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Donald Leiffer oral history interview, "Executive Officer of the California State Colleges", 1980 and 1987

Author: Leiffer Donald: interviewee; Grenier, Judson A.: interviewer; California State University, Dominguez Hills. California State University Archives: publisher; California State University, Fullerton. Oral History Program: publisher;
Publication venue
Publication date: 01/01/1988
Field of study

Leiffer 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 tÂ É P; §j MÊÈÊ iiisiiiiiiliiili 8| || ij§§ W WÊÊÊÊÊmmmmm. fml|

|Pmwm 'Q; \ ■ j ü \ jjm Kmm s B CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES ORAL HISTORY PILOT PROJECT ON THE ORIGINS OF THE CSU SYSTEM This is the first of two interviews with Mr. Donald Leiffer conducted at his home in La Jolla on November 24, 1980. JG: Please tell me a little bit about yourself. Are you a. native of California or how did you get out here? I understand you went to UCLA. DL: Well, my father retired in 1919, and we drove out. That was quite an experience. My brother, who is five years older than I, did the driving. He was sixteen and I was eleven. So, I went to school out here at Manual Arts High School. And after graduating from high school, I took a year and a half off and went around the country, came back and started in at what was then Southern Branch and moved out after three years to the new campus at Westwood. So I was in the first class to graduate from UCLA at the Westwood campus. As president of that class, I can remember crawling all over the empty hillsides on the campus looking for a potential amphitheater from which we might be able to hold our first graduation. Ernest C. Moore, who was then the provost, would not approve of any particular one until we finally held the ceremony at the Hollywood Bowl. JG: If you had invested in real estate in those hills you were tramping over, you’d be a millionaire. DL: It’s incredible. I majored in history and political science at UCLA. No graduate work was there whatsoever, and so to seek graduate degrees, one had to go elsewhere. I was offered a fellowship at Harvard and took a Masters Degree in European Diplomatic History. That intrigued me so that I wanted to know what was going on today. I shifted fields to International Relations to International Law, and from International Law to Public Law. Then I was not satisfied with knowing how laws were made, I wanted to know how they were executed. So I went into Administration and I have a Ph.D from Harvard in Municipal Administration. All of this took quite a bit of time, but I served first as an assistant and then as an instructor. I was a teacher at Harvard for eight years and returned twice in the capacity of visiting professor. LEIFFER 2 I went across the river to Boston University and became Chairman of the Department of Government at Boston University and Maxwell Professor of United States Citizenship and Government and founded the Public Administration Research Institute there. While there, I became the president of the AAUP Chapter and became active in faculty affairs and faculty interests. While president of that chapter, we worked to establish, and did succeed in getting, a salary standard set up, which had never been the case at Boston University. We also founded a university senate, and I was the first faculty chairman of the faculty senate. Then in 1947 I came out and taught at UCLA Summer School. My parents were still living in Los Angeles and I had a desire to return to California. The opportunity came when I was invited to San Diego State to start a public administration program at that institution, with the idea that it would be a kind of guinea pig program in public administration for the state college system. JG: They had no such programs at that time? DL: There were some courses, but there were no real programs anywhere. We set up an internship program here at San Diego which carried on in fairly normal fashion. I was president of CSEA Chapter here and the vice-president of the faculty association in my second year here, and this of course meant that I became interested in various areas outside my immediate professional area of public administration. I was interested in the broadening of the academic base in our state colleges and introducing research programs to our institution. The word "research” was not an acceptable word in the state colleges at this time. It was a word that was the peculiar prerogative of the University of California. So we started an institute on public affairs here without the use of the word research in it. I also, through this faculty association, met with faculty personnel from other institutions. We had an organization that met from time to time. As a result of this, we recognized the significance of the growing desire on the part of the state colleges to go into more and more graduate work, and more and more research, and be freed from the control exercised through the historic predominance of the education departments and the leadership throughout the administration of Ed.D’s. JG: You weren’t supposed to do any research that wasn’t connected to teaching? DL: Well, even the word "research" was— well, the idea of publication was accepted, but it was not the primary reason for promotion. I might say that my decision to LEIFFER 3 come out here was kind of interesting in that we knew we were going to be invited, and my wife and I tried to decide whether we should accept it or not because I was, of course, a tenured person and was a full professor and had been for some seven years. After going through all of the yeses and the nos of what we should do, we decided to make an arbitrary decision on a monetary basis and cut it through. So we said that if the offer came through at

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

4,496. JG: That’s close! DL: Well, yes. to come. It was close enough, and we made the decision JG: You mentioned that through your work with the faculty association you got to know people from other state colleges. Was that just on an informal, ad hoc basis? DL: No. It came in two ways: through what was called the ACSCI— the Association of State College Instructors— which later became the Association of State College Professors, and also through the CSEA. There was a committee of state college faculty composed of one from each of the state colleges, and we met occasionally and exchanged points of view. This, I think, was part of the ferment that led to later legislative efforts to get the state college program free from the administrative control by the Department of Education. The State Department of Education had within it a division of higher education, and this obviously was headed by a division chief. JG: Who was head of it when you first came? DL: I can’t recall, but Roy Simpson was the superintendent of public instruction, and this came under his administrative jurisdiction. I can recall appearing before a legislative committee in 1958— in which I appeared as a representative of faculty on a bill which subsequently was revised and became the Donahoe Act— supporting the concept of the independence of the state college program from the Department of Education. JG: How did you get invited to participate in the Brown Administration? DL: Well, one thing follows another. I was asked back in 1958 if I would prepare a position paper or two for [Edmund G.] Pat Brown’s campaign. I did, on metropolitan government, LEIFFER 4 and I participated in some of the brain trust meetings prior to his election. After his election, a few months after, I received a telephone call asking if I would come up for a talk with the governor relative to taking a position in the governor’s office. Of course I went, and the title which was given to me was research secretary. This is an euphemistic title for the speech writer, but actually I did very little speech writing. I was assigned three policy responsibility roles. One dealt with the reorganization of state government, and I headed up a task force which made its report finally, and which resulted in the organization we now have— the agency structure in state government— and then the third role was a relationship with state and local governments and state and local government organizations. So I appeared for the governor, during the year that I was there, as his representative when he could not, at meetings of the Board of Regents and of the Board of Education. Naturally, I became acquainted with the personnel in the Department of Education and on the Board of Education. JG: Could you tell me what the boards were like back in those days? DL: Well, there were very fine people on both boards of course, but the Board of Education had the responsibility for state policy for elementary education, secondary education, as well as the state colleges, and it meant that there was very little attention or time available to give to the great problems of the state college system which was developing and growing. Many in the system felt they were second-class citizens everywhere they went. It was kind of an almost paranoic feeling. JG: When they went to the University, to the state board or wherever they went. DL: When the Act was passed— the Donahoe Act— and the governor’s office supported it completely, it provided for the establishment of a new agency known as the Board of Trustees of the California State College system. JG: Whose idea was that? DL: I don’t think it was any particular person’s idea. I think it just developed in the course of a good many conversations. The idea of a divorce was clear and had been for some time. The thought of calling this the ’’Board of Trustees of the California State College” system was to provide a board which would be in the same position in relation to the state colleges as the Board of Regents was to the University of California. The proposal did LEIFFER 5 place upon this board, as president, the governor. The presiding officer is the governor, in both instances. Ex-officio memberships were quite similar from state officials— the lieutenant governor, et cetera. By legislation, however, the term of office was established at four years because the constitution does not permit the creation of a legislative body with terms longer than four years, so subsequently we had to have a constitutional amendment that extended the term to eight years. JG: Tell me about the Master Plan [Survey] Team. Who were some of the people that were prominent? DL: In the Master Plan . . . that was critical in relation to the development of the role we*re talking about now. The chairman of that was Arthur Coons. JG: How was he picked? DL: By the governor. And in fact, that before I was on the governor’s staff. Representing the University was Dean McHenry, and Glenn Dumke was from the state college system. They were the principal individuals. Clark Kerr was active within it, too. Clark was then the president of the University of California. JG: Did they select Coons as chairman because he would be disinterested? DL: Yes . . . yes, and of course there was representation from the Department of Education for the junior college program, which was a tremendously important higher education factor in the state. JG: Do you remember who that was? DL: I can’t recall the name at this time. I attended a number of meetings as representative of the governor, though I was not on the committee. JG: Where did they meet? DL: Different places, sometimes in Sacramento and sometimes in Los Angeles. I think they also met in San Francisco. JG: Arthur Coons’ secretary is still active, up at Occidental. DL: Well, she’s one person I suggest you talk to. He performed a great role in his capacity as chairman of that committee. The private institutions which he represented are just as deeply concerned in the public education program as they are in their own because there is an LEIFFER 6 interrelatedness and in some instances, a competition for status and for funds. JG: Did the Master Plan Committee depend upon position papers that were developed by individuals? DL: No, I think they did a great deal of work themselves. But the person I would talk to about that besides Glenn Dumke would be Dean McHenry. Dean McHenry is retired now, he has been chancellor for the University of California at Santa Cruz, and I can give you his address. JG: I would like to talk to him. DL: Perhaps we can spend some time talking about other individuals who might be of some interest to you as you do your work. JG: Good. DL: In your letter suggesting topics, there is one item which is not mentioned which I will now mention because I think it is of some interest. This occurred when I had the title of administrative officer. Would you like for me to back up a bit on this thing? JG: Please. I*d like to know, where did that title come from? DL: When the Board of Trustees held its first meeting, which, I think was in August 1960, I had prepared the agenda for that meeting as secretary to the governor, and one of the items on it was the suggestion that certain committees be set up within the board including one committee on personnel, charged with the responsibility of seeking a chancellor and of setting up an interim administration until the chancellor was selected. I had completed my year of leave from San Diego State and was ready to return to San Diego State. This committee that was set up by the board came into my office immediately after the meeting had been concluded and asked me if I would serve as secretary to the board and as staff man for the board. I said at that time that I appreciated their interest but that I could not visualize that role and that title, and that I felt like that whoever took it should have a more responsible assignment than was suggested by that title. They asked me for my opinion on it, and I said that I had no opinion about title really, but I did about salary, and I said if I were to be selected, I would request a salary of at least

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

CSUDH Gerth Archives & Special Collections

Memo from Yukio Mochizuki to Dr. [Donald] Hata, August 23, 1977

Author: Mochizuki Yukio: author
Publication venue
Publication date: 23/08/1977
Field of study

An update memo to Professor Donald Teruo Hata about Yukio Mochizuki's progress in his research. He first thanks Dr. Hata for offering to put him in contact with Mr. Raymond W. Ickes regarding the, "kidnapping of Japanese from Latin America during World War II." He then mentioned enclosed documents from a Peruvian interviewee (which are not included in this item.) He reports that his interviews are "lousy" after he reviews the tapes and inquires about other possible interviewees for his research, which seems to be going not as smoothly as he would have hoped.Collection of notes, articles, correspondence, photographs, and term papers collected by Yukio Mochizuki, a student at CSU Dominguez Hills, while researching Japanese American incarceration and Japanese Peruvian internment during World War II

CSUDH Gerth Archives & Special Collections

Caribbean Report 04-06-1996

Author: James Edison (interviewee)
Towne Grace (interviewee)
Gordon Warren (anchor)
Martin Anthony (interviewee)
Simeon Donald (interviewee)
Douglas Rosie (interviewee)
Wood David (correspondent)
Collymore Yvette (correspondent)
The British Broadcasting Corporation
Smith Colin (correspondent)
Richards Ken (correspondent)
Burns Larry (interviewee)
Publication venue
Publication date: 22/09/2015
Field of study

1. Headlines (00:00-00:28)2. Dominica's Economic Citizenship Programme criticised its passport for sales as it runs into further criticism. Prime Minister Edison James, Opposition Leader Rosie Douglas, Grace Towne, Oriental Hotel Project and Anthony Martin, Critic of the Dominica Economic Citizenship Programme are interviewed (00:29-03:52)3. A failed grade for the OAS at its Panama Assembly. Larry Burns, Head of the Centre, Council on Hemispheric Studies and OAS spokesman Wesley Curtin are interviewed (03:53-08:35)4. Dominica's Opposition Leader Rosie Douglas is warning of the consequences of what he sees as racist politics in the Dominican Republic. Opposition Leader Rosie Douglas is interviewed (08:36-10:16)5. Despite a last minute appeal to the United Nations Human Rights Committee prison authorities in Guyana today executed condemned murderer Rodcliffe Ross. Colin Smith reports (10:17-11:46)6. A failed grade for the OAS at its Panama Assembly. Yvette Colllymore reports (11:47-12:57)7. How marijuana could give lows instead of highs. Author of a report on sexually transmitted diseases Dr Donald Simeon is interviewed and David Wood reports (12:58-14:24)8. Seconds after takeoff from French Guiana Europe's biggest and most expensive rocket was exploded by scientist (14:15:17

UWISpace, The University of the West Indies Institutional Repository

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

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

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

CSUDH Gerth Archives & Special Collections

Brown, Donald

Author: African American History Project Bronx
Publication venue
Publication date: 2005
Field of study

Interviewee: Dr. Donald Brown Interviewer: Dr. Brian Purnell Summarized by: Estevan Román Dr. Donald Brown was born on February 4th, 1948 at Morissania Hospital in the Bronx. His mother Lula Moore is from Athens, Georgia or actually a town just outside Athens named Whitehall. His father was named Robert Brown is from Charleston, South Carolina. His parents were thirteen years apart in age. He mentions that his mother was previously married with three other kids and he would meet them a few years later at his mother’s funeral. His father did not like Charleston because of the racism he was facing and to possibly the fact he was the youngest of his siblings and disliked the discipline, eventually left Charleston and found his way to New York City getting a job working at the shipyards. Dr. Brown states that he doesn’t recall his father ever living in the Bronx, his dad lived in Manhattan and visited the Bronx while his mother raised him in the Bronx. His parents were not married; his father was married to another woman. Dr. Brown says that his first place he remembers his place of residence was 1345 Brook Avenue, in the Crotona Park Apartments. Mother passed when he was six. He lived with several different relatives. His dad’s nephew first, then the grandmother in Philadelphia, then with some woman who his dad established a relationship with in Philadelphia, and then she went to Baltimore herself, taking the little sister with her but was committed to returning to take care of Dr. Brown and his brother, and then the godmother’s house. Dr. Brown’s father was diagnosed and dying of cancer, his brother went to live with his dad and stepmom. Dr. Brown at the age of 12 moved in with a distant cousin on his mother’s side, Reverend Author William Clayton and his wife Emily at the Patterson projects at East 143rd street and 3rd avenue. Dr. Brown talks about his brother committing a robbery and going to Sparks Detention Center. He noticed the attention his brother got from that so he decided to rob a bike. He was placed on probation and met Mr. Hall and he was a positive role model with positive reinforcement. Dr. Brown finished PS 53, started attending Paul Lawrence Dunbar Junior High School, then A.S. Roberts JHS then went on the Elijah D. Clark JHS. He recalls PS 53 being predominantly Jewish while Brook Avenue was mostly black, and not having many material items, clothes in particular. He recalls the interaction with the Jewish kids being positive. He recalled playing “Johnny on the Pony” and “What was the point of Ringalevio?” He would go to the Jewish kids’ houses further up but they would never come down to the Brook Avenue. He mentions that getting wax removed his ears he was able to make a difference in his education, as he struggled a bit before that. Dr. Brown talks about his time with Reverend and Mrs. Clayton, who were in their 60’s when they took care of him, and had no children with them at the time, but the ensured him he can stay as long as he wanted. Reverend was a janitor at Lexox Hill hospital and Mrs. Clayton was a homemaker. They became his parents. Dr. Brown goes on to talk about his community at Paterson project and all the people whom he grew up and then mentions being part of Camp Minisink’s Army Cadet Corps, mostly because urban kids could not join the Boy Scouts, the Corps instilled positive values in its members. He used his experience at the Camp to launch an initiative named Christian Soldiers in Boston, modeled after the Cadet Corps. He talks about how some of the young men he grew up with being drawn into the negative elements such as drugs, crime and violence that were present in the neighborhood. Dr. Brown graduated from De Whitt Clinton High School in 1965 which at the time was a mostly white school. After graduating from there, he went on to attend Springfield College with a 10,000 scholarship. Although he did not do well at first, he wound up being president of Afro-Am, which was a progressive thinking group at the College and working as the assistant director at a program called Upward Boun

Fordham University: DigitalResearch@Fordham

Caribbean Report 11-07-1988

Author: Jones Nick (correspondent)
Whitehorne Pat (correspondent)
Crosskill Hugh (correspondent)
Allen Neil (correspondent)
Timmins Jerry (anchor)
Brown Colin (interviewee)
The British Broadcasting Corporation
Bajeux Jean-Claude (interviewee)
Chamberlain Susan (interviewee)
Calverley John (interviewee)
Publication venue
Publication date: 11/07/1988
Field of study

This program reports on events in the Caribbean and in Britain. Constitutional reform in Haiti takes center stage, followed by news on Britain's war on drugs and the possibility of summer rioting in British inner city communities. The program concludes with a note of hope for victims of the dreaded disease Olivopontocerebellar ataxia, as collaborative efforts at fighting the disease have led to early identification of the gene responsible, thus giving the victims certain options with regard to passing the disease on to their children.1. Headlines (00:07-00:23)2. Jerry Timmins interviews Jean-Claude Bajeux, Haiti's Director of the Eccumenical Center for Human Rights. The two discuss the possibility of a review of Haiti's 1987 constitution as promised by Haiti's military ruler general Namphy (00:55-03:02)3. Jerry Timmins focuses on an anti-drugs campaign launched by the British Government, and an independent report which has deemed the said campaign ineffective. Timmins interviews Colin Brown, Senior Research Fellow at the Policy Studies Institute and author of the report (03:03-05:41)4. A report to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher by Home Secretary Douglas Hurd regarding the possibility of summer rioting in Britain has caused some concern in Caribbean inner city communities. Hugh Crosskill and Nick Jones comment on the report which was carried in the Sunday Telegraph (05:45-08:51)5. Sport segment. Neil Allen and Hugh Crosskill discuss the on-the -track performances of Jamaican born British sprinter Linford Christie and former Jamaican sprinter turned manager Donald Quarrie (08:56-10:57)6. Pat Whitehorn presents the BBC's daily financial report (11:01-12:42)7. Report on a rare disease known as Olivopontocerebellar ataxia in Cuba which attacks the nervous system, and collaborative efforts by Dr. Susan Chamberlain of St. Mary's Hospital in London and Cuban neurologist Guillermo Orosco to combat the disease (12:47-14:37

UWISpace, The University of the West Indies Institutional Repository

C. Mansel Keene and Lois R. Feldheym oral history interview, "Formulating the System's Personnel Policies", Origins of The California State University, 1987

Author: Feldheym Louis R: interviewee; Keene, C. Mansel: interviewee; De Graaf, Lawrence Brooks: interviewer; California State University, Dominguez Hills. California State University Archives: publisher; California State University, Fullerton. Oral History Program: publisher;
Publication venue
Publication date: 06/08/1987
Field of study

C. 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. LF:

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

CSUDH Gerth Archives & Special Collections

Harry Harmon oral history interview, "Planning the Facilities for The California State University System", Origins of The California State University, 1987

Author: Harmon Harry: interviewee; De Graaf, Lawrence Brooks: interviewer; California State University, Dominguez Hills. California State University Archives: publisher; California State University, Fullerton. Oral History Program: publisher;
Publication venue
Publication date: 10/07/1987
Field of study

Harmon was an executive for physical planning and development.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 Harry Harmon Interviewed by Lawrence B. de Graaf An Oral History Project of the Archives U U U Archives CSU, Dominguez Hills CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES Oral History Pilot Project on the Origins of the CSU System HARRY HARMON PLANNING THE FACILITIES FOR THE CSU SYSTEM Interview Conducted by Lawrence B. de Graaf in 1987 Processed by CSU Fullerton Oral History Program November 1988 COPYRIGHT This is a transcription of an interview conducted for the California State University Archives under a grant from the Office of the Chancellor, CSU. Scholars are welcome to utilize short excerpts from any of the transcriptions without obtaining permission as long as proper credit is given to the interviewee, interviewer, and the institution sponsoring the project. All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between the CSU Archives and the interviewee. Therefore, scholars must obtain permission from California State University Archives before making more extensive use of the transcription and related materials. None of these materials may be duplicated or reproduced by any party except the California State University Archives. However, because it is the goal of this project to preserve and make accessible significant documentation relevant to the history of the State Colleges, copies of any unrestricted transcriptions may be obtained at cost by writing to the CSU Systemwide Archivist at California State University, Dominguez Hills, Carson, California, 90747. Copyright (c)1988 by the Board of Trustees of The California State University PREFACE The purpose of this oral history pilot project is to record and make available to researchers using the California State University Archives the reminiscences of individuals who participated in the creation of the California State Colleges from 1959 to 1965. The creation of the California State Colleges in 1961 united fifteen formerly independent colleges into a single, identifiable system, with its own Board of Trustees and a Chancellor to serve as chief executive officer. Using a formula which stressed systemwide planning in the allocation of resources and programs, The California State Colleges sought to offer Californians quality higher education at reasonable cost. The key to the success of the California State University was the decision to adapt a plan, incorporated into the Donahoe Higher Education Act of 1960, dividing higher education into three distinctly separate segments. Under the act, the California State Colleges were mandated to emphasize undergraduate and master’s level programs, while the University of California campuses were to emphasize graduate education, and the California Community Colleges were to focus on vocational training and college preparation. The California State University, starting from a base of fifteen campuses and 95,000 students in 1961, has grown to where it now provides a wide variety of innovative programs to more than 320,000 students on nineteen campuses. It is the largest system of higher education in the United States and is known as one of the strongest institutions of higher education in the country. In September 1979, the Board of Trustees created the California State University and Colleges Historical Archives, to be housed on the Dominguez Hills campus. Since its establishment, the Archives, as a systemwide project, has been jointly supported by the Chancellor’s Office and CSU Dominguez Hills, through the funding of a professional archivist. The Archives currently houses a collection of materials received from a variety of sources. These include the Chancellor’s Office, the CSU Academic Senate, and private individuals who had previous dealings with the CSU, such as former Chancellor Glenn Dumke, former Trustee Paul Spencer, and others. Consequently, the Archives holds some personal papers as well as official systemwide documents. As part of its collection policy, the Archives also has a responsibility to collect individual recollections and oral histories of the early System and pre-System years. iii Short-term goals of this oral history project are to make available the recollections and reminiscences of former members of the Board of Trustees, the State College-University of California Liaison Committee, and the Master Plan Survey Team, as well as other individuals who participated in the formation of the California State Colleges from 1959 to 1965. For the long run, the project has three purposes. First, it will help to increase interest in the history and accomplishments of the California State University. Next, it will, hopefully, be a tool to aid in the acquisition of additional materials concerning the System now in private hands. Finally, it will serve as a model and learning device to develop a more comprehensive oral history program. If the pilot project is successful, as many interviews as possible will be conducted under the expanded program with the System’s retired trustees, former vice-chancellors and college presidents, current senior management, state legislators, and other important individuals who have been influential in the growth and development of the state university. Funding for the project is provided by the Office of Vice Chancellor, Administration, Dr. Herbert L. Carter. We thank the interviewee for generously giving of his time. We also acknowledge the work of the Oral History Program at CSU Fullerton for the use of its facilities in processing this interview. Transcribing was performed by Shirley de Graaf, proofreading and index by Lynn Finger, and final preparation by Teryne Bell. Lawrence B. de Graaf Jacquelyn K. Sundstrand Judson A. Grenier CSU Archivist Project Co-Directors MEMBERS, CSU ARCHIVES ADVISORY BOARD Betty Blackman John Brownell Mayer Chapman Robert W. Cherny Lawrence B. de Graaf Glenn S. Dumke Donald R. Gerth Judson Grenier Arthur Hall Claudia H. Hampton James Harris Louis H. Heilbron Donald B. Leiffer Gloria Lothrop Theodore Meriam Carol J. Numrich Morris Polan W. Ann Reynolds Phillip V. Sanchez John Smart Jacquelyn K. Sundstrand HARRY HARMON c. 1977 CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES ORAL HISTORY PILOT PROJECT ON THE ORIGINS OF THE CSU SYSTEM This is an interview with Harry Harmon (HH), former vice-chancellor for physical planning and development, and later executive vice-chancellor. It is being conducted by Lawrence de Graaf (LD). It is being done on 10 July, 1987 in Mr. Harmon’s home in Rancho Bernardo, California. LD: Mr. Harmon, it’s typical to begin these interviews with a bit of biographical background. You were born in 1918 in San Francisco? HH: That is correct. LD: How long did you live there? HH: I lived there until I was four years old. LD: And then where did you move? HH: We moved to Los Angeles, and I received all of my education in Los Angeles. I went to grammar school, John Burroughs Jr. High, and Los Angeles High School. I received my advanced education at the University of Southern California. LD: And were your degrees in architecture? HH: My degree is in architecture, a Bachelor of Architecture. I graduated in 1941. LD: Then did you go into the military? HH: After graduating from the university I worked for about six months in San Francisco and Oakland. That was the later part of 1941. In December of 1941 a friend of mine and I decided we would go to Honolulu and work there. I left my job on the fifth of December. We were scheduled to sail on the tenth of December. Pearl Harbor was bombed on the seventh, and I decided immediately that I would join the military, the navy. My friend, in fact, two friends of mine, went to Honolulu. In February, 1942, I received a commission as an ensign in the United States Navy but was not called to active duty until September of 1942. In the meantime I worked in the Los Angeles area, once as a junior naval architect in San Pedro and later for a bank. I did some work for architectural offices. HARMON 2 LD: When did you leave the military? HH: I was in the military for about three years and left active duty in 1945. I joined the Naval reserve. In 1950 I was recalled to active duty, and went to Korea for two years. I was released from active duty in 1952 and returned to civilian life but continued in the military as a naval reservist. I retired in 1978 as a captain in the United States Naval Reserve. LD: Now I noticed in 1948 you went to work at UCLA as a project architect. Was that your first professional-level architecture job? HH: No. When I came out of the service after World War II, I went to work for an architectural firm in Los Angeles as a draftsman doing architectural work. Right after the war building materials were in short supply. The nation hadn’t really gotten back to a civilian economy. We did a series of designs and drawings which did not come into fruition because of uncertainties on bidding and uncertainties on the availability of building materials. At that particular juncture the forty-four person firm that I worked for had been reduced to about five of us, and things were still pretty slow. The architect had received an offer to do a project at UCLA, and the University at that time was beginning to expand their own architectural department. My employer told me that it was perfectly acceptable if I stayed with him, or I might be interested in a job at UCLA. I went to UCLA, took that position, and became a staff project architect about 1948. LD: Now what exactly are the functions of a project architect? HH: The situation that existed at UCLA was that money was being appropriated by the legislature to build buildings, expand the campus, and prepare for the influx of students that would be coming in under the GI Bill of Rights. There was a tremendous building program. The University hired private architects to design these buildings, but they needed some kind of a staff at the University to deal with the architects, to talk their language and work through the budgets and other things to bring concerted effort to create the buildings that were desired and for which money had been appropriated. LD: So in effect you talked with the faculty or administrators who wanted the buildings, and then converted their language to the . . . HH: That’s right. We worked on the programs and then translated them into architectural language. HARMON 3 LD: This is interesting because long before the state colleges got out from under the Division of Architecture you’re saying that the UC system was not bound to use the state Division of Architecture? HH: The University had a certain autonomy that they exercised over the years and fought for very vigorously. They were never saddled with the obligation to use the state Division of Architecture to design their buildings. They never used the state Division of Architecture; they always used private architects. LD: Now these buildings must have been after the old central group, Powell Hall, Royce Hall, and so forth. One thing that Charles Luckman raised— we’ve interviewed him among others— he used UCLA’s old campus versus its very eclectic later buildings as an example of his views of a common building vocabulary* Did you have any such master plan or common building vocabulary at UCLA? HH: Yes. I think my feeling is that probably the University of California system set the example for what has happened throughout the country. What UCLA was confronted with was, as you say, the basic early buildings that existed as the central core, and the prospect of new structures to be built in a different age, a different era. Something had to be done to keep everything together to look like it was a well thought out master-planned community. A couple of things occurred. The University, in addition to the staff which I was on and the project architect— well, we called them the project architect, and that may become a little confusing with the terminology, but that is the architect that actually did the building design— in addition, the University hired a consulting architect, or a master plan architect. That consulting architect, the master plan architect, was charged with designing the total campus plan, based on an academic program for the campus. He addressed such things as massing of the buildings, locations of buildings, vocabulary of buildings, materials, etc. Each project that came on line reflected careful thought in its location, its height and mass, its vocabulary of materials and its relationship to the older buildings. We had a saying, "A new building must live in compatibility with its neighbors.” It should not be a single expression of an individual architect having an ego trip to create his monument. You can see the results of these ego trips by architects throughout the world. There is a big controversy now at the Louvre in Paris where a very, very modern building addition, a glass pyramid, is being set in the courtyard. The design and compatibility HARMON 4 are very controversial. The issue of compatibility was addressed by staff architects, which I represented, the project architects who designed the building, and the master plan architect. We worked in concert to create an end result that we hoped everyone could be proud of. LD: And each UC campus had, by the 1940s or 1950s, such a master plan? HH: Yes. Each one had a master plan architect. And each campus had an in-house staff. The staffs in those times were relatively large. I would say that the staff on the campus at UCLA was probably in the neighborhood of forty or fifty people. But they did a lot of things that subsequently CSUC chose not to do. For example, UCLA had three or four electrical engineers. There were three or four mechanical engineers. There was a whole inspection staff. They had a drafting room staffed with draftsmen that did smaller jobs and remodeling jobs. In essence, it was a mini-architectural office, although they never did the large buildings. They did the small things. There were landscape architects. As we discuss what happened at the California State University System, you will see some sharp differences in how things were approached. LD: New obviously much of this must have sunk in, since you worked there from 1948 until 1962, except for your Korean War experience. Did you, when you came into the state college system, try to bring a lot of these UC practices into the state colleges? HH: Yes, I think that some of that had already been instituted the first six months prior to the date I joined the state colleges. The Donahoe Act, creating the governance structure for the state college system, was implemented in 1961. LD: In 1960. HH: I went to work for CSUC, at the beginning of 1962. Some of the procedures had already been set into place. Charles Luckman had been involved in it, and Harry Brakebill, on temporary assignment from San Francisco State, had been involved in it. There was some looking at how the other systems handled their programs. When I came I brought with me, as anyone does, the experience that I had gathered over a considerable period of time with the University. LD: How did you come to leave the UC system and get into the state college system? HARMON 5 HH: It was very interesting, as I think back. My boss, Carl McEIvy, was the campus architect at UCLA and I was the senior architect, so I was not in total charge of the UCLA campus. There was a campus architect, which was the chief executive officer of that group. There was a senior architect in charge of the medical center, and I was the senior architect in charge of the rest of the campus. Carl McEIvy came to me one day, and he said, "Harry, I’m thinking of leaving." I asked, "Where are you going?" He said, "Well, I’ve been interviewed by the California State Colleges to take their job." We had a discussion. Of course that opened an avenue for me, because at least then I had an opportunity to be the campus architect. A short period of time later he came to me and said, "No, I’m not going to take that job." That was fine. So I figured we were back to normal. About two weeks later I got a call from the California State Colleges, and they said they would like to talk to me about the possibility of a job at the California State Colleges. I had no reason to want to change jobs. I was perfectly happy, I was doing the things I felt I was doing well, and was comfortable. However, I said I would come to be interviewed. I went to the CSC offices that were then in Inglewood, and I met with Don Leiffer, Richardson— can’t recall his first name— LD: John Richardson. HH: — and with Chancellor Buell Gallagher. We had a very, very friendly talk. We talked about my background and experience, what they were looking for in their organization, etc. We said goodbye, and they said they would be back to me. And I said fine. I guess my interview was on Tuesday, the early part of the week. On Friday afternoon I received a call from John Richardson saying to me that he would like to offer me the job. I was now confronted with a real dilemma. I hadn’t really gone to the interview to get the job, and I was suddenly confronted with a decision. 1 simply told him, "I appreciate your offer of a job, and I’ll have to think about it over the weekend. I’ll be back to you." We didn’t talk about dollars, we didn’t talk about anything except that they wanted to offer me the job. I thought about it, and on Monday or Tuesday I called John and said I would like to come out and talk to them again. I went to their offices to meet with them. We talked about remuneration, responsibilities, authority, organization, etc. I took the job, and within two weeks on January 21, 1962, I began work with the California State Colleges. LD: That position was called the facilities planner? HARMON 6 HH: It was called chief of facilities planning, a title that I disliked. I remember talking to one of my navy colleagues, and I said, "You knew, I’m taking a job. I’m going from a senior architect to a chief of facilities planning." I said, "Chief is not a title that I really like." He told me, "Well, you have to remember other things. Always remember there’s a chief of naval operations, chief executive officer, there’s a chief of staff, and there’s a lot of other titles that include chief." But it was a term that I didn’t care for, I guess you could say I just wasn’t enthusiastic about it. LD: You took a position that Harry Brakebill had filled on sort of an interim basis. HH: I took the job that Harry Brakebill had filled on an interim basis. That is right. It is my understanding that his was just a temporary position, that it was a holding action using his expert knowledge in business and organizational ability. He had some facility experience, I believe on the San Francisco campus. He was a natural to come in. He performed his work, as I recall, in Sacramento. The timing of my coming to the system coincided with the move from Sacramento to Inglewood. To the best of my recollection, Harry never worked in that office. By the time I came to join the staff, he had hired the facility planners. And I always joke, he had hired my secretary. I never realized until much later that she had started work the day before I came, and she ran my life for twenty years. (laughter) I always thought that she had all that experience before. I always joked with her about this later. She had one day seniority on me, and exercised it to the ultimate extent. LD: It’s interesting you have just said that UCLA alone had an architect’s office with about fifty people in it, and here you were, the chief of facilities planning for the whole state college system. How big was your staff? HH: Six. At that time we had fifteen campuses to handle. One of the things my colleagues at UCLA said that I was absolutely crazy to go from a staff of forty or fifty on one campus down to a staff of six with responsibility for fifteen campuses. In retrospect, I guess I began to feel that we may have been a little understaffed, but certainly that UCLA was overstaffed. Maybe not overstaffed for the things that they were doing, but they were doing things in my opinion that really were not necessary. We didn’t hire a drafting staff, which they had. We didn’t hire mechanical or electrical engineers, or landscape architects. We had facilities planners, which were somewhat similar to their project architects, but in much HARMON 7 fewer numbers. We did not hire building inspectors. We contracted out for the inspection through the Office of the State Architect. On that basis, we did things differently. We made some conscious decisions. For example, one of the early decisions we made, having had the years of experience at UCLA, was based on my feeling that mechanical and electrical engineers checking the drawings of professionals that were licensed to do the work really caused more problems than it provided solutions. We started our organizational plan on the premise that we contract with competent professionals with the responsibility to provide professional work, and that it was not necessary to employ others to go through a plan check operation. We made it clear to those we contracted with that we were retaining them as professionals and responsibility is the hallmark of a professional. LD: The engineer or the architect? HH: The architect. So, therefore, that was a monumental decision. Subsequently it was interesting that our system was held up as an example to the Los Angeles County system, under the Board of Supervisors. I was asked to appear before the County Board of Supervisors to tell them what our

CSUDH Gerth Archives & Special Collections

Dorothy M. Knoell oral history interview, "State Colleges and the Department of Education", Origins of the California State University System, 1987

Author: Knoell Dorothy M.: interviewee; Grenier, Judson A.: interviewer; California State University, Dominguez Hills. California State University Archives: publisher; California State University, Fullerton. Oral History Program: publisher;
Publication venue
Publication date: 10/06/1987
Field of study

Knoell was staff in the Division of State Colleges and Teacher Education.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 Dorothy Knoell Interviewed by Judsort 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 DOROTHY M. KNOELL STATE COLLEGES AND THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 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 CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES ORAL HISTORY PILOT PROJECT ON THE ORIGINS OF THE CSU SYSTEM This oral interview of Dorothy M. Knoell (DK) took place on June 10, 1987 at her office at the California Postsecondary Education Commission [CPEC] in Sacramento as part of the on-going pilot project on the origins of the California State University. The interviewer is Judson A. Grenier (JG), professor of history, California State University, Dominguez Hills. Miss Knoell was a staff member of the Division of State Colleges and Teacher Education of the state Department of Education, which supervised the state colleges prior to assumption of responsibility by the new state Board of Trustees in 1961. Her topic is the administration of the state colleges before and during the adoption of the Master Plan. JG: I wonder if you could give me a little bit of your own background. We like to do this in all of our interviews in a routine way. Where were you born and reared? DK: New York. JG: New York. DK: Yes, on Long Island. JG: Oh. DK: It was said that New York did not have good public higher education at that time. New York City did, but we were not allowed to partake of New York City’s offerings. So I went out of state then to go to college to Douglass College— the women’s college of Rutgers in New Jersey— and then wandered to the University of Connecticut for a master’s degree. JG: What was your master’s in? DK: Well, it was in foreign languages and teaching of foreign languages at Connecticut. I’d had French and German as an undergraduate and then picked up Spanish. JG: Do you still speak French? DK: Not well. I’ve been to France a few summers recently, and I can communicate pretty well and I can read, but there’s just not the opportunity to speak French here. But we had very, very excellent foreign languages instruction at Douglass College; we had foreign language houses, and I KNOELL 2 worked in the departments. I was very much immersed in it, but it was not a very good field to be in to earn a living. JG: Did you teach in that field? DK: Well, you see, I was in secondary schools and I just hated it. I was out after a few experiences in some of the best schools. I decided that was not for me. I sort of had to wait for higher education to become a field of study. I went straight through to the doctorate at the University of Chicago without really stopping along the way, basically, from the baccalaureate on through. JG: You could do that? DK: Yes. And without going into debt, which is a fabulous thing, (laughter) I didn’t make any money, but at least I didn’t wind up owing when I got through. JG: Right. DK: Then followed some postdoctoral research at the University of Wisconsin for a couple of years at Madison. JG: Oh, really? DK: Yes, but as I say, it was a long time before higher education became a field. It was teacher education at that point, and there wasn’t any real field of higher education until some years later, although I decided that what I really wanted to do was get into research in higher education. I was in measurement, evaluation, research, curriculum, and so forth at Chicago. JG: After you left Wisconsin, where did you go? DK: Well, I wound up as a research psychologist for the Air Force for four years. (laughter) Very, very exciting, it was marvelous. We had some of the best young research social psychologists in the country as part of our unit, and research sociologists as well. That was again post-doctoral training in a way to be able to work with that group. And you know, the Air Force goals were not exactly mine. That’s when I got back into education, and went from Texas to the University of Pittsburgh for a year where I was working in the Schools of the Health Professions again, curriculum evaluation, and so forth, very fascinating. It was the first time that they tried to integrate the various schools of the health professions instead of having medicine over here and dentistry over here and something else over there. But I hated Pittsburgh, KNOELL 3 Pennsylvania, with a passion, and set out for California, and wound up at the state colleges. JG: What drew you out here? DK: Well, I was looking for a job in higher education and through Chicago . . . Ralph Tyler remembered that Jim Enochs was out here in state colleges in the state Department of Education, and so that was the connection. He picked me up; JG: Was Jim Enochs from the University of Chicago? DK: Yes. I didn’t know him; he was earlier than I was by a good deal. JG: So what year did you start working for the state Department of Education? DK: I came in the summer of 1955, I believe. JG: Just about the time of the Restudy? DK: No, wait a minute, it must have been about 1956. JG: Oh, right after. DK: That’s right, in the summer of 1956. JG: That was an exciting time to come on board. DK: Oh yes, oh yes. And see, Hubert Semans was on the staff of the department, at that point— probably one of the most dominant people on the staff. As I understand it, he thought after the Restudy that I would be coming out to be staff to him, and it didn’t turn out that way. I don’t think that our personalities meshed terribly well. I had a lot of respect for him, but as I say, it was not . . . JG: I’ve been reading, through some of your responsibilities, and I’m overwhelmed by the various areas you were in. DK: We did everything; we were a very, very, very small staff. JG: Your title was Consultant in State College Curricula. DK: Yes, well, that was a civil service title. JG: But so far as I can see, you were into almost everthing from instructional television to nursing to a . . . DK: admissions. KNOELL 4 JG: Computers, admissions, transfer policy, DK: Oh, absolutely. JG: Quite incredible. * - ? DK: Well, we had a very, very small staff. And the other thing that was incredible was that I had the opportunity to work from initiating things at the lowest level on up the ladder. I would work with the advisory committees from the colleges on up through the presidents. I would take items to the Presidents* Council [Meeting of the State College Presidents and Division Staff] and to the state Board of Education, so I would see the development of policies and programs every step of the way. JG: You were part of the Division of State Colleges and Teacher Education? DK: Yes. JG: From the beginning, from the first time you came out? DK: Yes. JG: I just read over a few of your reports; let me remind you of a few of them. One was "The Need for Instructional Television in the State Colleges.” Another was "Analysis of the Needs for Electronic Computers." DK: Those were two in the same year, if you can believe it. JG: Both in 1958. DK: That was quite a story; that was a fluke. Those were leading primarily to budget decisions, trying to get money into the budgets for large numbers of the colleges, both to get the instructional television equipment they wanted, and the computer equipment. We had sort of lost, year after year after year on this one. JG: I see. DK: And I was very angry. Again, I had a chance, I think, to meet with the Director of Finance and with his staff to plead our case. I don*t know what I said but I was so disgusted after being turned down one more time on the budget items that the top brass said, "Okay, you’re going to have a chance to meet with the Director of Finance on your own, and defend these things." JG: And did you? KNOELL 5 DK: Yes, and it’s a crazy story, because Roy Simpson went with us, and [J. Burton] Vasche, who was head ' of the state colleges. I remember going down to the basement of the garage with Simpson’s limousine and trying to figure out where I was supposed to sit, you know, with the driver or with these people going to meet with the Director of Finance. The Director of Finance had his own agenda, but really, looking back, it was a fairly historic occasion. Because the University of California with Glenn Seaborg had come in with a very huge proposal to take over the whole instructional television area in a way that only the University of California can do, and the Director of Finance saw our relatively modest request as an opportunity to, in a sense, stop the University, because he wasn’t convinced that their heart was in it in terms of the University’s using this tool. So not only that, but after our conference he said, "I want you back on Tuesday morning when Glenn Seaborg and the University people are coming in to present their budget for television, and I want you state college people to be there.” Of course the University was outraged, but we got our money in the end. JG: Good. Then I noticed too . . . you remember, they passed the National Defense Education Act after Sputnik stirred everybody up. DK: Oh yes, sure. JG: And you were the state Department of Education’s representative at a regional meeting and were elected secretary of that group. DK: I don’t remember what the name of that was. JG: It was a meeting on implementation of the National Defense Education Act. DK: I just remember my involvement in student financial aid, because that was the first time that the state colleges would have federal student aid. JG: Student loans. DK: With the federal loans I had a terrible time, because the state college presidents didn’t want to have anything to do with it. They felt that we didn’t need student financial aid for the state colleges. I had to talk them into it. JG: Really? DK: Into participating in the federal aid program. And the legislature didn’t trust them, so the legislature offered KNOELL 6 to put up the matching money that we needed, instead of having to get it from private sources. JG: That’s very interesting. Did the presidents oppose it because it might mean federal control? DK: No, no, they just felt there was no great need for financial aid— colleges were virtually free, people commuted— why would they need financial aid? JG: At any rate, I noticed that then you did a report on the status of student loan legislation as it worked its way through the legislature. DK: Yes. You see, the other problem we had was that the presidents turned it over to the business officers to administer the student loan program, and that was not a very happy kind of a situation, either. They were making other kinds of loans to students while they got their federal money, and it was a tough time. JG: During that same period of time, you were a member of a committee on research in the state colleges chaired by Albert Graves. DK: Yes. JG: This was the committee that developed guidelines for implementing. . . DK: . . . faculty research. JG: The Board of Education adopted a policy permitting research, in essence; do you remember all that? DK: Yes, yes. JG: You came up with a statement called "Guidelines for the Conduct and Administration of Research.” DK: Yes, yes. JG: And you recommended that four types of research be permitted in state colleges: "community service," "institutional," "graduate programs," and "individual faculty"? DK: Yes. JG: That’s broader than we have now. KNOELL 7 DK: I know. You see, I was trying hard, (laughter) But, as I say, it was never funded in a way that made it possible, and the presidents were not unanimous on this either. I remember most vividly the mam from Chico saying his faculty would rather go home and tend to their roses than to do research— it was not something that they wanted. That was one of the problems, I think, in working with the presidents. It was almost impossible to get them united on anything that they wanted. Everyone wanted something different. And we’d keep saying that if only you’d get together and say that this has a number one, number two, number three priority, we’d stand a much better chance of getting some improvements related to budgeting. JG: Well, that was a real breakthrough; we’ve been trying to get ’’community service” ever since. (laughter) And then you got involved in the nursing curriculum, and we’ve been involved in that ever since. DK: Oh dear, nursing and social work, I could never figure out which one I disliked more. JG: Then, also in that same period of time, you were working with the deans and test officers to obtain data on admissions requirements and success rate of our people. DK: Oh yes. JG: And [A.] Alan Post was asking nasty questions (laughter), and you wrote an answer to his questions that was so brilliant that the presidents voted formally to congratulate you on it. DK: Oh gosh, I have no recollection of that. JG: There are a couple of other committees, too, that I thought I’d show you. One of them is a study of junior college transfer problems . . . DK: Oh really, I don’t even remember doing that . . . JG: . . . chaired by a man named Donald Watson. DK: Yes. JG: The other one was a Committee on Changes in the Administrative Code . . . DK: Ah, that was a dull one, I’m sure. JG: . . . chaired by Mr. Hector Lee. KNOELL 8 DK: Oh yes, he’s a dear guy. Is he still alive, do you know? JG: I don’t know that. DK: He was very instrumental in the work, in that he was working with us on leave from— was he at Sonoma then or Chico?— and did a great deal of work, although he was not a regular member of the staff. He worked with us on many, many things. There wasn’t much I didn’t do. JG: Yes, it’s really quite incredible. At any rate, could I ask you about your co-workers? DK: Oh, sure. JG: I don’t know much about them. DK: As long as you don’t quote me by name. JG: No, of course not. First of all, of course, Roy Simpson— did you work with him? DK: Well, I noticed in going over the questions you sent me . . . they made some assumptions that were not too valid in that Roy Simpson was pretty remote from the state colleges. Now he may have worked quietly behind the scenes in different ways. But I don’t really ever— and I was at almost all the presidents’ meetings— recall his meeting with the presidents’ group. Of course, he would have been at the state board meetings as superintendent, but Vasche, who was head of the division, met with the presidents. But I knew Roy Simpson. We had a warm personal relationship, including after he retired, because I was at all the board meetings, and I had to carry an awful lot of the items, partly because I got along with people, and didn’t irritate them, and tended to get things to go the way we wanted them to, so I had a better relationship with people like him than might be called for in my level of job. JG: So he didn’t actively participate in running the state colleges? DK: Not actively. I’m sure that behind the scenes he would sit down with the presidents, because he had awful, awful problems, as they still do— as with the president of Long Beach and Humboldt, and so forth— but I can’t recall, frankly, his sitting with what was called the Council of Presidents. JG: Now, Burton Vasche was the principal administrator. Is he still alive? KNOELL 9 DK: No. I don’t know how much you know about his story. He was a very fine, honorable man, but ineffective as the head of that division. And finally, I’d say, and I think it’s pretty much true that Stanislaus, which was his home territory— his family and his wife’s family were very strong down in that area— was really created as a place for him to go. JG: I see. DK: He did leave the division before the end. He died of a brain tumor about two years after he moved down there to be president. JG: Was his background in higher education, and did he have a doctorate in that field? DK: I suppose, but he was a— I don’t like to use the word ’’nonentity"

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Caymanianness, history, culture, tradition, and globalisation : assessing the dynamic interplay between modern and traditional(ist) thought in the Cayman Islands

Author: Williams Christopher A.
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The research undertaken for this largely qualitative dissertation draws on newspaper articles, oral histories, historical documentation, open-ended interviews, and to a lesser extent, questionnaires, in the effort to ultimately confirm the extent to which the benefitting forces of globalization have fractured any existing traditional-historical cultural body of knowledge and expression among the Caymanian people. Indeed, by 2009 some Caymanians had long been verbally denouncing the social and cultural ills of globalization – inclusive of multiculturalism – on their so-called traditional, unassuming way of life, some of them clamoring for an extensive purge of the many foreign nationals in “their” Cayman Islands. Yet, other Caymanians have become somewhat invested in the idea of multicultural “oneness” ostensibly for the sake of peaceful coexistence, harmony and prosperity as these work towards the promotion of a global, borderless cultural awareness. This dissertation relies on theoretical frames centred both on the discrete natures of, and the dualistic struggle between, these two opposing ideological-cultural forces. That this struggle is taking place in the present age, I anticipate the ways in which more modern understandings, which are potentially open to liberating subjectivities, must clash with “historical”, xenophobic and nationalistic viewpoints, viewpoints which have constantly proven contradictory given their adherents’ complacent acceptance of, and participation in, a localised economic prosperity substantively dependent on foreign input. Thus in aggregate terms, this dissertation pinpoints the various effects of an evolving scheme of values and counter-values on an ideologically torn Caymanianness whose contradictory traditional half is especially fighting for its “cultural purity” in an era where its ‘reinvented’ logic is being more and more regarded as anachronistic and somewhat irrational

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