History of the University of California, Riverside

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[edit] The University of California Citrus Experiment Station

On February 14, 1907, the University of California Board of Regents established an experiment/research station on 23 acres of land on the east slope of Mt. Rubidoux in Riverside, California. Dubbed the Rubidoux Laboratory, the purpose of this research station was to conduct various agricultural experiments such as fertilization, irrigation, improvement of crops and air pollution research. Officially titled the University of California Citrus Experiment Station, (CES) it was here that the navel orange was introduced to the United States[1]. The laboratory was later moved in 1917 to the west slope of Box Springs Mountains.

When the Citrus Experiment Station celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, it had grown considerably in size and stature with several new buildings and a wider range of horticultural research conducted with more acres for experimental plantings. The laboratory's original two staff personnel increased to 265 personnel by 1957[2]. The lab itself had become famous throughout the citrus industry for its applied research on pest and disease control as well as on soil and irrigation problems[3]. In 1961, to reflect the growth of the laboratory, the name was changed to the Citrus Research Center and Agricultural Experiment Station. At the time, the director was Alfred M. Boyce for which Boyce Hall, the home to the Entomology[4] and Biochemistry[5] Departments, is named.

[edit] From a Liberal Arts College to a Research University, the Early Years of UCR

In the late 1940s, a local group of citrus growers and civic and business leaders formed the Citizens University Committee (CUC) to lobby the State Legislature for a small liberal arts college attached to the UC Citrus Experiment Station. The UC system, then composed only of campuses at Berkeley, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and Davis, was experiencing a massive influx of students as former servicemen took advantage of the 1945 GI Bill, and a state education committee was scouting out locations for a new campus. After diligent lobbying by the CUC, the state committee recommended to the Legislature that Riverside become the location for another UC campus. In 1949, California Governor Earl Warren signed the legislation approving the establishment of a small College of Letters and Science in Riverside, earmarking $6 million, later reduced to $4 million, for its construction.[6].

That same year, University President Robert Gordon Sproul persuaded Gordon S. Watkins, then dean of the College of Letters and Science at the University of California, Los Angeles, to undertake the organization of the College of Letters and Science at Riverside. Watkins accepted the job and started five years of planning, faculty recruitment, and building construction. To save money, Watkins focused on recruiting many young, new Ph.D.s into junior faculty positions rather than bringing in tenured professors with established research profiles from other universities [7]. He became provost of the Riverside campus and presided at its opening with 65 faculty and 131 students in February 1954, remarking "Never have so few been taught by so many."[8].

Determining that the liberal arts college model was too small and costly to effectively serve the growing needs of California, in 1958 the Regents designated Riverside a general UC campus and tasked Herman Theodore Spieth, provost after Watkins retired in 1956, with administering UCR's development towards full university status in accordance with the developing California Master Plan for Higher Education. As UCR's first chancellor, Spieth was to combine the College of Letters and Science and the Citrus Research Center into a single academic and administrative entity, as well as to oversee the planning and development of UCR's graduate division. UCR started accepting graduate students in 1961; UCR's College of Agriculture, Air Pollution Research Center and the Dry-Lands Research Institute were also established during Spieth's administration[9].

[edit] The Hinderacker Administration: UCR in the 1960s and 70s

UCR’s second Chancellor, Irvin Hinderacker, was inaugurated on Sept 29. 1964, the same year the free speech movement kicked off in Berkeley. While there were confrontations between student activists and campus administration at UCR in the 1960s, they did not occur on the dramatic scale as did the political protests at larger campuses in Berkeley or Los Angeles. Hinderacker, who was photographed at his own inauguration carrying a placard borrowed from a student protestor that said, ‘The University is not a Sandbox,” cooperated with student activists throughout his administration to develop such student-initiated projects as the KUCR radio station, a campus child-care center, a political debate union, social events, fine arts workshops, and a few of his own projects such as Greek chapters and grants for student athletes. He diffused a potential confrontation with student activists in ASUCR over a proposal to demand President Johnson support the right of African Americans to vote in Selma, Alabama simply by resigning his position on the council and by taking no disciplinary action against the students. Five other ASUCR officers, including the council president, joined Hinderacker and similarly resigned from ASUCR over this proposal, which was delivered in defiance of UC system wide directives not involve the university in outside politics. While chancellors at Berkeley and UCLA called in police, who beat and tear gassed their student populations, Hinderacker’s L & S dean Norm Better was noted to have served coffee and donuts to protestors camped inside the administration building[10].

It fell to Hinderacker to complete the task of turning UCR into a full fledged research university. In doing this, he had to confront the early faculty Watkins had recruited on the premise that UCR Letters and Science would be a small liberal arts institution dedicated to teaching undergraduates, as opposed to a large university with graduate students and a dedicated research mission. While some of UCR’s early L&S faculty did do significant research, many who saw themselves primarily as teachers had achieved tenured positions without the research profiles normally associated with tenure to create a general impression that UCR was not particularly “with the program” in terms of research. As Professor Charles Adrian, Chair of UCR’s Political Science Department during Hinderaker’s administration summarized the L&S faculty situation at UCR, "It sort of was Ivan Hinderaker vs. the ‘old UCR.’ There was talk of the old UCR as if it were some kind of an organization. But it didn’t exist as such. It simply was the original faculty members and some who were hired shortly thereafter vs. the fact that Hinderaker was sent here to change that and make this a regular part of the university system… The resistance would be one thing if it were a minority, a smaller group of the whole faculty. But it was the dominant group that was hired here primarily to teach and who didn’t want to do research … and he was supposed to change this." [11] All Hinderacker could effectively do to that effect was wait for this early faculty to retire in order to appoint new faculty with demonstrated research interests to begin to change UCR’s scholastic reputation.

These objectives were further hindered when Riverside’s Mayor Lewis requested Governor Regan declare the south coast air basin a disaster area in 1972. This caused Riverside to become famous for its air pollution and had disastrous effects on student enrollment and faculty recruitment at UCR. According to Hinderaker: “…Irvine didn’t have smog. It’s hard to realize what a tremendous problem that was. Your budget is related to enrollment, so what effect did smog have?... UCR in 1971-2 was 5,576 [students]… By ’78-’79, we had twenty five percent fewer students than we did in ’71-’72. In terms of faculty positions, we had taken away from us in ’72-’73 twelve, ’73-’74 ten, ’74-’75 twenty positions.” Rumors circulated that the campus would close; Hinderaker developed UCR’s competitive Biomedical Program and popular Business Administration Program as means of keeping the whole campus afloat by assuaging the enrollment problems created by Riverside's air quality[12] Hinderaker also established UCR’s graduate schools of education and administration and streamlined UCR’s departmental structure during this period.

[edit] The 1980s

As a result of the 1978 passing of Prop 13, which drastically reduced the state’s ability to fund higher education, another set of budgetary problems developed for UCR as well as for all the public education institutions in California. After terminating UCR’s two-time Division II state championship football team, Hinderacker retired in 1979, and a series of chancellors serving short appointments as UCR’s chief executive followed through the 1980s. While enrollment began to make modest but sustained annual gains through the 1980s, more than doubling by 1991, [13] no single chancellor at Riverside was ever in office long enough to strategically direct UCR’s overall development. Tomas Rivera, the UC’s first minority chancellor and the first Latino leader of a major research university in the United States, dismantled UCR’s Black and Chicano Studies interdepartmental programs in response to the budget crisis. [14]He died of a heat attack while in office in 1984, following which Daniel Aldrich served a one year interim appointment before being replaced by Theodore L. Hullar, who began the push for more professional schools and locally supported, sustainable development practices that would characterize later administrations. UC President Gardner reassigned him to the chancellorship at Davis in 1987 and appointed Rosemary S.J. Schraer as the UC system’s first female chancellor at Riverside, in both cases without a formal committee reviewed search process. [15] Due to the enrollment gains through the 1980, Schraer was able to appoint 200 new faculty members. [16]. She died while in office in 1992, but not before completing a formal, peer-reviewed search process for her successor, Raymond Orbach, who would further steer UCR’s development during the 1990s.

[edit] The 90s to Today: Riding Tidal Wave II

A state-wide recession in the early nineties brought on drastic cuts to student services and financial aid programs as well as significant increases in fees which caused significant drops in enrollment throughout the UC and Cal State systems. When the economy began to improve in 1994, the UC campuses immediately started receiving more applications than they had been anticipating. In 1995, a panel of experts convened by the California Higher Education Policy Center completed an independent review of the higher education enrollment projections in California, and determined that the total enrollment in the UC system would increase by 488,030 students through 2006[17]. This surge became known as Tidal Wave II, the first “Tidal Wave” of students being the Baby Boom generation born in the post-WW2 war era. To help the UC system accommodate this growth, the Regents targeted UCR for an annual growth rate of 6.3 percent, the fastest in the UC system, and anticipated 19,900 students enrolled at UCR by 2010[18].

As enrollment increased at UC Riverside, so did the diversity of its student body. By 1995, fully 30 percent of UCR students were members of underrepresented minority groups, already the highest proportion of any campus in the UC system. The 1997 implementation of Proposition 209, which banned the consideration of race and ethnicity in statewide decision making, had a long term effect of further increasing the ethnic diversity at UCR while reducing it at Berkeley and UCLA, the most selective campuses in the UC system[19].

With UCR scheduled for dramatic population growth, a likewise push has been made to increase both its popular and academic recognition. In 1998, the students voted to increase fees to move UCR athletics into NCAA Division I standing. Plans to establish both a law school and a medical school at UCR have been in progress since Orbach’s administration in the nineties, with the medical school proposal attracting more support from the industry as well as the local community[20] [21]. In 2006, UCR received its largest private donation ever, 15.5 million from two local couples[22], in trust towards building its medical school, as well as another 5 million from UnitedHealth group[23]. The Regents are expected to make their decision regarding UCR’s medical school proposal in November, 2006.

[edit] References