nebraska and eastern Colorado were very muddy,
well, not muddy, because we didn’t hit very much wet
weather, but very rough dirt roads, sometimes mere
tracks. We followed the Lincoln Highway.
LD: I imagine you had to carry a lot of your own fuel with
you, didn’t you?
AJ: No. Not a lot. We stopped along the small towns.
LD: They had abundant gas stations by that time?
AJ: Yes, gas was readily available. But we tried to keep a
full gas tank.
LD: That’s interesting. Now, you did go to the University of
California, Berkeley. Did you get all your degrees there?
AJ: Yes, I got all three degrees there. I entered the
University in 1921, got my AB in 1925, stayed on to get my
master’s degree and secondary teaching credential in 1926.
JOYAL 3
I worked in a high school for four years, and then
returned to the University full-time in 1930, and got my
doctorate in August 1931.
LD: Is that a doctorate in Education?
AJ: No, a Doctor of Philosophy in Education.
LD: What technically is the difference between those two
degrees?
AJ: The principal difference at Berkeley was first of all a
language requirement. One had to pass a reading test in
German and French. Then there were a few, but I don’t
remember exactly what, differences in course
requirements. The Ph.D. was generally regarded to be a
little harder to get.
LD: Now was higher education, even at that time, a particular
specialty of yours?
AJ: No. It was School Administration. And I guess at first I
thought probably I’d eventually get a job as a principal
or a school superintendent. But after I got into the
program the professors at Berkeley, particularly
Professors L. H. Peterson, under whom I worked, and Frank
Hart, who also worked closely with me— or I with him,
rather— encouraged me to think about college teaching.
LD: During all of this time did you have any contact with, or
particular interest in, the state colleges of California?
AJ: I had a few contacts but no particular interest. I met
Dr. Frank Thomas, who was president of Fresno State
College, because at that time Dr. Thomas occasionally
taught in the summer session at Berkeley. I ran into him
there and made a kind of friendship, although I never
dreamed that I myself would one day be at Fresno State.
Also, I knew about Chico State College, but only
incidentally, because Teacher Institutes were held there.
LD: Now from 1933 until 1948 you held various professorships
and deanships. Were these all in the area of education?
AJ: Yes. Are you interested in knowing just what they were?
LD: Not particulary; we have a good vita on you, and we are
interested in how these culminated in your going to Fresno.
AJ: Well, I guess I went to Fresno on the recommendation of
the people at the University of California. I didn’t
apply for the job. I was a dean at the University of
Oklahoma at the time, and one day I got a telephone call
JOYAL 4
from Roy Simpson, who was the state director of education,
asking me if I’d be interested in a job at Fresno. I told
him I thought I might. He asked me to come out and be
interviewed. I did and accepted the job when it was
offered.
LD: That’s interesting, all the way from Oklahoma.
AJ: Yes, I flew out from Oklahoma to Berkeley, and went up to
Sacramento. He [Simpson] drove me down to Fresno in a
state car. I was interviewed by a Mr. Gilbert Jertberg*, a
member of the State Board of Education who lived in
Fresno, and went back to Sacramento with Dr. Simpson.
Subsequently I got a letter from him offering me the
position, and I accepted it.
LD: As I said earlier, I am very interested, for this project,
in getting a sense of how much things did or did not
change as a result of the Master Plan. Therefore, I will
be interested in some recollections on what things were
like in Fresno between 1948 and about 1959 or 1960. First
of all, what general impression, or opinion, did you have
of the state colleges when you first became president?
You had been a dean at several universities. How did the
state colleges stack up?
AJ: One must remember that I was interested in professional
education, that my job for a number of years had been in
trying to help prepare people for school administrative
positions. I was a professor of School Administration.
At Denver, again at Maryland, and in Oklahoma I had been
working with students who wanted jobs as principals and
superintendents. And, of course, at that time the state
colleges, although they were not called teachers’
colleges, still were rather predominantly concerned with
teacher preparation. I didn’t think of Fresno as being a
teachers’ college, but I knew there was a heavy emphasis
on education. I think that I foresaw the inevitable
development of the state colleges into institutions which
would be larger, more diversified and stronger
institutions. After all, you see, I had been around
California and in touch with Californians over the years.
For instance, I taught a couple of summer sessions at
Berkeley during the interval between the time I got my
doctorate and the time I went to Fresno. I knew a good
many people in the California school system, and in the
state college system, too, for that matter, as well as in
the University of California. So I had the impression
that Fresno was destined to become a bigger and better
institution.
JOYAL 5
LD: Now besides having a heavy emphasis in teacher
preparation, was Fresno when you came there in 1948 also
heavily into preparing other vocations?
AJ: Yes. When I went there in 1948, the program in
agriculture had just been started. Now there had been
some courses taught in the field of agriculture, but
through the Department of . . . I don’t remember what
department they had those classes in now, but there were a
couple of professors who taught some courses in
agriculture. A Department of Agriculture had just been
created in Spring, 1948. And when I got there the first
contingent of people who later were members of the
Division of Agriculture had just been hired. Eugene Egan
had come from Cal Poly to head the work in Agriculture,
and four or five men had been employed to start this new
work. This program resulted from the demands of the
people in Fresno, the farmers in the area and the
agriculturists. Perhaps you want me to say more about
that later.
LD: Yes.
AJ: That was one specific program. There were others in
Industrial Arts, Engineering, Criminology, Business, and
Home Economics.
LD: Was there much advanced work in liberal art
subjects— master’s degrees . . .
AJ: No, the master’s degree had not been started at Fresno at
that time. That came several years later.
LD: So it was strictly undergraduate?
AJ: It was principally an undergraduate program, yes.
LD: But you did offer credentials to teachers didn’t you?
AJ: Teachers’ credentials, yes, both the elementary and
secondary. The secondary credential required a fifth
year.
LD: Was there a required general education core as there are
today in all of the state colleges?
AJ: No, not in the sense of a core that was later developed
and required. There was a pattern of courses required,
but I can’t say that it was a core.
LD: Did the buildings tend to be designed predominantly with
teacher preparation in mind?
JOYAL 6
AJ: No. Remember now that when I went there the campus was
located at the so-called downtown location. A new campus
was constructed after I was there. The old campus at the
corner of Van Ness and University Avenue had been
constructed back in the 1920s I guess. No, some of it
before that, because the school was started in 1911.
There were just more or less standard classrooms, although
there was a laboratory school on the campus.
LD: Oh, there was.
AJ: And the teachers, or prospective elementary teachers, did
their practice teaching in a lab school, an eight grade
school, right on the campus.
LD: Did these characteristics substantially change between
1948 and 1959, that is, before the Master Plan came in?
AJ: Oh, very, very definitely. When I went there the Full
Time Equivalent [Student enrollment (FTE)] was about
2,700. There was slow growth during the first two or
three years, but there was growth. And then, beginning
about 1951 and 1952, there was a rather marked
acceleration in the growth. That was stimulated in part
by the [Korean] War of course, and in part by the fact
that we were in the process of getting ready to move to
the new campus.
LD: How early was this new campus site acquired?
AJ: When I went to Fresno in August 1948, the state had just
purchased 160 acres of land at the corner of Shields and
Blackstone avenues, the so-called Markarian property. It
was a fig orchard, with one house on the lot. The state
had announced that it was going to move the campus to that
new area. So, from the very beginning I knew that a new
campus was imminent. Now soon after I got there, I think
it was in 1949, I believe December 20, 1949— I’m not
positive about that date, I could check it— the decision
was made that that area, the Markarian property, was not
large enough. The state decided to move farther out of
town to Shaw Avenue where the college is now located.
LD: I understand that eventually they got in excess of a
thousand acres.
AJ: Oh, yes, more than that. At the present time, I believe
the acreage is 1,440 acres. But the original purchase was
about 240 acres. Then additional land was bought in
several different parcels over the years. The last parcel
was the forty acres where the athletic facilities are now
JOYAL 7
located. That area was purchased not too long before I
left in 1964.
LD: But the point is, that in the area of physical expansion,
at least, much of the work had been done before the Master
Plan and the trustees came along.
AJ: Oh, most of it had been done, yes. And as I say, that
prospective building program was another incentive for
enrollment.
LD: Now as more students came were you faced with demands for
a more diverse curricular offering, or degrees?
AJ: Oh, yes, definitely. The people in the San Joaquin Valley
have always regarded Fresno State as their college, and
frankly, the administration encouraged it. We thought of
the valley as our sphere of influence. So the people
often came to us and to the State Board of Education with
demands for service. We used to say that the genius of
the place was the ability to serve the people, and I still
believe that. In any event, we had demands for a lot of
different kinds of programs, nursing, for example, and
social work. A good example is the program within
agriculture called enology, or wine-making. There is an
interesting story there. I could tell you briefly, if
you’d like to hear it.
LD: Alright.
AJ: All around Fresno there are wineries. I don’t know how
many, but I guess there must be at least a dozen. And of
course there are lots of grapes. So the wine makers in
the area came to me, fairly early in my career down there
and wanted a program in enology. And the people of the
community raised a lot of money, a quarter of a million
dollars or so, to help finance a program in agriculture
including enology. Of course the state board had to
consider the program and approve it. Although there was
some opposition in the community from the churches, for
example— in those days some people didn’t think it was
quite appropriate to educate young people in wine-making—
the program was approved. Today it’s a very superior
program, one of only two in the state: the one at Davis
and the one at Fresno. The emphasis at Fresno is now and
always had been on the practical side of enology. It’s a
very excellent program. That’s a good example of how the
people wanted something, and they came to the state and
demanded it. I mean they went right up to the legislature.
One time I flew up there with a group of men from
the community in a Fresno Company’s airplane to influence
JOYAL 8
[the legislature on] some program or other. I think it
may have been enology.
LD: All right now, this is asking you for a speculation, but
once we went to our present system, where a board of
trustees reviews all such programs, and more important
where they have to be put on a master curricular plan five
years in advance, do you think it has reduced this ability
of the state university to serve the interests and needs
of its local community?
AJ: Yes, in my opinion it has stifled that to some degree.
Now to just what degree I can’t say for sure, because
Ralph Prator oral history interview, "A New College in a New System", Origins of The California State University System, 1988
No full textPrator was a former president of San Fernando State College, now California State University, Northridge.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
Ralph Prator
Interviewed
by
Judson A. Grenier
An Oral History Project
of the
Archives
IIUU Archives
CSU, Dominguez Hills
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
Oral History Pilot Project on the Origins of the CSU System
RALPH PRATOR
A NEW COLLEGE IN
A NEW SYSTEM
Interview Conducted by
Judson A. Grenier
in 1987
Processed by CSU, Fullerton Oral History Program
October 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 sus 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 them 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 and proofreading were performed by
Shirley de Graaf, final preparation and index by Lynn Finger.
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
RALPH PRATOR
1958
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT ON THE
ORIGINS OF THE CSU SYSTEM
The following interview of Dr. Ralph Prator (RP), former
president of San Fernando State College, which became
California State University Northridge, took place at his home
in Camarillo, California, on January 22, 1988, as part of the
ongoing CSU Oral History Project. The interviewer is Judson A.
Grenier (JG).
JG: I would like to start with a little biographical
information. Could you tell me where you were born and
reared?
RP: I was born in a place called La Veta, Colorado. And I
just celebrated my eightieth birthday; I was born on the
sixteenth of November 1907.
JG: How do you spell the name of the town you were born in?
RP: L—a V-e—t—a. La Veta, Colorado. It’s a very small place
down in the south central part of the state of Colorado,
near what are called the Spanish Peaks. It’s in the
mountains of Colorado.
JG: How long did you stay in that town?
RP: Well, I stayed there through the third or the fourth
grade. And then we went into the area near Denver. We
lived in several places, but the longest time was in a
town called Brighton, Colorado, which is about nineteen
miles north of Denver. I graduated from high school there
in 1925, and went then to the University of Colorado,
where I got my baccalaureate degree in history in 1929.
JG: History, a good field.
RP: I stayed on then for my master’s degree. But I had an
interim. I played professional baseball for part of one
season until I had an injury to my back. That sort of
ended my professional baseball career. I was stationed at
St. Joseph, Missouri. I was assigned to the St. Louis
Cardinals, and put into one of their farm teams. So I
came back to the University of Colorado then and finished
my master’s degree in 1931, also in history, with a minor
in economics.
JG: So that was right after the onset of the Great Depression,
wasn’t it?
PRATOR 2
RP: Yes, it was. Actually, I had a number of short-lived
careers in this process. In 1929, when I graduated from
the University, I went as high school principal and
athletic coach to a place called Flagler, Colorado, which
is out in the eastern part of the state. In the interim I
had signed a contract to play professional baseball. So I
went then the summer of 1930 to St. Joseph, Missouri, and
the season ended after school had started in September.
So then I went back to the university since jobs were no
longer available. This, as I indicated, turned out to be
an interesting interval. When I finished my master’s
degree at the university I went then to a place called
McAlister, New Mexico, where I was also high school
principal and athletic coach, and taught a full schedule
of classes at this high school. I was there for two years
and then went to a place called Huerfano County High
School, which was in Walsenburg, Colorado. There I was
the athletic coach and taught the social sciences, history
primarily. I was there only one year, and then I went to
a place called Del Norte, Colorado and did pretty much the
same sort of thing. In the meantine my athletic teams
were pretty successful, so I was then recruited by
Clifford Houston, who was the president of a small college
in western Colorado, called Mesa College, as athletic
director and dean of men. Also I taught a full load of
classes. It was a small school. I was there for three
years. And in 1939 Lois, my wife, and I decided that I
had better get going with my education. I went to the
University of California at Berkeley.
JG: What made you choose Berkeley?
RP: Well, that’s kind of interesting. One of the students in
the class that I had in comparative education at Mesa
College did a study on the relative respectability of the
graduate schools in the United States. And at that time
Harvard and Berkeley were pretty much matched as to
excellence of record and reputation in graduate studies.
Well, Berkeley was a lot closer than Harvard, and a lot
less expensive. So I chose to go to Berkeley. That’s the
answer to that.
JG: And what was your field of study there?
RP: Educational administration. I finished my Ed.D. degree in
1947. But the reason for the interval: I was, of course,
caught in the war. I should back up a bit, too. While I
was at Berkeley doing my residence requirement, there were
several jobs that opened up. One of them in El Centro as
president of El Centro College, which was a junior
college. And I was intrigued by the possibility— I was
recommended, incidentally, by the University of California
PRATOR 3
placement service for that responsibility. I went down to
visit with them. While I was there I got a call from the
University of Colorado suggesting that I come back and be
a member of their administrative staff. So we decided
that probably— there was a bit of nostalgia in this, I
assume— that we go back to the University. We were very
fond of the place. My wife had graduated from there, as I
had. So I went there as director of alumni relations and
admissions counselor. Within a year I was made director
of admissions and records, in addition to the other
responsibilities I had. The war broke out, so in 1942 I
became a member of the United States Navy, and served then
at Quonset Point, Rhode Island, in an area that was titled
civilian personnel relations, but was really industrial
relations. I was there, then, during the whole time of
the war. This was a new field to me. I imposed upon the
people at Rhode Island State College to brief me on what
an industrial relations specialist had to do, and had to
pick up this kind of specialty. When I left active duty
then in 1946, 1947 . . .
JG: You stayed in the service for a year or so after the war
ended?
RP: Yes. I was there about a year to clean up things. It was
an involved process, because we had reduction of staff,
and a lot of other complicated factors. The navy was
anxious to keep those of us who had at that time acquired
some expertise in this area to stay on until we got this
facet of it over. Then I went back to the University of
Colorado and was made director of summer sessions and
associate professor of education in addition to my
admissions and records, and also was acting director of
the placement bureau. This was the way things had to be
at the end of the war. Things were pretty complicated.
JG: So you went back to Colorado in 1946 or 1947?
RP: Yes. And was there until I came to Bakersfield in 1950.
Again, the University of California placement service had
recommended several places that were open at that time.
This was kind of a bonanza time for all of us in
education. There were a lot of openings.
JG: Because of the GI Bill?
RP: Well, that was partially it. Enrollments were booming,
and, as I say, there were a lot of openings. We chose
Bakersfield, partially because several of our children had
been sick with asthmatic and respiratory problems in
Colorado. I said, ”1 have to come to some place where it
is warm and dry.” And he said, "How about Bakersfield?”
PRATOR 4
This was a grand opportunity for me, because Bakersfield
at that time was one of the premier community colleges in
California. It had a long, illustrious history. My
predecessor there was Grace Bird, who had started the
college, really, and had stayed there the whole time from
its inception about 1913. So I stayed there, then. One
of the other attractions about Bakersfield— they had
raised a very large amount of money and were going to
build a completely different campus, starting right from
scratch. The challenge of this was very interesting. And
I was delighted with the opportunity. As a matter of fact
at one time we had something like fourteen buildings
coming out of the ground at one time at Bakersfield. It
was delightful. When I went there we started the process
of selecting the site, and doing the planning, and so on.
JG: So you were responsible, in part, for site selection?
RP: Yes. Well, the building of the staff, too. Our staff was
growing rapidly at that time. I assume this experience
was what moved Roy Simpson to call me on the telephone
about Christmastime of 1958. He said there was an opening
of a new branch of the state college system at Northridge,
and since I had had this experience of starting right from
scratch at Bakersfield in building a campus, and they were
going to do the same thing in the San Fernando Valley,
would I be interested? I met with the Board of Education
at that time, and it looked like a very challenging
opportunity. So we moved then to Northridge, and thus
started San Fernando Valley State College in 1958.
JG: When you were president of Bakersfield College did you
have contact with Roy Simpson?
RP: Oh, yes, frequently. At Bakersfield, too, I became
president of the California Junior College Association,
which is the state organization of the junior colleges. I
was very active then in community college circles. I was,
as a matter of fact, quite impressed with California
development in junior college education. It was a premier
state organization, of course, [in reputation] across the
country. And I had had this rather brief experience at
Mesa College, which was a community college in Colorado.
So this whole thing fit into an interesting pattern.
Bakersfield was a delightful place to be, just a marvelous
experience there for all of us. Our whole family. I got
pretty steeped in community college education. It was a
good crash course for me.
JG: Do you remember Forrest Murdock of El Camino?
RP: Oh, very well.
PRATOR 5
JG: He hired me there in 1956.
RP: Did he really? Well, here is kind of an interesting
sidelight in that category. When we were planning the
selection of the site, and how much land we should have at
Bakersfield College, El Camino was a new one at that time
just getting underway. Well, there was another one that
was close by, the name escapes me— but what I urged our
Board of Trustees to do was to join me, and we went on a
little tour of these places that were just starting in
southern California, the new junior colleges. I had
warned them that one of the things that we needed to know
was how important it was to get an adequate land base.
Because many of the junior colleges were saddled on
fifteen or twenty acres of land, and I was pretty sure
this was not going to be comfortable for the kind of
growth it looked like we were going to have at
Bakersfield. So I called these people ahead of time and I
said, "Please emphasize what you think is an adequate land
base, because this will be important to our Board of
Trustees." We visited about five or six institutions in
southern California. When we got to Forrest
first— Forrest Murdock— he said, "Now gentlemen, one of
the things you want to do is get plenty of land, because
once you’ve gotten started, it gets closed in and it’s
hard to come by. We found this out at El Camino." Then
we got down to Mr. Casey, who was at Harbor College at the
time. They had something like 210 acres of land at
Harbor, and he said, "Now, Gentlemen, one of the things
you must do is get plenty of land." We got to one of the
other junior colleges which was a very large one because
it had an agricultural unit, and he emphasized the same
thing. At this particular point, of course, our Board of
Trustees turned to me and said, "You haven’t been briefing
these fellows?"
JG: That’s what I would have thought, too.
RP: But they got an adequate land base. And we were very
impressed with all the possibilities. So we built, then,
what at that time was considered kind of an ideal set-up
at Bakersfield. It all came at once.
JG: Tell me how you got to know Walter Stiern.
RP: Well, he was a veterinarian in Bakersfield. Since I was
involved in civic affairs, particularly as president of
the Rotary Club, I was active. Of course you have to come
up through the chairs. But Walter was one of my
colleagues in committee work, in a number of the
organizations there: the Kern County Heart Association,
the Rotary Club, as I mentioned, and the Kern County
PRATOR 6
Cancer Society. All of these organizations . . . by
virtue of our burgeoning activity I was pretty much
involved in a lot of these civic affairs, and so was
Walter Stiern. That’s how I came to know him.
JG: Bakersfield was a fairly close-knit community?
RP: Very close-knit. As a matter of fact, Bakersfield is
unique in that there was a commonality about the place.
They were tremendously interested in a number of special
things. Probably Walter Stiern was a graduate of
Bakersfield College. That was common there, that a lot of
their civic leaders were also graduates of Bakersfield
College, and then they had gone on to other places, like
Berkeley and so on.
JG: Was Stiern interested in educational issues, educational
matters?
RP: Yes, very. And Stiern was a very able man. He was
objective, fair, well-liked, and very influential in the
Bakersfield area. And, of course, he was very influential
in the state legislature, too.
JG: Were there any things that he didn’t want Bakersfield
College to do?
RP: There wasn’t anything within the context of community
college education that he didn’t think Bakersfield ought
not to do. And, of course, I knew Dorothy Donahoe. The
act which started the Master Plan is credited to her. It
is called the Donahoe Act.
JG: How did you come to know her?
RP: Dorothy was a member of the administrative staff of the
school system there. My recollection is that she was the
registrar, I believe, of Bakersfield High School. Dorothy
had suffered an attack of polio, and was partially
crippled in one leg. She had a limp, as it were, but was
able to get around pretty well, and was very active in all
civic affairs. She was a marvelous community worker in
all of the women’s organizations. She was the sole
support, as I remember, of her mother. And her mother and
she were present at virtually everything of civic interest
in and around Bakersfield. So far as I know, too, she and
Walter Stiern were pretty much colleagues in a number of
these civic affairs at that time. Of course, Dorothy was
quite well liked, very popular, and as evidence of that
she was elected to the legislature.
PRATOR 7
JG: Her handicap didn’t keep her from being very active in
community affairs?
RP: No, she had prodigious energy. She used to remark to
those of us who were going into many of these civic
affairs, MI saw you this morning, I saw you at noon, I’m
seeing you this evening." And Dorothy was one of those
who was was present at practically every civic
organization meeting that I attended.
JG: Why was she popular?
RP: Two things, probably. One, when she accepted a
responsibility, she did it to the best of her ability.
She was willing, of course, to accept and take on
responsibility. Secondly, she was easy to work with, very
easy to work with. She was not an offensive pusher; she
was very tactful, and quite successful. Of course, my
recollection is that she was most interested in, and
successful at this Master Plan for Higher Education in
California. She undertook the responsibility of the
legislature’s involvement in it, and just gave
unstintingly of her time, her energy, and her knowledge,
all of which were considerable. She knew a lot about
community college education. I don’t know that she had
graduated from one of the four-year institutions. My
recollection is that she had gone to Bakersfield College.
But education had a top priority with Dorothy.
JG: Did you ever discuss educational issues with her when you
were president of
Robert Wert oral history interview, Origins of The California State University, 1988
No full textOral 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
Donald R. Gerth oral history interview, "Researching Higher Education in Transition", Origins of The California State University", 1987
No full textTranscripts and cassette tapes of oral history interviews with various individuals involved in the formation of the California State University system.Origins of
The California State
University
Donald R. Gerth
Interviewed
by
Judson A. Grenier
An Oral History Project
of the
Archives
UUU Archives
CSU, Dominguez Hills
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
Oral History Pilot Project on the Origins of the CSU System
DONALD R. GERTH
RESEARCHING HIGHER EDUCATION
IN TRANSITION
Interview Conducted by
Judson A. Grenier
in 1987
Processed by CSU, Fullerton Oral History Program
August 1988
COPYRIGHT
This is a transcription of an interview conducted for the
California State University Archives under a grant from the
Office of the Chancellor, CSU.
Scholars are welcome to utilize short excerpts from any of
the transcriptions without obtaining permission as long as
proper credit is given to the interviewee, interviewer, and the
institution sponsoring the project. All uses of this
manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between the CSU
Archives and the interviewee. Therefore, scholars must obtain
permission from California State University Archives before
making more extensive use of the transcription and related
materials.
None of these materials may be duplicated or reproduced by
any party except the California State University Archives.
However, because it is the goal of this project to preserve and
make accessible significant documentation relevant to the
history of the State Colleges, copies of any unrestricted
transcriptions may be obtained at cost by writing to the CSU
Systemwide Archivist at California State University, Dominguez
Hills, Carson, California, 90747.
Copyright(c)1988 by the Board of Trustees
of The California State University
PREFACE
The purpose of this oral history pilot project is to
record and make available to researchers using the California
State University Archives the reminiscences of individuals who
participated in the creation of the California State Colleges
from 1959 to 1965.
The creation of the California State Colleges in 1961
united fifteen formerly independent colleges into a single,
identifiable system, with its own Board of Trustees and a
Chancellor to serve as chief executive officer. Using a
formula which stressed systemwide planning in the allocation of
resources and programs, the California State Colleges sought to
offer Californians quality higher education at reasonable
cost. The key to the success of the California State
University was the decision to adapt a plan, incorporated into
the Donahoe Higher Education Act of 1960, dividing higher
education into three distinctly separate segments. Under the
act, the California State Colleges were mandated to emphasize
undergraduate and master’s level programs, while the University
of California campuses were to emphasize graduate education,
and the California Community Colleges were to focus on
vocational training and college preparation.
The California State University, starting from a base of
fifteen campuses and 95,000 students in 1961, has grown to
where it now provides a wide variety of innovative programs to
more than 320,000 students on nineteen campuses. The system is
the largest as well as one of the strongest institutions of
higher education in the United States.
In September 1979, the Board of Trustees created the
California State Colleges and Universities Historical Archives,
to be housed on the Dominguez Hills campus. Since its
establishment, the Archives, as a systemwide project, has been
jointly supported by the Chancellor’s Office and CSU Dominguez
Hills, through the funding of a professional archivist.
The Archives currently houses a collection of materials
received from a variety of sources. These include the
Chancellor’s Office, the CSU Academic Senate, and private
individuals who had previous dealings with the CSU, such as
former Chancellor Glenn Dumke, former Trustee Paul Spencer, and
others. Consequently, the Archives holds some personal papers
as well as official systemwide documents. As part of its
collection policy, the Archives also has a responsibility to
collect individual recollections and oral histories of the
early System and pre-System years.
m
Short-term goals of this oral history project are to make
available the recollections and reminiscences of former members
of the Board of Trustees, the State College-University of
California Liaison Committee, and the Master Plan Survey Team,
as well as other individuals who participated in the formation
of the California State Colleges from 1959 to 1965.
For the long run, the project has three purposes. First,
it will help to increase interest in the history and
accomplishments of the California State University. Next, it
will, hopefully, be a tool to aid in the acquisition of
additional materials concerning the System now in private
hands. Finally, it will serve as a model and learning device
to develop a more comprehensive oral history program. If the
pilot project is successful, as many interviews as possible
will be conducted under the expanded program with the System’s
retired trustees, former vice-chancellors and college
presidents, current senior management, state legislators, and
others who have been influential in the growth and development
of the state university.
Funding for the project is provided by the Office of Vice
Chancellor, Administration, Dr. Herbert L. Carter. We thank
the interviewee for generously giving of his time. We also
acknowledge the work of the Oral History Program at CSU
Fullerton for the use of its facilities in processing this
interview. Transcribing was performed by Shirley de Graaf,
final preparation, proofreading and index by Teryne Bell.
Lawrence B. de Graaf, Jacquelyn K. Sundstrand,
Judson A. Grenier, CSU Archivist
Project Co-Directors
MEMBERS, CSU ARCHIVES ADVISORY BOARD
Betty Blackman
John Brownell
Mayer Chapman
Robert W. Cherny
Lawrence B. de Graaf
Glenn S. Dumke
Donald R. Gerth
Judson Grenier
Arthur Hall
Claudia H. Hampton
James Harris
Louis H. Heilbron
Donald B. Leiffer
Gloria Lothrop
Theodore Meriam
Carol J. Numrich
Morris Polan
W. Ann Reynolds
Phillip V. Sanchez
John Smart
Jacquelyn K. Sundstrand
IV
DONALD R. GERTH
ca. 1976
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PILOT PROJECT ON THE
ORIGINS OF THE CSU SYSTEM
This interview of Donald R. Gerth (DG) was conducted in the
office of the president of California State University,
Sacramento on July 7, 1987. The interviewer is Judson Grenier
(JG) of the CSU Oral History Project.
JG: We begin all these interviews with a short personal
background. Could you remind me where you were born and
reared?
DG: Chicago, Illinois. I was bora in 1928, December of 1928,
and I grew up in Chicago, went through the Chicago public
schools. Did not graduate from high school until after I
graduated from college, because I left high school and
went to the University of Chicago as an early entrant. I
got my B.A. in June of 1947.
JG: I remember that under [Robert] Hutchins that was a fairly
common procedure, wasn’t it?
DG: It was possible, yes.
JG: And what was your major?
DG: At the undergraduate level, it was liberal arts.
JG: I see.
DG: We had no majors at Chicago. It was possible to get a
concentration; I didn’t even elect to do that. I took the
solid liberal arts program.
JG: What did your father do for a living?
DG: He was a civil engineer.
JG: And after you got your B.A., what then?
DG: Went on for the master’s; got a job on the staff of the
University of Chicago in student affairs, and also went on
for my master’s degree. Did that for two years, then went
to southeast Asia as field representative for World
University Service for the better part of a year. Came
back, finished up my master’s. Always on the staff, too.
Was loaned at one time as assistant to the president at
GERTH 2
Shimer college, which was at that point in time a small
college in western Illinois that had a relationship with
the University of Chicago. Finished my master’s, started
on the Ph.D. It was clear that the military was going to
get me; by this time the Korean War was underway. I was
in the Far East when the Korean War broke out. So, I
volunteered for the Air Force, and got a commission in the
psychological warfare . . .
JG: That’s interesting.
DG: . . . business or branch of the Air Force. And did that
for four and a half years. Then I came back and rejoined
the staff of Chicago, finished up the Ph.D. By this time
I was getting beyond the age of eighteen, which was all I
was when I graduated from college I taught at the
University of the Philippines while I was overseas in the
Air Force in southeast Asia. I worked all over southeast
Asia for the Air Force.
JG: My goodness. What was the topic of your dissertation?
DG: At the Ph.D. level, it was the governance of higher
education in California.
JG: How did you become interested in that topic?
DG: Because I was recruited to join the faculty at San
Francisco State by the then president of San Francisco
State. I decided to go in spite of all these dire
warnings from the department in Chicago that I shouldn’t
leave, I should take a Ford Foundation Fellowship, which
I’d gotten to go to India. That I shouldn’t leave,
because if I left, I wouldn’t finish. They recited the
statistics to me about the odds of ever finishing. And
they were grim, but I decided to come to California
anyway. So, out of all that, all the warnings, I decided
I would pick a very manageable topic that I knew I could
do on the scene in California, where I knew I wouldn’t be
trapped and have to go to Washington when I was young and
didn’t have any money and would have to go here and there
for material. I knew that if I wrote on the government of
higher education in California, the material would be here
in California. And it struck me as an interesting thing
to do. I was sort of fascinated with the topic.
JG: There had been little or nothing written on it?
DG: At that point in time, social scientists by and large had
not gotten involved in writing about higher education as a
public enterprise.
GERTH 3
JG: What year did you come out to San Francisco State?
DG: 1958.
JG: 1958. So you taught full-time while finishing up your
Ph.D.?
DG: No, actually, between the time I was first appointed— I
had worked in the admissions office in Chicago as a
graduate student— between the time I was interviewed, and
the time I actually got appointed in a technical sense, I
was asked if I’d be willing to take a different job than
straight teaching as director of admissions— in those days
they called it "Associate Dean of Students for Admissions
and Records"— for the princely sum of $8,112 a year. I
remember the figure; that was more money than I thought
there was in the whole world.
JG: Yes.
DG: And I thought about it a little bit and said yes. So I
was a member of the government department at San Francisco
State and taught, but my principle job, the thing that
paid me, was being associate dean.
JG: You came out in 1958 . . .
DG: I was 29.
JG: . . . and Glenn Dumke had already been named president by
that time.
DG: He was, yes, he was president when I was appointed, and my
dean was a fellow named Ferd Reddell. Ferd is still
around.
JG: Yes.
DG: Of course, Glenn is. They’re both retired.
JG: So, what were the sources that you used for the study of
the California state college part of higher education?
DG: A lot of interviews. I went back into the historic
material, I spent time here in Sacramento. It’s when I
first visited this campus on one of my trips up here. I
used the state archives, the state library, all kinds of
musty old records from the state Department of Education.
I did a lot of interviewing, because nobody had been
collecting the material. I used the Bancroft at Berkeley
. the Bancroft Library. There was a woman there named
Mae Dornan, who was then the librarian at Bancroft. I
GERTH 4
don’t think she was the head— the head was James Hart— but
she was the one who did a lot of the work, and worked
with graduate students. She was very helpful. What
else? . . . I used the records of the regents, I used the
records of the state Department of Education. In those
days, the chancellor’s office didn’t exist.
JG: Right. That was a pretty heady time in higher education
here in California.
DG: Oh yes. While I was doing the research . . . then the
Master Plan started.
JG: Right.
DG: So, one of the by-products of this was that I got
involved. My expertise, or my specialization in this
topic, caused people to draw on me for the Master Plan.
JG: That’s very interesting. Did you ever interview Roy
Simpson?
DG: Yes.
JG: Did you ever observe any of the meetings of groups such as
the Council of Presidents?
DG: No, those were private. I tried to, and I was told I
couldn’t. I attended the state Board of Education— I
think the first state Board of Education meeting I ever
attended may have been on this campus. It was either here
or Fresno. I think it was here.
JG: Was that in 1958 or 1959?
DG: 1958.
JG: What was Roy Simpson’s leadership style?
DG: Oh, he was very quiet. He would come to the meetings
rather well prepared, as I remember now. He was not
deeply involved in the substance of the issues about the
state colleges. He had his chief, an associate
superintendent named J. Burton Vasche, who became the
founding president of Stanislaus and died fairly soon
after that. And it was Vasche and a couple of his people
who were the people who were deeply involved in the
substance of the issues. The two people who were really
the most involved were Jim Enochs, spelled E-N-O-C-H-S,
he’s the retired vice-president at Sonoma now— lives up in
Oregon— and Dorothy Knoell, who is with the California
GERTH 5
Post-Secondary Education Commission [CPEC], here in
Sacramento.
JG: I did interview her.
DG: They were the two people who were most deeply involved in
the substance of the issues. Vasche sort of coordinated
the whole thing. As I recall, Vasche had four
professionals; he had Enochs, Knoell, a fellow named Don
Youngreen, who was his chief fiscal type; he was an
accountant. I don’t know what’s happened to Don, I’ve
lost track of him. And a guy named Art Browne, who ended
up doing a lot of the staff-work for the community
colleges on the Master Plan. That was the whole division
of higher education [Division of State Colleges and
Teacher Education]— that and some clerical staff— and a
few technicians: Clarence Lust, who’s on the chancellor’s
staff now, Boyd Horne, who has just been named an
assistant vice-chancellor was just a young kid then we
all were— Clarence was the fellow who did all the
enrollment projections, did all the technical stuff.
JG: I see.
DG: It was a very small staff. So, Vasche was a very busy
guy. But the real substance at that point in time would
have been carried by the other two. Simpson was the man
who sat at the table. My impression always was that he
was fairly well briefed— my impression was that he was
supportive of his presidents, and I think he regarded them
just that way. When the presidents met— they didn’t meet
with Roy Simpson with any regularity— my understanding is
that they met with Vasche.
JG: Did the division of higher education exercise any real
authority over the colleges, or were they virtually . . .
DG: My impression at the time was that, yes. On curricular
affairs, yes. All of our appointments went through there;
my appointment went through there. Our appointments in
those days all went to the state board; both the original
appointments of faculty and tenure decisions went to the
state board. Now I’m not sure maybe the presidents made
the original appointments and simply reported them. I
know tenure went to the state board, and I know that
appointments of administrators went to the state board.
JG: How would the state board have time to concern itself with
all those . . .
DG: I don’t know that they did. I think they got a list and
they approved them on a motion.
GERTH 6
JG: Was it your impression that the state board devoted much
time to higher education as opposed to other levels?
DG: No, no, no. The real governing board, in my judgment, for
the California state colleges at that point in time was to
be found in the monthly meeting of the presidents. I am
told that was commonly understood. I’m doing all this
from memory; some of the detail on this is in my
dissertation and in my book [An Invisible Giant], But I
am told that the business managers met with some
frequency. In those days, you had common titles for
administrators on all campuses, and a common
administrative pattern for all campuses. There were nine
campuses, and all but two, Humboldt and Chico, had the
same administrative pattern. Humboldt and Chico were
smaller; they had a modified one. The business managers
would meet with some frequency, and periodically would
meet with the presidents. I am told that there was a
great deal of muscle in the business managers’ group.
There were other groups that met with some frequency: the
deans of students did, the deans of instruction did, the
executive deans— in those days they were building
types— did. The muscle, I think, was in the presidents
and in the business managers.
JG: Who were the strong presidents in the system when you did
your study?
DG: Oh my goodness . . . Guy West to a certain extent— he was
the president here at that time. Malcolm Love, without
question, at San Diego. Going up and down the state,
Julian McPhee was certainly very strong.
JG: Yes.
DG: Glenn Kendall was strong, although he used restraint—
Glenn would use restraint in the exercise of power— and I
watched that over the years. I ended up working with him
for two years.
JG: Was this picture of the group taken just about the time
you did your study? (Shows a photograph.)
DG: Yes, it’s a little afterwards, because Fred Harcleroad is
in it, and Carl McIntosh. I would say Malcolm Love and
Kendall had a kind of strength. Of course, Dumke because
of the Master Plan. The presidents were all pretty strong
in those days. [Ralph] Prator came on the scene in
1958— that was when the system started to grow. Bill
[William B.] Langsdorf was fairly new. I would say
particularly Julian McPhee and Malcolm Love, and then to a
certain extent Kendall. There was a certain potency among
GERTH 7
all of them. There were a couple whom I personally
regarded as fairly weak.
JG: Were there any clusters? Were there any groupings within
the Council of Presidents— people who tended to think
alike?
DG: You ought to ask Glenn Dumke that question. I don’t know,
because I wasn’t in the group. By the time I got in the
group, I was sort of an adjunct to the Council of
Presidents in 1963-64 when I was on the chancellor’s
staff, and I used to meet with them then. But not in the
days when I was at San Francisco State, from 1958 to
1963. By that time, there was a difference. There were
really three groups by 1963. There were the sort of "new
order" types who were committed to the arts and sciences,
the "comprehensive state college," as envisioned by then
chancellor Dumke. There were the old "teacher education"
types, and their relatives; McPhee would have been in that
group, at Cal Poly. And then there were some who were
waiting to see how things would go. It’s not unlike
today, where the issues are very different, but where
there are three groups of presidents . . .
JG: Yes.
DG: . . . the ones who take a definitive stand here, another
group taking a definitive stand there, and a third group
waiting to see how it all turns out.
JG: When you did your study, the state colleges were still in
the process of evolution, were they not, from teacher
training schools to full-scale liberal arts colleges?
DG: Oh yes. I was appointed director of admissions at San
Francisco State in 1958, and I shall never forget, my
first or second year there, I went to a place called
Galileo High School which was not distant from the campus,
in the city of San Francisco. And I got there, was met by
the— in those days the San Francisco city schools all had
what they called "educational counsellors," and somebody
was on the head counsellor’s staff who worked with kids,
getting them ready for college— and the educational
counsellor met me. If I recall correctly, her name was
Miss Marini. We didn’t talk much. She met me, and we
walked down a hall, and she marched me into a room. There
were all these lovely young ladies, high school seniors.
And she said, "All these students are interested in San
Francisco State; this is Donald Gerth, Director of
Admissions," or whatever. And I said, "Thank-you," and
gave my little pep talk about San Francisco State. She
stayed. I turned to her, and I said, "Isn’t it unusual,
GERTH 8
that these are all girls?” And she said, right back to
me, as if it were fact, in front of this entire group,
”Not really, because people who go to San Francisco State
want to be elementary school teachers.” This was 1958.
And I said, ”0h no,"— by this time, because of my
research, I knew the history of the system backwards— I
said, "That changed in 1935." Actually it had changed
earlier in the twenties, in terms of secondary credential
preparation. But I said, "We became state colleges in
1935." And she said, "No, you’re new to California, you
don’t understand, only people who want to be grade school
teachers go to a state college."
JG: Oh my.
DG: And I just wasn’t going to have a debate with her. Now
that was atypical in 1958, but deeply symptomatic. And
internally . . . this was certainly true at San Francisco
State. Now San Francisco State was founded just before
the turn of the century, so it had a significant history
as a teacher education institution, a teachers’ college.
At San Francisco State, the combat level, the tension, the
strife, between those who felt they had a commitment to
Ambrose Nichols oral history interview, "From San Jose to Sonoma State: An Academic Odyssey", Origins of The California State University, 1988
No full textOral 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
