8 research outputs found
Walter W. Stiern oral history interview, Origins of The California State University, 1987
No full textOral history interview with a primary focus on the origins of the California State University System and the 1960 master plan for California higher education. Steirn was a former state senator.Transcripts and cassette tapes of oral history interviews with various individuals involved in the formation of the California State University system.Origins of
The California State
University
Walter Stiern
Interviewed
by
Lawrence B. de Graaf
An Oral History Project
of the
Archives
;
California State University Archives
CSU Dominguez Hills
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
Oral History Pilot Project on the Origins of the CSU System
WALTER STIERN
THE STATE LEGISLATURE AND THE
CALIFORNIA STATE COLLEGES
Interview Conducted by
Lawrence B. de Graaf
in 1987
Processed by CSU Fullerton Oral History Program
1988-1989
COPYRIGHT
This is a transcription of an interview conducted for the
California State University Archives under a grant from the
Office of the Chancellor, CSU.
Scholars are welcome to utilize short excerpts from any of
the transcriptions without obtaining permission as long as
proper credit is given to the interviewee, interviewer, and the
institution sponsoring the project. All uses of this
manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between the CSU
Archives and the interviewee. Therefore, scholars must obtain
permission from California State University Archives before
making more extensive use of the transcription and related
materials.
None of these materials may be duplicated or reproduced by
any party except the California State University Archives.
However, because it is the goal of this project to preserve and
make accessible significant documentation relevant to the
history of the State Colleges, copies of any unrestricted
transcriptions may be obtained at cost by writing to the CSU
Systemwide Archivist at California State University, Dominguez
Hills, Carson, California, 90747.
Copyright @ 1989 by the Board of Trustees
of The California State University
PREFACE
The purpose of this oral history pilot project is to
record and make available to researchers using the California
State University Archives the reminiscences of individuals who
participated in the creation of the California State Colleges
from 1959 to 1965.
The creation of the California State Colleges in 1961
united fifteen formerly independent colleges into a single,
identifiable system, with its own Board of Trustees and a
Chancellor to serve as chief executive officer. Using a
formula which stressed systemwide planning in the allocation of
resources and programs, The California State Colleges sought to
offer Californians quality higher education at reasonable
cost. The key to the success of the California State
University was the decision to adapt a plan, incorporated into
the Donahoe Higher Education Act of 1960, dividing higher
education into three distinctly separate segments. Under the
act, the California State Colleges were mandated to emphasize
undergraduate and master’s level programs, while the University
of California campuses were to emphasize graduate education,
and the California Community Colleges were to focus on
vocational training and college preparation.
The California State University, starting from a base of
fifteen campuses and 95,000 students in 1961, has grown to
where it now provides a wide variety of innovative programs to
more than 320,000 students on nineteen campuses. It is the
largest system of higher education in the United States and is
known as one of the strongest institutions of higher education
in the country.
In September 1979, the Board of Trustees created the
California State University and Colleges Historical Archives,
to be housed on the Dominguez Hills campus. Since its
establishment, the Archives, as a systemwide project, has been
jointly supported by the Chancellor’s Office and CSU Dominguez
Hills, through the funding of a professional archivist.
The Archives currently houses a collection of materials
received from a variety of sources. These include the
Chancellor’s Office, the CSU Academic Senate, and private
individuals who had previous dealings with the CSU, such as
former Chancellor Glenn Dumke, former Trustee Paul Spencer, and
others. Consequently, the Archives holds some personal papers
as well as official systemwide documents. As part of its
collection policy, the Archives also has a responsibility to
collect individual recollections and oral histories of the
early System and pre-System years.
iii
Short-term goals of this oral history project are to make
available the recollections and reminiscences of former members
of the Board of Trustees, the State College-University of
California Liaison Committee, and the Master Plan Survey Team,
as well as other individuals who participated in the formation
of the California State Colleges from 1959 to 1965.
For the long run, the project has three purposes. First,
it will help to increase interest in the history and
accomplishments of the California State University. Next, it
will, hopefully, be a tool to aid in the acquisition of
additional materials concerning the System now in private
hands. Finally, it will serve as a model and learning device
to develop a more comprehensive oral history program. If the
pilot project is successful, as many interviews as possible
will be conducted under the expanded program with the System’s
retired trustees, former vice-chancellors and college
presidents, current senior management, state legislators, and
other important individuals who have been influential in the
growth and development of the state university.
Funding for the project is provided by the Office of Vice
Chancellor, Administration, Dr. Herbert L. Carter. We thank
the interviewee for generously giving of his time. We also
acknowledge the work of the Oral History Program at CSU
Fullerton for the use of its facilities in processing this
interview. Transcribing was performed by Shirley de Graaf,
proofreading and index by Lynn Finger, and final preparation by
Shirley de Graaf.
Lawrence B. de Graaf Jacquelyn K. Sundstrand
Judson A. Grenier CSU Archivist
Project Co-Directors
MEMBERS, CSU ARCHIVES ADVISORY BOARD
Betty Blackman
John Brownell
Mayer Chapman
Robert W. Cherny
Lawrence B. de Graaf
Glenn S. Dumke
Donald R. Gerth
Judson Grenier
Arthur Hall
Claudia H. Hampton
James Harris
Louis H. Heilbron
Donald B. Leiffer
Gloria Lothrop
Theodore Meriam
Carol J. Numrich
Morris Polan
W. Ann Reynolds
Phillip V. Sanchez
John Smart
Jacquelyn K. Sundstrand
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WALTER STTERN
ca. 1972
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT ON THE
ORIGINS OF THE CSU SYSTEM
This is an interview with former State Senator Walter Stiern
(WS). It is being conducted by Lawrence de Graaf (LD) in Mr.
Stiern’s home in Bakersfield, California on September 18, 1987.
LD: Walter, first we want to get a few biographical insights
down. You were born in 1914 in San Diego?
WS: That is correct, in a school teacher family. My father was
a schoolteacher. He started teaching in San Diego, and
then came back to Bakersfield in 1920, which is his home
city where he grew up and went through school. My mother
was also a Bakersfield person. They met in San Diego,
married, and I was born down there but came back here when
I was a child five years old. My father taught in the
Bakersfield city schools, in what was called Kern County
Union High School, which is now Bakersfield High School.
He was a manual arts teacher. It was one of the biggest
high schools in the state of California. The high school
when I was in it was 6,000 students, on an eleven-block
square campus, a very large school in a city where you
wouldn’t expect one that size. He taught forty-four years
before he retired. His name was Walter Stiern, and it was
kind of a "Goodbye, Mr. Chips" when he left that high
school. I chose the field of veterinary medicine. I ran
into the problem of no veterinary school in the state of
California, so I had to go out of state.
LD: Oh, that’s why you went to Washington.
WS: The only school on the Pacific slope, this side of the
Rocky Mountains, was Washington State College, as it was
called at that time. It is now Washington State
University, at Pullman. I graduated from that institution
in 1938 and came back to Bakersfield to practice. Then I
had a reserve commission and found myself pulled into the
army when the United States went to war with Germany and
Japan and that commission was activated. I had the unique
experience in being a veterinarian in the United States
[Army] Air Corps, which became the United States Air
Force. It was a strange place for a veterinarian.
LD: Yes, did you practice your trade there?
WS: Well, veterinarians in that segment of the military are
part of the medical department of the army; veterinarians,
STIERN 2
like dentists and nurses, were under the surgeon. I was
heavily into food procurement for the military and the
allies of the military. I did that in this country for a
number of years, and then finally went to the China-Burma-
India theater, and did that there, which is a much
different experience of gathering food. The theory at that
time was to try to subsist locally and take a load off the
United States, because we were pushing food into Murmansk,
where we reversed lendlease to the Soviets and other allies
at that time. I had the unique experience of being in
India, which made a tremendous impression on me. The thing
that made the impression on me was coming first-hand to
grips with poverty, ignorance, and disease, which is a blow
to somebody who has never seen that kind of thing before.
I was connected with the University of Calcutta School on
Tropical Disease, and I was also procuring food for
American and allied troops in India. I was also tacked
onto an operation which was made up of mules that were used
to move supplies into Burma for our unit that was known as
Merrill’s Marauders. So I was doing two things in that
part of the world. When I came home I was deeply impressed
with the idea that I sure didn’t want anything to happen in
my country that would ever put you in a position of
experiencing these horrible things you see in India. I did
a lot of thinking about that. I went back into practice
when I came home, but I got to thinking about how do you
keep from having things like that happen, where can you use
your education and what you have to the most good? I came
to the conclusion that would have to be in the California
legislature, that you would have to capture one of those
120 seats if you were going to do anything about it in the
state of California, unless one went to Congress. I looked
at where I was in age, and how many years I had to go if I
had tried for Congress. So I tried for the state
legislature, and I won a state senate seat up there,
replacing a man in this area who was very elderly and
senile and who was some eighty-three years of age, and
wanting to run again to represent this area. I went to
spend four to eight years thinking maybe that’s all I was
going to be there.
But I got terribly, terribly involved with education,
particularly with higher education, and I spent by far most
of my time in that area. I guess a mentor, a little bit to
me, was Assemblywoman Dorothy Donahoe, who was a
Bakersfield woman. I found myself getting into not just
committees that affected the economy of this area, like
agriculture and the need for water resources, but I spent
an enormous amount of time on education. I finally wound
up by being the chairman of the subcommittee of the Senate
Committee on Finance that handled the budgets for higher
STIERN 3
education, which included the budgets for the University of
California, the California State University System, and
then the separate organizations like the Maritime Academy
and the other state-owned special schools. Then I spent a
lot of time in scholarships and grants and that type of
thing. I found it very, very satisfying, and I stayed
there to a point where I thought it was time to change and
rotate out, because that is the way the system works. You
replace somebody, and somebody will replace you, and I
think that’s what keeps it vital. The legislature has to
work with balanced budgets, which Congress does not, and
so we have to be prudent the way we work. We put enormous
amounts of money into schools, and schools are like a
sponge. With the growth of California it takes more and
more money and planning for the future. When I came back I
decided not to go back into practice. I kept myself busy
with a lot of things that I am doing: writing, and I’m
going to do some lecturing out at Cal State with students
in political science and high school teachers coming back
for advanced work in economics on how the state plans
things out, and how they work. That will take a lot of my
time.
LD: I’ll bet, yes. Some additional questions. You were in
World War II in the Army Air Corps on the China-Burma-India
theater. So is the man I interviewed this morning, Don
Hart. Did you two ever run across each other there?
WS: No. It was a huge theater and there were a lot of people
in it. Don Hart and I are high school classmates. I’ve
watched his career as a businessman with interest. He was
a close friend of former Governor Edmund ["Pat”] Brown, and
was appointed to the Board of Trustees once the system was
put together. He gave a lot of time and energy to that.
Even after he was off the board he also did a lot of work
contributing to it in helping develop the system to where
it is today.
LD: Is there anything in your early career that you can look
back on besides, as you say, your horror at the poverty you
saw in India, that may explain the interest you took in
education?
WS: Yes, because I feel very strongly that every child in the
state of California get what the intent of the California
constitution states, and that is that the first bid on tax
dollars is for the education of the youth of the state to
the maximum of what that might be. If the child is gifted,
wonderful, you do the most you can for that. If a child is
retarded or physically handicapped or has other disadvantages,
that that child be trained and taught to as
STIERN 4
great a degree as that child can be taught. And since
California is a state made up of many ethnic groups and
racial minorities, and is at this moment in the process of
becoming a state which is made up [primarily] of
minorities, that those minorities be trained, taught,
qualified, and made ready to take their proper place in
things if this state is to remain strong. An example is
the Hispanic population which in some parts of California
is already predominant. It will be heavier as we go on
into the next ten or fifteen years. As they get ready and
willing to take over many spots in public service they are
going to have to have have every tool they can gather to
work with, to be successful in doing it. So I am a heavy
proponent that the minorities— I don’t like the term— but
the total of all of the minorities will be the majority in
California, and anybody that doesn’t see that has got their
head in the sand. So you do everything to make a better
education possible, because there are so many of these
families never have had a member of their family on
campus. That’s why I feel so strongly, particularly
towards the community college movement, which was a savior
for myself when I was at that age to do remedial work so I
could go on to a university. I had some problems with
mathematics and I was too young when I went into college,
and it was a lifesaver for me. I recognize what the
community college system can do in making adjustments and
taking care of deficiencies so that you can go on to a
senior university or campus. So that’s why I threw myself
into that area as much as I could.
LD: Now you said that eventually you got the feeling that only
by going into the legislature could you realize some of the
specific needs you felt you had to address. Did you work
your way in in any way, or suddenly in 1958 did you run for
office without having had much prior experience or work in
any political campaigns or organizations?
WS: That’s a good question, because people often say, "How did
you ever get interested in this thing to start with?" It
comes as a surprise to people. I had never held public
office at any level. I had no knowledge of how to run a
campaign. In fact, I wasn’t even a member of a political
party.
LD: Oh, you weren’t?
WS: Not until four years before I ran. And that was surprising
to a lot of people. "Declined to state" was the position I
was in. I voted regularly, but I had not associated myself
with the two major parties. Then when I realized that the
only way that you could possibly win an election was to
associate with one party or the other, the Democratic party
STIERN 5
and its platform seemed to fit the way I felt more than any
other, so I chose that. I never will forget how I ran for
office, if you can believe a person being this naive. I
just wrote a letter to every client that I had, not knowing
what party they were in, telling them that I didn’t know
what their politics were, but that I wanted to serve in the
legislature. I would do my best to serve— at that time
just Kern County was the senate district— but that I would
dedicate myself to the very best I could. On the basis of
a lot of trust from a lot of people, people who trusted me
as a veterinarian, and people who knew my father and
figured I might be something like he was, and I had three
brothers who had good reputations in the community, and a
lot of other things, and a lot of volunteer work, we ran a
primary and a general election for $12,500. You couldn’t
even begin to touch that today, because today it is taking
anywhere from two-thirds to a million dollars to win a
state senate seat. I think it’s horrible, it’s deplorable,
I don’t know what the answer to it is, but that’s the way
it is. So I ran, and I got pretty good support from both
parties.
LD: Did you cross-file?
WS: Yes, I did cross-file. As an example, the Cattlemen’s
Association, which is 99.9 percent Republican, supported
me, endorsed me, and helped me, on the basis that they saw
me as I had been on their ranch, and how I worked with them
as a veterinarian and tried to save them money and tried to
do things the best I could. And in their mind they
transferred, ’’Well, he was that precise about being a
veterinarian helping me with my livestock; I’m sure he
would do the same things if he was sitting in a legislative
seat.” It was some of that kind of a crossover that I got
from some of those kinds of people. I’m not going to tell
you I just swept the Republican pool; I didn’t do that.
But it didn’t hurt to have people on both sides helping you
when you are making a change from an old-timer who had been
there a long time to a new man starting out.
LD: Who was that old-timer who was your predecessor?
WS: Jess R. Dorsey.
LD: Was he a Republican?
WS: He was a Republican, he was a lawyer. He had been in a
long time, and he had one time served in the assembly,
years before he was in the senate. He was a successful
lawyer in Bakersfield, and he was at one time in the
district attorney’s office here. He was a well-known
figure and family. But he got to be quite elderly, and he
STIERN 6
got to be senile and he was forgetful and he wasn’t staying
on top of what the problems of this county were at the
time. It was just one of those things that developed. I
was in a very peculiar situation with this man, in that
even his own party wanted to replace him. They chose a
younger man whose name was Barney Gill, S. B. ’’Barney"
Gill, who was an attorney about thirty-six to thirty-seven
years old. The Republican party ran him against the
incumbent, if you can believe a thing like that. Then I
was running against him, and there was another man who ran
against me on the Democratic ticket. In the primary I came
out easily the winner of the four. A strange thing
happened three days before the general election. This old
gentleman was hospitalized for ten days, and died three
days before the general election day. So I went up against
a man who was dead. There were a lot of stories told about
how Stiern didn’t beat Dorsey, the undertaker did, except
that my totals were enormous compared to his in the general
and the primary. My first bill was one to correct that
situation if it happened ever again. Then I ran seven
times and I was elected seven times. Each time it was
comfortable. I didn’t have any close races. People
trusted me. I know what the reason is. It was the way my
father raised me, and I have always tried to do the best I
can. I never promised anything; you can’t. Any politician
who promises you this and that, watch out for that person,
because you don’t control the rest of the members of the
house you are working in. You can guide and cajole and try
to lead and show reason why they should do this and that
and the other thing, but they may go against you on a vote.
LD: If you didn’t promise anything, did you particularly make
education or educational issues a part of your campaign in
1958?
WS: Education was a part of my campaign, and the need for water
in this part of California and southern California was
another thing.
LD: This was before the state water plan wasn’t it?
WS: That’s right. The battle cry in this part of the state was
supplemental water now, because water was being mined out
from underneath faster than it was being replenished in a
highly agricultural area, the San Joaquin Valley, of which
Kern is the second [largest] agricultural county in the
nation next to Fresno. So trying to get the north and the
south off of dead center where they were, by being a
C
An Extended Interview: Between Theory and Practice
No full textThe article attempts to characterize the specific literary form of an extended interview. Relying on the research after 1945, the author evaluates various classification proposals and points to its crossgeneric features of non-fiction. He concentrates on the interviewee oriented character of the form and sees its potential in the broad thematic scope and the possibility to present or confront worldviews. Given the fact that the extended interview in Poland flourished in the 1990s, its heyday coincided with socio-political transformations. This success was due to the lifting of censorship and the emergence of publishing houses in the private [email protected] Różański, doktorant na Wydziale Filologicznym Uniwersytetu Szczecińskiego. Zainteresowania badawcze koncentruje wokół genologii i ewolucji wywiadów-rzek, których bohaterkami są kobiety. Ponadto bada recepcję twórczości pisarek i pisarzy polskich od przełomu XIX i XX wieku w praktyce szkolnej. Pracuje jako nauczyciel języka polskiego w liceum ogólnokształcącym.Wydział Filologiczny, Uniwersytet SzczecińskiBalbus Stanisław (2000), Zagłada gatunków, w: Genologia dzisiaj, red. W. Bolecki, I. Opacki, Warszawa: Instytut Badań Literackich PAN, s. 15–27.Czapliński Przemysław (1997), Ślady przełomu. O prozie polskiej 1976–1996, Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie.Czermińska Małgorzata (1987), Autobiografia i powieść, czyli pisarz i jego postacie, Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Morskie.Czermińska Małgorzata (1995), Autobiograficzne formy, w: Słownik literatury polskiej XX wieku, red. A. Brodzka i in., Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Ossolineum, s. 49–54.Czermińska Małgorzata (2000), Autobiograficzny trójkąt. Świadectwo, wyznanie i wyzwanie, Kraków: Universitas.Drzycimski Andrzej, Skutnik Tadeusz (1990), Gdańsk. Sierpień ’80, Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Aida.Głowiński Michał (1998), Gatunek literacki, w: M. Głowiński, T. Kostkiewiczowa, A. Okopień-Sławińska, J. Sławiński, Słownik terminów literackich, Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Ossolineum, s. 174–176.Głowiński Michał, Wołowiec Grzegorz (2018), Czas nieprzewidziany. Rozmowa-rzeka, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Wielka Litera.Główczewski Aleksander (2005), Poetyka i pragmatyka „rozmów z...”, Toruń: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek.Grochowski Grzegorz (2018), Pamięć gatunków. Ponowoczesne dylematy atrybucji gatunkowej, Warszawa: Instytut Badań Literackich PAN.Holmgren Beth (1990), O „Rozmowach” Witolda Gombrowicza, przeł. D. Gostyńska, „Pamiętnik Literacki”, z. 1, s. 75–106.Jarzębski Jerzy (1984), Kariera autentyku, w: J. Jarzębski, Powieść jako autokreacja, Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, s. 337–364.Kot Wiesław (1990), Rozmowa z pisarzem – reguły gry, „Czas Kultury”, nr 22–23, s. 7–11.Lubas-Bartoszyńska Regina (1993), Między autobiografią a literaturą, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.Łebkowska Anna (1993), Kariera „książki mówionej”, „Dekada Literacka”, nr 6, s. 1, 4.Łebkowska Anna (1994), Rozmowa z pisarzem-analiza gatunku, w: Kryzys czy przełom. Studia z historii i teorii literatury, red. M. Lubelska i A. Łebkowska, Kraków: Universitas, s. 175–187.Maciąg Kazimierz (2001), W kręgu problematyki „pamiętników mówionych”, Rzeszów: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Rzeszowskiego.Nycz Ryszard (2016), Sondowanie pamięci (5): być (z) sobą nie u siebie, w: Migracyjna pamięć, wspólnota, tożsamość, red. R. Sendyka, T. Sapota, R. Nycz, Warszawa: Instytut Badań Literackich PAN, s. 7–14.Ong Walter Jackson (1990), Przekształcanie się środków przekazu: mówiona książka, przeł. M.B. Fedewicz, „Pamiętnik Literacki”, z. 1, s. 319–327.Sendyka Roma (2015), Od kultury ja do kultury siebie. O zwrotnych formach w projektach tożsamościowych, Kraków: Universitas.Skwarczyńska Stefania (1987), Niedostrzeżony problem podstawowy genologii, w: Problemy teorii literatury. Seria 2, wyboru prac dokonał H. Markiewicz, Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Ossolineum, s. 97–114.Sławiński Janusz (1990), Jedno z poruszeń w przedmiocie, w: Teksty i teksty, Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Polska Encyklopedia Niezależna PEN, s. 42–51.Sulima Roch (1980), Dokument i literatura, Warszawa: Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza.Szajnert Danuta (2000), Osoba w paratekstach, w: Osoba w literaturze i komunikacji literackiej, red. E. Balcerzan i W. Bolecki, Warszawa: Instytut Badań Literackich PAN, s. 47–72.Taylor Charles (2001), Źródła podmiotowości. Narodziny tożsamości nowoczesnej, red. T. Gadacz, tłum. zbior., Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.Zimand Roman (1989), Rozmowa z... – dokument czy literatura?, w: R. Zimand, Czas normalizacji. Szkice czwarte, Londyn: Wydawnictwo Aneks, s. 7–23.1316317
Ralph Prator oral history interview, "A New College in a New System", Origins of The California State University System, 1988
No full textPrator was a former president of San Fernando State College, now California State University, Northridge.Transcripts and cassette tapes of oral history interviews with various individuals involved in the formation of the California State University system.Origins of
The California State
University
Ralph Prator
Interviewed
by
Judson A. Grenier
An Oral History Project
of the
Archives
IIUU Archives
CSU, Dominguez Hills
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
Oral History Pilot Project on the Origins of the CSU System
RALPH PRATOR
A NEW COLLEGE IN
A NEW SYSTEM
Interview Conducted by
Judson A. Grenier
in 1987
Processed by CSU, Fullerton Oral History Program
October 1988
COPYRIGHT
This is a transcription of an interview conducted for the
California State University Archives under a grant from the
Office of the Chancellor, CSU.
Scholars are welcome to utilize short excerpts from any of
the transcriptions without obtaining permission sus long as
proper credit is given to the interviewee, interviewer, and the
institution sponsoring the project. All uses of this
manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between the CSU
Archives and the interviewee. Therefore, scholars must obtain
permission from California State University Archives before
making more extensive use of the transcription and related
materials.
None of these materials may be duplicated or reproduced by
any party except the California State University Archives.
However, because it is the goal of this project to preserve and
make accessible significant documentation relevant to the
history of the State Colleges, copies of any unrestricted
transcriptions may be obtained at cost by writing to the CSU
Systemwide Archivist at California State University, Dominguez
Hills, Carson, California, 90747.
Copyright (c)1988 by the Board of Trustees
of The California State University
PREFACE
The purpose of this oral history pilot project is to
record and make available to researchers using the California
State University Archives the reminiscences of individuals who
participated in the creation of the California State Colleges
from 1959 to 1965.
The creation of the California State Colleges in 1961
united fifteen formerly independent colleges into a single,
identifiable system, with its own Board of Trustees and a
Chancellor to serve as chief executive officer. Using a
formula which stressed systemwide planning in the allocation of
resources and programs, The California State Colleges sought to
offer Californians quality higher education at reasonable
cost. The key to the success of the California State
University was the decision to adapt a plan, incorporated into
the Donahoe Higher Education Act of 1960, dividing higher
education into three distinctly separate segments. Under the
act, the California State Colleges were mandated to emphasize
undergraduate and master’s level programs, while the University
of California campuses were to emphasize graduate education,
and the California Community Colleges were to focus on
vocational training and college preparation.
The California State University, starting from a base of
fifteen campuses and 95,000 students in 1961, has grown to
where it now provides a wide variety of innovative programs to
more them 320,000 students on nineteen campuses. It is the
largest system of higher education in the United States and is
known as one of the strongest institutions of higher education
in the country.
In September 1979, the Board of Trustees created the
California State University and Colleges Historical Archives,
to be housed on the Dominguez Hills campus. Since its
establishment, the Archives, as a systemwide project, has been
jointly supported by the Chancellor’s Office and CSU Dominguez
Hills, through the funding of a professional archivist.
The Archives currently houses a collection of materials
received from a variety of sources. These include the
Chancellor’s Office, the CSU Academic Senate, and private
individuals who had previous dealings with the CSU, such as
former Chancellor Glenn Dumke, former Trustee Paul Spencer, and
others. Consequently, the Archives holds some personal papers
as well as official systemwide documents. As part of its
collection policy, the Archives also has a responsibility to
collect individual recollections and oral histories of the
early System and pre-System years.
iii
Short-term goals of this oral history project are to make
available the recollections and reminiscences of former members
of the Board of Trustees, the State College-University of
California Liaison Committee, and the Master Plan Survey Team,
as well as other individuals who participated in the formation
of the California State Colleges from 1959 to 1965.
For the long run, the project has three purposes. First,
it will help to increase interest in the history and
accomplishments of the California State University. Next, it
will, hopefully, be a tool to aid in the acquisition of
additional materials concerning the System now in private
hands. Finally, it will serve as a model and learning device
to develop a more comprehensive oral history program. If the
pilot project is successful, as many interviews as possible
will be conducted under the expanded program with the System’s
retired trustees, former vice-chancellors and college
presidents, current senior management, state legislators, and
other important individuals who have been influential in the
growth and development of the state university.
Funding for the project is provided by the Office of Vice
Chancellor, Administration, Dr. Herbert L. Carter. We thank
the interviewee for generously giving of his time. We also
acknowledge the work of the Oral History Program at CSU
Fullerton for the use of its facilities in processing this
interview. Transcribing and proofreading were performed by
Shirley de Graaf, final preparation and index by Lynn Finger.
Lawrence B. de Graaf Jacquelyn K. Sundstrand
Judson A. Grenier CSU Archivist
Project Co-Directors
MEMBERS, CSU ARCHIVES ADVISORY BOARD
Betty Blackman
John Brownell
Mayer Chapman
Robert W. Cherny
Lawrence B. de Graaf
Glenn S. Dumke
Donald R. Gerth
Judson Grenier
Arthur Hall
Claudia H. Hampton
James Harris
Louis H. Heilbron
Donald B. Leiffer
Gloria Lothrop
Theodore Meriam
Carol J. Numrich
Morris Polan
W. Ann Reynolds
Phillip V. Sanchez
John Smart
Jacquelyn K. Sundstrand
iv
RALPH PRATOR
1958
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT ON THE
ORIGINS OF THE CSU SYSTEM
The following interview of Dr. Ralph Prator (RP), former
president of San Fernando State College, which became
California State University Northridge, took place at his home
in Camarillo, California, on January 22, 1988, as part of the
ongoing CSU Oral History Project. The interviewer is Judson A.
Grenier (JG).
JG: I would like to start with a little biographical
information. Could you tell me where you were born and
reared?
RP: I was born in a place called La Veta, Colorado. And I
just celebrated my eightieth birthday; I was born on the
sixteenth of November 1907.
JG: How do you spell the name of the town you were born in?
RP: L—a V-e—t—a. La Veta, Colorado. It’s a very small place
down in the south central part of the state of Colorado,
near what are called the Spanish Peaks. It’s in the
mountains of Colorado.
JG: How long did you stay in that town?
RP: Well, I stayed there through the third or the fourth
grade. And then we went into the area near Denver. We
lived in several places, but the longest time was in a
town called Brighton, Colorado, which is about nineteen
miles north of Denver. I graduated from high school there
in 1925, and went then to the University of Colorado,
where I got my baccalaureate degree in history in 1929.
JG: History, a good field.
RP: I stayed on then for my master’s degree. But I had an
interim. I played professional baseball for part of one
season until I had an injury to my back. That sort of
ended my professional baseball career. I was stationed at
St. Joseph, Missouri. I was assigned to the St. Louis
Cardinals, and put into one of their farm teams. So I
came back to the University of Colorado then and finished
my master’s degree in 1931, also in history, with a minor
in economics.
JG: So that was right after the onset of the Great Depression,
wasn’t it?
PRATOR 2
RP: Yes, it was. Actually, I had a number of short-lived
careers in this process. In 1929, when I graduated from
the University, I went as high school principal and
athletic coach to a place called Flagler, Colorado, which
is out in the eastern part of the state. In the interim I
had signed a contract to play professional baseball. So I
went then the summer of 1930 to St. Joseph, Missouri, and
the season ended after school had started in September.
So then I went back to the university since jobs were no
longer available. This, as I indicated, turned out to be
an interesting interval. When I finished my master’s
degree at the university I went then to a place called
McAlister, New Mexico, where I was also high school
principal and athletic coach, and taught a full schedule
of classes at this high school. I was there for two years
and then went to a place called Huerfano County High
School, which was in Walsenburg, Colorado. There I was
the athletic coach and taught the social sciences, history
primarily. I was there only one year, and then I went to
a place called Del Norte, Colorado and did pretty much the
same sort of thing. In the meantine my athletic teams
were pretty successful, so I was then recruited by
Clifford Houston, who was the president of a small college
in western Colorado, called Mesa College, as athletic
director and dean of men. Also I taught a full load of
classes. It was a small school. I was there for three
years. And in 1939 Lois, my wife, and I decided that I
had better get going with my education. I went to the
University of California at Berkeley.
JG: What made you choose Berkeley?
RP: Well, that’s kind of interesting. One of the students in
the class that I had in comparative education at Mesa
College did a study on the relative respectability of the
graduate schools in the United States. And at that time
Harvard and Berkeley were pretty much matched as to
excellence of record and reputation in graduate studies.
Well, Berkeley was a lot closer than Harvard, and a lot
less expensive. So I chose to go to Berkeley. That’s the
answer to that.
JG: And what was your field of study there?
RP: Educational administration. I finished my Ed.D. degree in
1947. But the reason for the interval: I was, of course,
caught in the war. I should back up a bit, too. While I
was at Berkeley doing my residence requirement, there were
several jobs that opened up. One of them in El Centro as
president of El Centro College, which was a junior
college. And I was intrigued by the possibility— I was
recommended, incidentally, by the University of California
PRATOR 3
placement service for that responsibility. I went down to
visit with them. While I was there I got a call from the
University of Colorado suggesting that I come back and be
a member of their administrative staff. So we decided
that probably— there was a bit of nostalgia in this, I
assume— that we go back to the University. We were very
fond of the place. My wife had graduated from there, as I
had. So I went there as director of alumni relations and
admissions counselor. Within a year I was made director
of admissions and records, in addition to the other
responsibilities I had. The war broke out, so in 1942 I
became a member of the United States Navy, and served then
at Quonset Point, Rhode Island, in an area that was titled
civilian personnel relations, but was really industrial
relations. I was there, then, during the whole time of
the war. This was a new field to me. I imposed upon the
people at Rhode Island State College to brief me on what
an industrial relations specialist had to do, and had to
pick up this kind of specialty. When I left active duty
then in 1946, 1947 . . .
JG: You stayed in the service for a year or so after the war
ended?
RP: Yes. I was there about a year to clean up things. It was
an involved process, because we had reduction of staff,
and a lot of other complicated factors. The navy was
anxious to keep those of us who had at that time acquired
some expertise in this area to stay on until we got this
facet of it over. Then I went back to the University of
Colorado and was made director of summer sessions and
associate professor of education in addition to my
admissions and records, and also was acting director of
the placement bureau. This was the way things had to be
at the end of the war. Things were pretty complicated.
JG: So you went back to Colorado in 1946 or 1947?
RP: Yes. And was there until I came to Bakersfield in 1950.
Again, the University of California placement service had
recommended several places that were open at that time.
This was kind of a bonanza time for all of us in
education. There were a lot of openings.
JG: Because of the GI Bill?
RP: Well, that was partially it. Enrollments were booming,
and, as I say, there were a lot of openings. We chose
Bakersfield, partially because several of our children had
been sick with asthmatic and respiratory problems in
Colorado. I said, ”1 have to come to some place where it
is warm and dry.” And he said, "How about Bakersfield?”
PRATOR 4
This was a grand opportunity for me, because Bakersfield
at that time was one of the premier community colleges in
California. It had a long, illustrious history. My
predecessor there was Grace Bird, who had started the
college, really, and had stayed there the whole time from
its inception about 1913. So I stayed there, then. One
of the other attractions about Bakersfield— they had
raised a very large amount of money and were going to
build a completely different campus, starting right from
scratch. The challenge of this was very interesting. And
I was delighted with the opportunity. As a matter of fact
at one time we had something like fourteen buildings
coming out of the ground at one time at Bakersfield. It
was delightful. When I went there we started the process
of selecting the site, and doing the planning, and so on.
JG: So you were responsible, in part, for site selection?
RP: Yes. Well, the building of the staff, too. Our staff was
growing rapidly at that time. I assume this experience
was what moved Roy Simpson to call me on the telephone
about Christmastime of 1958. He said there was an opening
of a new branch of the state college system at Northridge,
and since I had had this experience of starting right from
scratch at Bakersfield in building a campus, and they were
going to do the same thing in the San Fernando Valley,
would I be interested? I met with the Board of Education
at that time, and it looked like a very challenging
opportunity. So we moved then to Northridge, and thus
started San Fernando Valley State College in 1958.
JG: When you were president of Bakersfield College did you
have contact with Roy Simpson?
RP: Oh, yes, frequently. At Bakersfield, too, I became
president of the California Junior College Association,
which is the state organization of the junior colleges. I
was very active then in community college circles. I was,
as a matter of fact, quite impressed with California
development in junior college education. It was a premier
state organization, of course, [in reputation] across the
country. And I had had this rather brief experience at
Mesa College, which was a community college in Colorado.
So this whole thing fit into an interesting pattern.
Bakersfield was a delightful place to be, just a marvelous
experience there for all of us. Our whole family. I got
pretty steeped in community college education. It was a
good crash course for me.
JG: Do you remember Forrest Murdock of El Camino?
RP: Oh, very well.
PRATOR 5
JG: He hired me there in 1956.
RP: Did he really? Well, here is kind of an interesting
sidelight in that category. When we were planning the
selection of the site, and how much land we should have at
Bakersfield College, El Camino was a new one at that time
just getting underway. Well, there was another one that
was close by, the name escapes me— but what I urged our
Board of Trustees to do was to join me, and we went on a
little tour of these places that were just starting in
southern California, the new junior colleges. I had
warned them that one of the things that we needed to know
was how important it was to get an adequate land base.
Because many of the junior colleges were saddled on
fifteen or twenty acres of land, and I was pretty sure
this was not going to be comfortable for the kind of
growth it looked like we were going to have at
Bakersfield. So I called these people ahead of time and I
said, "Please emphasize what you think is an adequate land
base, because this will be important to our Board of
Trustees." We visited about five or six institutions in
southern California. When we got to Forrest
first— Forrest Murdock— he said, "Now gentlemen, one of
the things you want to do is get plenty of land, because
once you’ve gotten started, it gets closed in and it’s
hard to come by. We found this out at El Camino." Then
we got down to Mr. Casey, who was at Harbor College at the
time. They had something like 210 acres of land at
Harbor, and he said, "Now, Gentlemen, one of the things
you must do is get plenty of land." We got to one of the
other junior colleges which was a very large one because
it had an agricultural unit, and he emphasized the same
thing. At this particular point, of course, our Board of
Trustees turned to me and said, "You haven’t been briefing
these fellows?"
JG: That’s what I would have thought, too.
RP: But they got an adequate land base. And we were very
impressed with all the possibilities. So we built, then,
what at that time was considered kind of an ideal set-up
at Bakersfield. It all came at once.
JG: Tell me how you got to know Walter Stiern.
RP: Well, he was a veterinarian in Bakersfield. Since I was
involved in civic affairs, particularly as president of
the Rotary Club, I was active. Of course you have to come
up through the chairs. But Walter was one of my
colleagues in committee work, in a number of the
organizations there: the Kern County Heart Association,
the Rotary Club, as I mentioned, and the Kern County
PRATOR 6
Cancer Society. All of these organizations . . . by
virtue of our burgeoning activity I was pretty much
involved in a lot of these civic affairs, and so was
Walter Stiern. That’s how I came to know him.
JG: Bakersfield was a fairly close-knit community?
RP: Very close-knit. As a matter of fact, Bakersfield is
unique in that there was a commonality about the place.
They were tremendously interested in a number of special
things. Probably Walter Stiern was a graduate of
Bakersfield College. That was common there, that a lot of
their civic leaders were also graduates of Bakersfield
College, and then they had gone on to other places, like
Berkeley and so on.
JG: Was Stiern interested in educational issues, educational
matters?
RP: Yes, very. And Stiern was a very able man. He was
objective, fair, well-liked, and very influential in the
Bakersfield area. And, of course, he was very influential
in the state legislature, too.
JG: Were there any things that he didn’t want Bakersfield
College to do?
RP: There wasn’t anything within the context of community
college education that he didn’t think Bakersfield ought
not to do. And, of course, I knew Dorothy Donahoe. The
act which started the Master Plan is credited to her. It
is called the Donahoe Act.
JG: How did you come to know her?
RP: Dorothy was a member of the administrative staff of the
school system there. My recollection is that she was the
registrar, I believe, of Bakersfield High School. Dorothy
had suffered an attack of polio, and was partially
crippled in one leg. She had a limp, as it were, but was
able to get around pretty well, and was very active in all
civic affairs. She was a marvelous community worker in
all of the women’s organizations. She was the sole
support, as I remember, of her mother. And her mother and
she were present at virtually everything of civic interest
in and around Bakersfield. So far as I know, too, she and
Walter Stiern were pretty much colleagues in a number of
these civic affairs at that time. Of course, Dorothy was
quite well liked, very popular, and as evidence of that
she was elected to the legislature.
PRATOR 7
JG: Her handicap didn’t keep her from being very active in
community affairs?
RP: No, she had prodigious energy. She used to remark to
those of us who were going into many of these civic
affairs, MI saw you this morning, I saw you at noon, I’m
seeing you this evening." And Dorothy was one of those
who was was present at practically every civic
organization meeting that I attended.
JG: Why was she popular?
RP: Two things, probably. One, when she accepted a
responsibility, she did it to the best of her ability.
She was willing, of course, to accept and take on
responsibility. Secondly, she was easy to work with, very
easy to work with. She was not an offensive pusher; she
was very tactful, and quite successful. Of course, my
recollection is that she was most interested in, and
successful at this Master Plan for Higher Education in
California. She undertook the responsibility of the
legislature’s involvement in it, and just gave
unstintingly of her time, her energy, and her knowledge,
all of which were considerable. She knew a lot about
community college education. I don’t know that she had
graduated from one of the four-year institutions. My
recollection is that she had gone to Bakersfield College.
But education had a top priority with Dorothy.
JG: Did you ever discuss educational issues with her when you
were president of
Caymanianness, history, culture, tradition, and globalisation : assessing the dynamic interplay between modern and traditional(ist) thought in the Cayman Islands
Get PDFThe 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
Knowledge-intensive firms : configuration or community?
Get PDFThis thesis is a study into the nature of knowledge-intensive firm defined here as
professional service firms providing tailored services to corporate clients and relying heavily
on the problem solving capacity of their employees. This thesis attempts to strike a balance
between a straightforward and overtly empirical piece of work which presupposes the
meaning of knowledge work and an abstract contribution which questions, explores and
attempts to reframe our understanding of the prevailing concept of knowledge work and of
the knowledge-intensive firm. Three exceptionally successful contemporary firms are
studied as potential exemplars of this seemingly new organisational form. The cases are
examined from three overlapping and integrated perspectives. First, a structure and design
perspective is adopted. The existing literature on the structure and design of these firms is
examined and developed into an ideal type (Weber, 1978) which is subsequently used in the
interviewing of employees. A more processual/contextual/alternative perspective on
knowledge work is then adopted and combined with the related concept of community is
applied to the study of the three cases. Finally, drawing on the historical case of early Irish
monasticism, a premodern knowledge-intensive institutional form, the sense of the
interrelationship between structure and community is elaborated upon and, along with some
peculiarly monastic angles, applied to the three cases. The overall conclusion is that
contemporary KIFs represent "plural forms" (Jeffrey, 1991) in the sense that they use
different internal and external control mechanism simultaneously for the same function.
While the operations of these firms are complex and unusual, the claim of a new paradigm
of management underpinning these firms is rejected
Crime, community, context & fear : influences on informal social control in an affluent English suburb
Get PDFBased on ethnographic research, involving observations, participant
observation and in-depth interviews, this thesis explores the impact of crime
and the influences on informal social control in an affluent, middle class
suburb. The research focused on the interaction between estate design, the
environment, social and community life, and fear of crime, and their effects on
residents in the neighbourhood. Despite low recorded crime rates, crime was
perceived to be a problem. This situation arose from a paradox of community
dynamics which, on the one hand, increased fear of crime, but on the other,
contained crime. Apart from small-scale and extremely localised solidarities, a
socially fragmented community existed in which limited and loose-knit local
social networks, strong desires for privacy, and atomisation prevailed. These
factors, coupled with busy lifestyles and features of the suburban environment,
resulted in isolation and enhanced fear of crime.
However, fear arose more from concerns about crime in wider society together
with general anxieties rooted in change in late-modernity, than actual risk of
victimisation. Crime control was rarely based on conm-iunity action, instead
being individualistic and reliant on sophisticated target hardening. Low crime,
therefore, was less attributable to the pursuits of 'active citizens' envisaged by
community crime prevention policies and more to structural processes of
affluence, status and property ownership which created an exclusive and
exclusionary community of vested interest, common identity and shared values.
As a study of affluent suburban life, the research contributes to the community
studies tradition. However, the main importance of the research is its
implications for community crime prevention. By highlighting the complex and
contextual nature of informal social control and the influences which impact on
it, the necessity to tailor crime prevention more to local needs is emphasised
Firm innovations from voluntary dyadic engagement with nonprofit organisations: an exploratory UK study
Get PDFThis dissertation presents the findings of an exploratory collective case-study examining
corporate innovations arising from voluntary dyadic engagement between UK firms and
nonprofit organisations (NPOs) focused on social issues.
Whilst the extant literature demonstrates that pro-active engagement with NPOs can
assist firms innovate, there has been no empirical work which explores the relationship
between the engagement and the innovation outcome: a gap which this research
addresses. In doing so, it illustrates how concepts and constructs from the innovation
management literature can be applied usefully to the stakeholder and cross-sector
collaboration field. To date, empirical studies addressing firm-NPO engagements have
concentrated overwhelmingly on partnerships to address environmental issues. This
study provides insights into cross-sector engagements focused on addressing social
issues.
Using a form of analytic induction to evaluate qualitative case-data from ten dyadic
engagements, this dissertation addresses the question: “how do firms innovate through
engagement with social issues nonprofit organisations?” The research found that
product and service innovations resulted from engagements where the firm had an
external stakeholder orientation and was focused on delivering tangible demonstrations
of corporate responsibility. Process innovations, by contrast, were produced from
engagements where firms had an internal stakeholder orientation. Two distinctions
were noted in the innovation process, too. Firstly, a more exploratory approach to
dyadic engagement activities, which resulted in an emergent innovation process; and
secondly, a focused and pre-determined search activity to exploit the resources of the
nonprofit partner which demonstrated a more planned innovation process. In addition,
two distinct boundary spanning roles were identified: in dyads with no direct
management involvement in the engagement, the role was associated with formal
responsibilities from senior management to „manage‟ innovation opportunities and
outcomes. In dyads where senior management were involved, there was no such
formality; the boundary spanner acted to „facilitate‟ search and exploration to locate
opportunities for innovation through idea exchange.
The application of innovation constructs to the business and society field has enabled
firm engagement with nonprofit stakeholders to be examined through a new lens and
demonstrated how firms innovate from such relationships. In particular it has
highlighted the key role played by the firm boundary spanner (relationship manager)
and how this role alters depending on senior management involvement: a distinction
which has not been made in the extant literature and would benefit from further
examination
Governing mother-child communication about sex in HIV/AIDS epidemic : positioning Lovelines
No full textIncludes bibliographical references (p. 421-474).Lovelines was a didactic textual series that appeared in Fairlady, a South African women's magazine, instructing mothers on how sex should be talked about with young people to inoculate them against the risk of HIV/Aids. My reading of this media discourse, and mothers' appropriation of it, sought to examine how the primary target audience of middle classed mothers were persuaded to adopt particular communicative positions. Foucault's normative apparatus of family-sexuality-risk concerns the distribution of expertise - epidemiological science of risk in populations, developmental psychology-inscribed micro-practices of childrearing in families - and self-responsibilization of disciplinary power. This finds mothers governmentally positioned as relay points between 'public' (health, economy) and 'private' (family, childrearing, sex) apparatuses, tasked with appropriately socializing a new generation of sexually responsible citizens. This governmental rationality of neo-liberalism is read against South African conditions of mass media persuasion, HIV/Aids risk and talking about sex in families
