Dr. William B. Langsdorf was the founding president of California State University, Fullerton (then known as Orange County State College).[1]
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William B. Langsdorf (1909-2002) was born in Denver, CO but grew up in Pasadena, CA. He completed his B.A. and M.A. degrees at Occidental College and his Ph.D. in history at the University of California, Berkeley. He taught history at Occidental for several years before becoming an administrator at Pasadena City College. He served as assistant principal at Pasadena City College from 1939 to 1950 and then as principal (president) from 1950 to 1959.[2][3] At the time Langsdorf accepted the appointment as the first president of Orange County State College (January 19, 1959), the institution existed in name only. It had no campus, faculty, administration, or staff.[1]
Langsdorf faced a number of challenges when he accepted the appointment as the first president of Orange County State College (later to become California State University, Fullerton). These included finding temporary quarters to house the administrative offices of the new college, as well as finding people to fill the administrative positions. Temporary quarters also had to be found to house the soon to be hired faculty, and the first classes to be offered by the college. A 228 acre tract of land in the northeast corner of the city of Fullerton had been identified for the permanent campus; however, title to various portions of the land was held by several different owners. It would take close to two years before the state could acquire all of this land for the campus.[3]
Langsdorf was able to obtain the use of one floor of an old building owned by the local community college, Fullerton College, that had been moved to the campus of Fullerton High School to house the administrative offices. He also was able to obtain an agreement to use space at the recently-opened Sunny Hills High School campus in north-west Fullerton to house faculty and classes until temporary buildings could be constructed at the permanent campus site.[3]
Langsdorf quickly recruited an administrative staff that included Executive Dean Dr. Stuart McComb who had been Superintendent of the Pico Rivera School District, Dean of Instruction Dr. Gerhard Ehmann who had been president of Glendale Community College, Finance Officer Jack Lyons from the San Francisco State College Foundation, Dean of Students Dr. Earnest A. Becker from Pasadena City College, and Librarian Dr. Earnest Toy, Jr. from Riverside City College.[3]
At the time the state colleges in California were under the nominal control of the California state department of education and the Superintendent of Public Instruction. However, in practice, the individual state colleges enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy. This gave Langsdorf the opportunity to select the academic direction of the new college. Most of the existing state colleges had been established as teacher-training institutions, though by 1959 segments of the faculties at many of these colleges were pressing to widen their academic roles. By 1959 Orange County was changing rapidly. Housing tracts and new industry, including a number of high-technology industries, were springing up throughout the county as agricultural land was sold off to developers. Langsdorf recognized that the new college would need to offer more than teacher education if it was to serve the needs of its service area.[3]
Teacher education would be a significant part of the mission of Orange County State College, but only a part of its mission. The founding faculty members hired by Langsdorf to head the divisions of the new college represented a broad range of academic disciplines. They included Seth Fessenden (Speech), E.C. Newsom, Miles D. McCarthy (Science), Lawrence de Graaf (History), Lester Beals, Barbara Hartsig (Education), and William Alamshah (Philosophy) along with Librarian Toy.[3] The liberal arts thus became a key component in the education of all students in the new college regardless of their individual degree interests.
With the initial administrators and faculty members in place along with a five-person clerical staff, Orange County State College opened its doors to 452 students at Sunny Hills High School on September 21, 1959, nine months after Langsdorf became president. At the same time planning began for the growth of the student body and the development of the permanent campus. Langsdorf organized all of his administrators and faculty members into a Faculty Council[3][4] to advise him on these issues. He delegated to the Faculty Council significant responsibility for the development of academic policy for the new college, as well as seeking their advice regarding the physical development of the new campus. Though a few other California state colleges had academic senates at this time, this level of collegial governance was unique among the state colleges.[3]
When the California State College System was established following the development of the Master Plan for Higher Education in California in 1961, both the requirement that all students complete a core general education program firmly based in the liberal arts and the principle of collegial governance in the development of academic policies that were pioneered by Langsdorf at Fullerton became system-wide cornerstones.[5]
Construction began on 12 temporary buildings on the permanent campus site in March of 1960. These were ready for occupancy by the Fall 1960 semester. At the time state funds for permanent buildings were driven by formulas based on FTES (full-time equivalent students). State planners projected that enrollment at the Fullerton campus eventually would reach approximately 35,000 FTES, so Langsdorf and his staff were faced with the challenge of creating facilities on the 238 acre site that would be able to accommodate that level of enrollment. Their solution was to delay completion of the first permanent building for four years, so that the new college's enrollment could grow. In addition, though the building was intended to eventually house the mathematics and science programs, it was designed in such a way that it initially could house almost all the academic programs of the college. The resulting structure, the Letters and Science Building (later renamed McCarthy Hall), which opened in the Fall of 1963 was a six-story building with a full basement with a total of about 300,000 sq. ft. of floor space.[1] The next two permanent buildings built were the Music-Speech-Drama Building, which was completed in December of 1964, and the Physical Education Building opened in September of 1965. Langsdorf and his staff selected these for construction before other buildings on the campus master plan, because the state formulas were more generous for buildings that housed these activities.[1]
Langsdorf served as president of Cal State Fullerton from 1959 to 1970 when he transferred to the Cal State System's Chancellor's Office in Long Beach and became Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs.[2] Langsdorf's tenure at Fullerton marked a period of enormous growth for the institution. During Langsdorf's tenure as president the enrollment grew from a few hundred students to more than 16,000 full-time equivalent students. This also was a period of extensive construction that transformed the college from a small collection of temporary buildings on 238 acres (0.96 km2) of orange groves to a campus with several permanent facilities including the Letters and Science Building (now McCarthy Hall), a performing arts building, a visual arts center, a library, a humanities building, an administrative building (now Langsdorf Hall, former Business Administration building), and a large physical education and athletics complex that included a gymnasium, swimming pool, tennis courts, and athletic fields.
In 1970, President Langsdorf transferred to the California State College Chancellor's Office where he served as Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs for several years. Langsdorf died at age 93 in 2002.
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