http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification 720 https://escholarship.org/uc/rhp_oralhist_insthist/rss Recent eScholarship items from Institutional History of UCSC Fri, 15 May 2026 16:01:33 +0000 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/949077n9 Red Clay, Blue Hills: An Oral History of Professor John Brown Childs https://escholarship.org/uc/item/949077n9 Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Childs, John Brown Vanderscoff, Cameron UCSC Library, Regional History Project https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8q9754b0 Saving the Peregrine: An Oral History of the UCSC Predatory Bird Research Group with Glenn R. Stewart https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8q9754b0 Tue, 27 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Stewart, Glenn R. Rabkin, Sarah https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8165t7k8 <p>In 1971, Robert Michael Tanner [R. Michael Tanner] arrived at the University of California, Santa Cruz as a young assistant professor, joining what was then a fledgling computer and information sciences board [department]. Attracted to UCSC by its focus on undergraduate education and interdisciplinary study, and by the beauty of the campus’s natural landscape, Tanner was hired by the legendary provost of Cowell College, Jasper Rose. &nbsp;Tanner remained at UC Santa Cruz until 2002; in his more than thirty years on the campus he served in a myriad of leadership roles. His first administrative position was as chair of the Committee on Admissions, Financial Aid, and Relations with Schools, working with Dean of Admissions Richard Moll during UCSC’s enrollment crisis of the 1970s and early 1980s. He later chaired the Computer and Information Sciences (1981-1988) board and the Academic Senate Committee on Educational Policy (1985-1987), where he focused on reviewing UCSC’s Narrative... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8165t7k8 Tue, 2 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Tanner, Michael Reti, Irene H. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9r6928sq <p>The genesis of the vision for UC Santa Cruz’s newest colleges, College Nine and College Ten, dates back to the 1988 Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) which responded both to faculty members who argued that the Social Sciences Division needed academic space in the campus core, and the demographic studies that demonstrated that UCSC would be experiencing rising student enrollments and would need to house more students on campus. The 1988 LRDP thus called for planning two new colleges that would integrate academic and residential facilities.</p><p>Fast forward to May of 1999, when under the chancellorship of MRC Greenwood and the vice chancellorship of Francisco Hernandez, The Colleges Nine and Ten Planning Advisory Committee issued a report entitled “Opening College IX and X.” Among its recommendations were for these two colleges to “continue the tradition of the current UCSC colleges concentrating upon community life and student affairs,” while also “being centers of interdisciplinary... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9r6928sq Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Baxter, Wendy Slater, Deana Reti, Irene H. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9kc4x0gx <p>Carolyn Martin Shaw joined the UCSC faculty in 1972, hired by the anthropology department and Kresge College, where she served as provost from 1991 to 1996. In selecting Professor Martin Shaw in 2004 for the Dean McHenry Award for Distinguished Leadership in the Academic Senate, the Committee on Committees noted her “intelligent, imaginative, indefatigable, and principled work to create…communities of scholarship and learning characterized by openness, fairness, and respect.” Martin Shaw’s abiding interest in the nature of human community and her dedicated efforts to help build robust communities at UCSC emerge as running themes throughout her oral history.</p><p>UCSC in the early 1970s presented her with other kinds of foreignness as well, in its whiteness and in the economic privilege enjoyed by many of its students. Landing in what was “really a world that I’m not familiar with,” Martin Shaw responded by rolling up her sleeves with curiosity, clear-sightedness, and a sense... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9kc4x0gx Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Martin Shaw, Carolyn Rabkin, Sarah J. Reti, Irene H. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9fj6b2qj <p>Audrey Stanley is a Professor Emerita of Theater Arts at UC Santa Cruz, and the founding artistic director of Shakespeare Santa Cruz. In this oral history, Stanley addresses her life and career in education and theater, which spans from her youth in England to her ongoing tenure in Santa Cruz. Her narrative begins with her childhood in Whitstable, Kent, and London, where she was first introduced to theater through pantomimes at a young age, and was soon inspired to direct her inaugural production with a cast of local friends. Stanley relates both these experiences and their larger social context, discussing her education during the bombings and defense of England in World War II, and delineating the important role that theater and art played in that time of national trial. She follows this thread of interest through her experience at the University of Bristol, where the United Kingdom’s first drama program was founded during her time as a student. As a result, Stanley emerged... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9fj6b2qj Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Stanley, Audrey Vanderscoff, Cameron https://escholarship.org/uc/item/98s606j3 <p>UC Santa Cruz’s second chancellor, Mark N. Christensen, served the campus from July 1974 to January 1976. Christensen arrived at UCSC during a tumultuous point in the campus’s history. Founding Chancellor Dean McHenry had brought to fruition his singular vision for UC Santa Cruz as an innovative institution of higher education which emphasized undergraduate teaching centered in residential colleges, each with a specific intellectual theme and architectural design. McHenry oversaw the planning and building of UCSC from 1961 until his retirement in June 1974. In the early years, UCSC drew high caliber students and earned a reputation as a prestigious and unique university. But by the mid-1970s, enrollments were falling. Internally, the campus was fracturing along fault lines between the colleges and the boards of studies (now called departments), as UCSC experienced the political and economic pressures of trying to establish a decentralized, innovative campus within the traditional... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/98s606j3 Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 McFadden, Daniel H. Jarrell, Randall Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9636r3cj <p>Michael Nauenberg, Professor of Physics: Recollections of UCSC, 1966-1996, is the edited transcript of a single interview conducted by Randall Jarrell on July 12, 1994. Nauenberg received his B.S. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1955 and his Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1960. Prior to his appointment as a professor of physics at UC Santa Cruz in 1966, he was an assistant professor at Columbia University and a visiting associate professor at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and Stanford University.</p><p>At UCSC, Nauenberg served as department chairman of physics from 1970 to 1972, and again from 1983 to 1985. He was instrumental in developing both Stevenson and Crown Colleges, but in 1973 shifted his focus to building a graduate program in physics. He also founded and served as the director of the Institute of Nonlinear Sciences at UC Santa Cruz.</p><p>Nauenberg's primary research interests are in particle physics, condensed matter physics, and nonlinear... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9636r3cj Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Nauenberg, Michael Jarrell, Randall Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8tt9n8pj This short but compelling oral history with Karen Sinsheimer documents not only the unique perspective of the wife of a University of California chancellor during a period where the nature of that role was in transition, but also the founding years of Shakespeare Santa Cruz. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8tt9n8pj Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Sinsheimer, Karen Jarrell, Randall Reti, Irene Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8m9346m7 <p>For many people, Jasper Rose embodied the spirit and dream of the young University of California, Santa Cruz campus. UCSC first opened its doors in 1965, and Jasper Rose was one of its founding faculty members and a senior preceptor at Cowell College. For Jasper, it meant the inauguration of a powerful shared venture, a space and a time where, as he put it, “it was as though we were a complete society.” He was passionate about that society and his place in it as an educator; animated by a reformer’s vision for change in education, he saw Santa Cruz as a place where something new and remarkable could be realized. In these pages, Jasper Rose recounts his own life journey to that place and to that vision, and shares his convictions and critiques about what has happened in the decades since at UCSC. While this oral history is Jasper’s story, it is also fundamentally a shared effort by the Rose family. Three different family members—his wife Jean Rose and sons Inigo and William... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8m9346m7 Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Vanderscoff, Cameron Reti, Irene https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8787s3c9 <p><em>Peter Scott, Professor of Physics: Recollections of UCSC, 1966-1994</em>, is the edited transcript of a single interview conducted by Randall Jarrell on June 27, 1994. Scott received his B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, his M.A. from the University of Michigan, and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He then taught as an assistant professor for three years at Stanford University. Attracted to UCSC because it represented an alternative to what he characterized as the machine-like educational atmosphere of UC Berkeley, Scott arrived at UCSC in 1966.</p><p>In this oral history, Scott describes his early history at UCSC, both in the physics board of studies and at Stevenson College. He relates a delightful opportunity to teach innovative seminars for sophomores at Stevenson College, among other anecdotes. He discusses the groundbreaking research undertaken by UCSC undergraduate and graduate students in physics, particularly the "Dynamical... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8787s3c9 Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Scott, Peter Jarrell, Randall Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7vv2v3rz Longtime director of El Centro, UC Santa Cruz’s Chicano/Latino Resource Center, and counselor and academic coordinator at UCSC’s Educational Opportunity Program, Rosie [Rosalee] Cabrera, mentored, advised, counseled, and inspired UCSC students for nearly three decades. “I can think of no one on campus more committed to helping our students reach their full potential as young scholars, leaders, and human beings,” wrote Larry Trujillo, Executive Director of Student and Academic Support Services, when he nominated Cabrera for the Outstanding Staff Award she received in 2009. In this oral history conducted by Susy Zepeda shortly before Cabrera’s retirement in 2013, Cabrera reconstructs the political and cultural climate at UCSC over three decades, sharing her memories of key Chicano/a and Latino/a campus figures, organizations, events, and student activism. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7vv2v3rz Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Cabrera, Rosie (Rosalee) Reti, Irene H. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/76j64910 Professor Priscilla "Tilly" Shaw: Poet, Teacher, Administrator https://escholarship.org/uc/item/76j64910 Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Shaw, Priscilla Rabkin, Sarah J. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7216m333 <p>Miriam Ellis was born in New York City in 1927, the child of Jewish immigrants who left what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. While the family struggled financially in the Depression, Miriam’s route to the world of language and interchange was laid out from an early age. As she puts it, “Our house was always open to immigrants, and so they came with all kinds of languages: German, Russian, Polish, or Hungarian, and I don’t know what all else.”</p><p>Miriam fell especially in love with French language and theater through a program that was offered during WWII by the Free French government in exile; it was designed to preserve and promote French language and culture while France was occupied. When she was twenty-one, Miriam went to France for the first time to volunteer in a postwar displaced persons camp, serving refugees who had been driven from North Africa and parts of the Middle East by fascist occupation and war. After the war, she came back home with her first husband,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7216m333 Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Ellis, Miriam Reti, Irene Vanderscoff, Cameron https://escholarship.org/uc/item/56h206hb <p>Julia Armstrong-Zwart was hired by Chancellor Robert Sinsheimer in 1981 as Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Matters of Informal Grievance and Affirmative Action and served as the University of California, Santa Cruz’s first ombudsman. In 1983, she stepped down as ombudsman, to assume the position of assistant academic vice chancellor for faculty relations, and continued to serve as special assistant to the chancellor for affirmative action. In addition to her work as assistant vice chancellor for faculty relations, she held the position of assistant chancellor for human resources, with responsibility for the offices of Academic Human Resources, EEO/Affirmative Action, Labor Relations, Staff Human Resources, and Title IX.&nbsp;&nbsp;She retired from UCSC in 2001.</p><p>In this oral history, conducted by the Regional History Project in the summer of 2013, Armstrong-Zwart describes how she worked with other key UCSC administrators, faculty, and staff members to transform... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/56h206hb Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Armstrong-Zwart, Julia Reti, Irene H. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4st5s13x <p>Theoretical chemist Frank Andrews was hired with tenure in 1967 by UCSC’s chemistry board, where he was employed for four decades before retiring in 2006. When this oral history was recorded eight years after his retirement, he was still offering two courses annually: not for chemistry, but for Crown and Merrill Colleges, focusing on the psychology of personal growth—a field he began cultivating shortly after arriving in Santa Cruz. Notwithstanding his enthusiasm for the discipline in which he was originally trained, it is this area of inquiry that ultimately became Andrews’s primary passion as a teacher and a learner, and it is perhaps the one for which he was most widely beloved by students.</p><p>Deeply interested throughout his career in pedagogical challenges and innovations, Andrews won numerous teaching awards, both on campus and from outside organizations. He also spearheaded the publication of <em>Teacher on the Hill</em>, a campus newsletter of “faculty conversations... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4st5s13x Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Andrews, Frank Rabkin, Sarah https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4rg173mr Harry Berger, Jr.’s oral history is an account of his perspective as a professor of literature, founding faculty member at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and literary critic. Throughout, he traces the parallel tracks of his pedagogy, campus engagement, and scholarship, considering points of intersection and core philosophies, addressing themes of change, conflict and continuity at UCSC. Berger defines himself as a critic above all else, and his training in New Criticism, with its trademark methodology of close reading, proves to be a consistent note both in his writing and in his approach to teaching and working at UCSC. After providing an overview of his early biography, discussing life in New York City and New Rochelle, he turns to his two loci at UCSC, Cowell College and the literature department. At the former, he was a teacher and dedicated participant in the original UCSC collegiate experiment, and at the latter, he was a passionate advocate of close reading as... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4rg173mr Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Berger, Harry, Jr. Vanderscoff, Cameron Reti, Irene https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4mw8b8vb <p>The Regional History Project conducted this oral history with Leta Miller, Professor of Music, as part of its University History Series. After earning a B.A. from Stanford University in music, an M.M in music history from the Hartt College of Music, and a PhD from Stanford University in musicology, Miller arrived at UC Santa Cruz in 1978. She began as a part-time lecturer, teaching a course in chamber music literature at College Eight and offering flute lessons in a tiny room with no window in the old music building. After several years teaching various classes for UCSC, including a music history survey course, in 1987 Miller applied for and was hired for a tenure-track position in the UCSC Music Department [then called the Music Board].</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>Miller is passionate about teaching, research, and performance. For many years she was a dedicated professional player of Baroque, Renaissance, and modern flute. Her classes at UCSC range from general education courses in... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4mw8b8vb Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Miller, Leta Reti, Irene H. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4b67r8d3 <p>This set of interviews with Elizabeth Spedding Calciano make up the rare project that is not just a life history, but an oral history of and about oral history itself. While Calciano has thrived in multiple professions and jobs, including a forty-plus year career as a lawyer, this volume focuses on her years as the founding head of the Regional History Project at UC Santa Cruz from 1963 to 1974.&nbsp;this volume is both a life narrative and a meta oral history, telling the story and perspective of someone who arrived to UC Santa Cruz and the oral history field at emergent historical moments.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4b67r8d3 Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Calciano, Elizabeth Spedding Reti, Irene Vanderscoff, Cameron https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3nf9m5pr [Francis] Frank M. Zwart III arrived at the University of California, Santa Cruz as a student at Cowell College in 1967, when the campus was a mere two years old and the students were “walking across planks where pipe trenches were still open.” Zwart graduated in mathematics from UCSC and boarded a train east to study architecture at Princeton University, where he matriculated in 1976. After graduation, Zwart worked with architectural firms in Princeton, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, Aptos, California, Philadelphia, and Carmel before returning to UC Santa Cruz in 1985 as a staff architect and project manager. Thus he commenced a long and distinguished career at UCSC that spanned the tenures of seven UCSC chancellors. Zwart became Campus Architect in 1988 and directed UCSC’s Office of Physical Planning &amp; Construction (PP&amp;C) until his retirement in April 2010. From 1999 until 2010 he also held the title of Associate Vice Chancellor for Physical Planning &amp; Construction.... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3nf9m5pr Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Zwart, Frank Reti, Irene https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3gh404x1 <p>John Patrick Lynch is a professor emeritus of literature and a formative figure in the classics program at UC Santa Cruz, as well as a former provost of Cowell College. Lynch expands on these roles in this account, providing their larger context in his work and philosophies as an educator, and discussing his hopes and priorities in his 37-year career at this institution. He makes sweeps through the personal as well as the professional, and in doing so, affirms a core vocational identity as a teacher above all else, a campus citizen above a researcher. In his work at UCSC, Lynch sought to instantiate a model of learning that is fundamentally shared between teacher and student, one that goes beyond the confines of the classroom to become an experience in community.</p><p>Lynch proves to be a thoughtful commentator on what has often been called the original UCSC experiment, starting from his decision to pick up and drive cross country, having never taught a class, to accept a... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3gh404x1 Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Lynch, John P. Vanderscoff, Cameron https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3gf2t45j <p>Public Affairs Director Jim Burns retired in June 2014 after serving UC Santa Cruz for over three decades. For many of those years, as writer Kara Guzman wrote in the <em>Santa Cruz Sentinel</em>, Burns was known as “the voice of the university.” This oral history, conducted over four sessions in July 2015, gives a sense of the person behind that voice, as well as the technological, economic, political, and cultural changes that transformed the fields of media and university public relations over the past thirty years.</p><p>Burns arrived at UC Santa Cruz in 1984, hired by the Public Information Office as Publications Editor. There he edited print publications such as <em>On Campus</em> and the <em>UCSC Review</em>, and he and his close colleague Jim MacKenzie became early adopters of desktop publishing technology. His office promoted much of UCSC’s most groundbreaking research, including the campus’s national role in developing and spreading organic farming and sustainable... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3gf2t45j Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Burns, Jim Reti, Irene H. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2xg7k0gz <p> Elba Rosario Sánchez was born 1949 in Atemajac, Mexico, a small town near Guadalajara. She is the oldest of three girls. Her father worked in the cotton mill until an accident injured one of his eyes. The accident sent him to the United States in search of work, first to Chicago, where the family had relatives, and then to San Francisco, where he worked as a bus boy at the Fairmount Hotel. After about eighteen months, he brought his family to San Francisco in 1960, where they lived at Divisidero and Pine, in a Black neighborhood. At the neighborhood elementary school, Elba was one of very few non-Black children; ironically, even as she struggled to adapt to a white-dominated country, in the racial definitions of that time she was considered white. She learned English quickly, and soon became the translator for her family.</p><p>Within a few years of her arrival, the social movements of the 1960s altered the national landscape. Witnessing the brutal repression of Black civil... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2xg7k0gz Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Sánchez, Elba R. Reti, Irene H. Zepeda, Susy https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1p6409v5 <p>Pablo Guillermo Reguerín currently serves as the Executive Director for Retention Services and Educational Opportunity Programs at UC Santa Cruz, providing leadership and oversight to a cluster of student services offices charged with retaining and graduating students with a focus on educational equity.</p><p>Since September 2009, Mr. Reguerín has led efforts to integrate student services to develop student care teams, increased case-management of vulnerable student populations and data-driven intervention programs. These efforts have resulted in Individual Success Plans for cohorts of EOP students, intensive advising services for immigrant and undocumented/AB540 students, a newly launched Textbook Lending Library for students facing financial hardship and a Laptop pilot program for students that arrive to campus without a laptop or computer. In collaboration with faculty partners and the Office of Institutional Research, Pablo has launched an evidence-based evaluation process... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1p6409v5 Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Reguerin, Pablo Reti, Irene H. Williams, Samantha https://escholarship.org/uc/item/19j1h7b3 <p>161 pages, 2018</p><p>Photographer Norman Locks was born in San Jose, California in 1947, but grew up primarily in San Francisco. His father, Seymour Locks, was a well-known abstract painter and assemblage sculptor who taught at San Francisco State University for thirty-seven years. The San Francisco art scene [Beatnik, Abstract Expressionism, and Bay Area Figurative] shaped Norman’s early life. These synchronicities of history placed Norman Locks in the Bay Area just as the West Coast Photography scene was blossoming. As a teenager, he took summer session courses at San Francisco State from Jack Welpott, who was drawn to California by the work of Edward Weston. When he was eighteen years old, he met Monterey photographer Wynn Bullock at a lecture at the San Francisco Art Institute. Bullock invited Norman to visit his home in Monterey and show him his photographs. During those years, Locks’ parents also took him camping in the Sierra Nevada and to other favorite locations in... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/19j1h7b3 Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Locks, Norman Reti, Irene H. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0r64t762 <p>James Clifford came to UCSC in 1978, and was one of two new appointments in UCSC’s History of Consciousness Program, which were the result of the first effort to structure the program with full-time, dedicated faculty. His knowledge of Michel Foucault and other figures of ‘French theory,’ acquired during his time in Paris doing dissertation research, proved to be an important common ground between Clifford and his new senior colleague, Hayden White, and in the structuring of histcon that they undertook together. They were charged with infusing the “fundamentally anarchic” program with a sense of ballast, foundation and direction.</p><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The program in time developed a cadre of dedicated and renowned faculty, and a contingent of graduate students who were exceptional for their creativity, their self-direction, and in many cases their political activism. Histcon became extremely successful, with an extraordinarily... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0r64t762 Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Clifford, James Vanderscoff, Cameron Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0c00c5xb George R. Blumenthal arrived at UC Santa Cruz in 1972 as a young faculty member in astronomy and astrophysics. Thirty-five years later, on September 19, 2007, he became UCSC’s tenth chancellor, after serving as acting chancellor for fourteen months. Blumenthal dedicated thirteen years of his life to being chancellor of UC Santa Cruz. This oral history was transcribed from forty interviews recorded between June 2018 and July 2019 and encompasses Chancellor Blumenthal’s long and distinguished career at UC Santa Cruz and with the University of California system. Long before he became chancellor, Blumenthal served the campus in diverse capacities; he was the faculty representative to the UC Regents (2003-05); chaired the UC Santa Cruz division of the Academic Senate (2001-03); and served as chair of the Astronomy and Astrophysics Department twice. But not only does this oral history cover almost fifty years of UCSC’s history—from the early years of Oakes College under Provost J. Herman... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0c00c5xb Mon, 1 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Blumenthal, George Reti, Irene H. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3s75k0n1 <p>Virginia Jansen was raised in Dayton, Ohio and attended Smith College as an undergraduate, where she earned a degree in German language and literature. She earned her PhD at UC Berkeley in the History of Art. After a few years teaching at colleges in the Bay Area, Jansen arrived at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the fall of 1975 to teach medieval art and architecture for the Art Department (or Art Board, as it was then known), where she taught for more than three decades.</p><p>In the mid-seventies, UCSC had no freestanding program in art history and Jansen helped build an art history major at the fledgling university. Her passion for delving into the history of architecture inspired her to turn to “study what is in your backyard” and focus on the unique architecture of the UC Santa Cruz campus. She soon became known as an expert on campus planning and architecture and in 1986 co-taught an undergraduate art history seminar entitled <em>The History and Implementation... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3s75k0n1 Mon, 28 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Jansen, Virginia M. Reti, Irene H. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hw978p9 <p>This oral history documents the Page and Eloise Smith Society, which offers support, advocacy, and fellowship to UC Santa Cruz undergraduates who come to the university with little or no family backing: former foster children; orphans; former juvenile delinquents; homeless and runaways. The society is the brainchild of alumnus Bill Dickinson, a member of the pioneer class who transferred to the campus in 1965 after having lived on his own since the age of sixteen. At a class reunion in 1999, Dickinson appealed to fellow pioneer alumni to help him build a scholarship fund for former foster children. Out of that initiative grew a volunteer-driven organization—the first of its kind in the US—that has, in the ensuing two decades, served hundreds of students, setting them up with mentoring, financial help, and a collegial community that many have come to think of as a surrogate family.</p><p>In founding the society, Dickinson aimed to carry on the spirit of its namesakes, Page and... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6hw978p9 Thu, 28 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000 Dickinson, William Miles, Gary https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9tn727hf <p>Douglas McClellan arrived at UC Santa Cruz in 1970, where he taught until his retirement in 1986. He was one of the founders of UCSC’s Art Board and served as chairman from 1970 to 1975 and again in 1983. Before coming to UCSC, McClellan taught art at Scripps College/Claremont Graduate School, where he headed the art department from 1962 to 1970. McClellan’s experience in both faculty and administration in the college-based Claremont Colleges located east of Los Angeles, which were known as the “Oxford of the Orange Groves,” attracted the attention of Founding Chancellor Dean McHenry, who invited him to interview for a position in the newly created art department at UC Santa Cruz. McClellan was fifty years old when he arrived at UC Santa Cruz as an affiliate of College V (later Porter College). In this oral history, McClellan provides a narrative of the early years of UCSC’s art faculty and students, the UCSC college system before Chancellor Sinsheimer’s reorganization of 1979,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9tn727hf Mon, 26 Mar 2018 00:00:00 +0000 McClellan, Douglas Reti, Irene H. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/47v1f16m <p>The Science Illustration Certificate Program is internationally recognized as one of the most prestigious training platforms of its kind, this postgraduate curriculum prepares students with backgrounds in art and/or science to be professional visual communicators about scientific subjects.</p><p>The year-long program involves a rigorous curriculum of classroom and studio work, guest presentations and field trips, followed by ten or more weeks of internship. Graduates work as freelance and staff illustrators for hundreds of organizations, including zoos, aquaria, museums and botanical gardens, public and private research institutes and public agencies such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and publications such as <em>Scientific American</em> and <em>National Geographic</em>.</p><p>UC Santa Cruz alumnae Jenny Keller and Ann Caudle have built, administered and taught in the Science Illustration Certificate Program since helping to establish it in the 1980s under the auspices... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/47v1f16m Wed, 17 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Caudle, Ann Keller, Jenny Reti, Irene H. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9rj1p3tk <p>UCSC now serves one of the largest populations of undocumented students at any college in the United States. This commitment dates back at least ten years, to the activist efforts of a group of undocumented students calling themselves Students Informing Now [SIN], who through their activism first made their challenges known to the campus community and beyond.[1] There are many staff and faculty at UCSC who were inspired by SIN and have carried on SIN’s legacy. Dr. Yolanda Venegas, lecturer at UC Santa Cruz, is one of those people.</p><p>Dr. Yolanda Venegas was born and raised in the wetlands of Tijuana, Mexico, on the U.S.-Mexico border. She earned her B.A. in Third World Studies from UC San Diego in 1992 and a PhD in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley in 2004. After earning her PhD, Yvenegas realized that her true passion was teaching writing; hence she returned to college to earn an MA from San Francisco in Teaching Composition in 2013 and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9rj1p3tk Wed, 3 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Venegas, Yolanda Reti, Irene H Sherwood, Yvonne https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9zx9n3bt <p>Edward Landesman was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. He and his parents and his twin brother moved to Los Angeles when Ed was two years old, the city which was to be his home through his undergraduate and then graduate education at the University of California, Los Angeles. Landesman was a first-generation college student, as his parents never had the opportunity to pursue higher education. He graduated from UCLA with a BA in mathematics in 1960, earned his MA in 1961, and his PhD in 1965, all from UCLA.</p><p>While at UCLA, Landesman discovered that he loved teaching, a passion to which he was to dedicate himself for the rest of his career. He was honored with several major teaching awards, including the UCSC Santa Cruz Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award in 1984, and the Mathematical Association of America Deborah and Franklin Tepper National Award for Distinguished University or College Teaching in 1996. However, his record is... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9zx9n3bt Thu, 12 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Landesman, Edward Reti, Irene H. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4xm9n444 <p>Pavel Machotka was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1936 and grew up during the Nazi occupation. His father was a sociologist. As a boy, Machotka studied English. After his father helped lead an uprising against the Communist Regime in 1948, the family was in danger and needed to flee Prague for the United States. Fortunately, Machotka’s father had studied at the University of Chicago as a postdoc from 1934 to 1935 and was offered a position at the University of Chicago. Pavel’s English skills proved useful after this immigration, when he attended high school in Chicago.</p><p>Machotka was awarded a Ford Pre-induction Scholarship to attend the University of Chicago at age sixteen, where he majored in social psychology. It was there that he saw his first Cézanne painting and fell in love with Cézanne. Cézanne was to become one of the focal points of his life’s work.</p><p>Machotka went on to earn his MA and PhD from Harvard University, where his dissertation incorporated a... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4xm9n444 Wed, 13 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Machotka, Pavel Reti, Irene H. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6rv1h8fv <p>Dean E. McHenry was appointed chancellor of UCSC in 1961, more than four years before the campus opened its doors to the first class of 650 students. He served for 13 years before retiring in 1974, but remained an active member of the UCSC community until his death in 1998. His vision, integrity, and deep commitment to higher education played an essential role in the successful development of the campus.</p><p>This is the third volume in a three-volume oral history.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6rv1h8fv Thu, 9 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000 McHenry, Dean E Regional History Project, UC Santa Cruz Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3ws3p49b <p>Dean E. McHenry was appointed chancellor of UCSC in 1961, more than four years before the campus opened its doors to the first class of 650 students. He served for 13 years before retiring in 1974, but remained an active member of the UCSC community until his death in 1998. His vision, integrity, and deep commitment to higher education played an essential role in the successful development of the campus.</p><p>This is the second volume of a three-volume oral history.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3ws3p49b Thu, 9 Jul 2015 00:00:00 +0000 McHenry, Dean E Regional History Project, UC Santa Cruz Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9h09r84h Donna Haraway came to UC Santa Cruz in 1980 as a professor in the History of Consciousness Program (Histcon), one of the first interdisciplinary graduate programs in the United States. Her position in feminist theory within Histcon's graduate program was probably the first one of its kind in the country. While Haraway's philosophy and theories infuse this narrative, the focus and scope of this oral history is her life at UC Santa Cruz. Haraway's interest in aurality and in the interview format has inspired us to provide the recordings of her interview(s) MP3 format on the Library's website, in addition to this transcript. While Haraway lightly edited the manuscript in places, for the most part the transcript can be used as a finding aid to the oral interview. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9h09r84h Wed, 17 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000 Haraway, Donna Reti, Irene https://escholarship.org/uc/item/21s8b7xc Gary Griggs was UC Santa Cruz’s first faculty member with expertise in oceanography. He came to the campus in 1968 at the invitation of earth sciences founding chair Aaron Waters, who had been his undergraduate mentor at UC Santa Barbara. As a young assistant professor (having completed his Ph.D. at Oregon State University in just three years), Griggs immediately began publishing professional articles at a prolific rate and developing a campus-wide reputation as a stellar teacher. Promoted to the rank of professor in 1979, he served as chair of earth sciences from 1981 to 1984 and associate dean of natural sciences from 1991 to 1994. Since 1991 he has been director of the Institute of Marine Sciences and Long Marine Laboratory. The author of more than 145 journal articles, author or co-author of several books for professional and popular audiences, and writer of a regular column in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Griggs is perpetually in demand both locally and internationally as a consultant... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/21s8b7xc Wed, 17 Jun 2015 00:00:00 +0000 Griggs, Gary Rabkin, Sarah https://escholarship.org/uc/item/66q09369 <p>In 1971, David Kliger arrived at UC Santa Cruz as a young chemistry professor and affiliate of Kresge College. In 2010, he stepped down from his position as Campus Provost/Executive Vice Chancellor (CP/EVC), although he is still a faculty member in chemistry and remains very engaged with his Kliger Research Group. Over the past forty years, Kliger has served the campus in a variety of administrative capacities: as chair of the Board of Studies (Department) of Chemistry from 1985-1988, chair of the academic senate from 1988-1990, dean of the Division of Natural Sciences (now Physical and Biological Sciences) from 1990-2005; and finally as CP/EVC from 2005-10. This oral history, conducted as part of the Regional History Project’s University History Series, provides Kliger’s unique perspective on forty years of UCSC’s history from the vantage point of these diverse administrative positions, as well as a member of the chemistry faculty and of two different UCSC colleges.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/66q09369 Fri, 20 Mar 2015 00:00:00 +0000 Kliger, David Reti, Irene https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6zq1v27w <p>After working in the Detroit auto industry and union organizing for twelve years, William Friedland turned to a research and teaching career in sociology, ultimately becoming one of the founders of the sociology of agriculture movement. Friedland came to the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1969 from Cornell University, where he had created the Cornell Migrant Health Project, a field study program in which he and his research associate, Dorothy Nelkin, sent Cornell undergraduates to work undercover as laborers in the agricultural fields of upstate New York and assist with research on the sociology of migrant labor.</p><p>Friedland built on his Cornell experience when he was hired by UC Santa Cruz to establish the Board of Community Studies, an innovative, interdisciplinary academic program that integrated scholarship and community engagement in both research and teaching and that graduated over 2000 majors until it was suspended in 2010, a decision that was greeted... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6zq1v27w Thu, 5 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 Friedland, William Rabkin, Sarah Reti, Irene Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5dp6d4c6 <p>Patricia Zavella was born in Tampa, Florida in 1949, the oldest of twelve children in a working-class family and often cared for her siblings. Her mother and father were both born in the United States and the primary language spoken in her family was English.&nbsp; She spoke English to her maternal grandmother who was born in the U.S. Her father was in the air force and they moved frequently when she was a child. Zavella was often one of very few Mexican-American children in the schools she attended. Teachers were often “surprised” at Zavella’s stellar performance in the classroom. When she was ten years old, the family settled in Ontario in Southern California. It was here that there were more Mexican-Americans in her classrooms; this prompted her critical thinking about race relations and the Spanish language.</p><p>In 1968, Zavella went to Chaffey Community College, in Alta Loma near her family’s home. There she heard both Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez speak and became... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5dp6d4c6 Mon, 2 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 Zavella, Patricia Reti, Irene H. Zepeda, Susy https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3bz3s3t5 <p>Olga Nájera-Ramírez was born in 1955 and raised in the small town of Davenport, California. She is the fourth of six children. In the early 1950s, her parents came to the United States from the state of Durango, Mexico, part of a migration of Mexican-Americans to the North Coast of Santa Cruz County. Her father worked in the fields and at the Davenport Cement Plant. When <em>Nájera</em>-<em>Ramírez was eight,</em> her father died and her family labored in the fields along with finding other jobs to support themselves. Her mother worked in packing sheds and canneries in several places in Santa Cruz County. This oral history begins with Nájera-Ramírez’s recollections of growing up in Davenport. Nájera-Ramírez’s early labor as a farmworker and the importance she placed on creating familia within the community in Davenport grounds her later vision of facilitating access to the university system for people of diverse locations.</p><p>Even as a small child in Davenport, Najera-Ramírez... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3bz3s3t5 Mon, 2 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 Nájera-Ramírez, Olga Reti, Irene H. Zepeda, Susy https://escholarship.org/uc/item/33s2k55x <p>Ruth Solomon arrived at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1970 as a professor in the theater arts board and an affiliate of the brand-new College Five (now Porter College). At UC Santa Cruz, Solomon created a visionary program within the theater arts board that synthesized dance and theater. She taught at UC Santa Cruz until 1995. Solomon also founded and coordinated UCSC’s prestigious Summer Dance Theater Institute from 1972 until 1980.</p><p>In 1953 Solomon entered Bard College’s dance program, where Jean Erdman became her teacher and major mentor. While still at Bard, she joined the Jean Erdman Dance Theater and danced with Erdman’s company until 1970. Erdman was ultimately to recommend Solomon as the right person to found a new dance program at UC Santa Cruz. At Bard College, Ruth met her future husband, John Solomon. She worked with many well-known composers such as John Cage and Lou Harrison. Her oral history captures the milieu of the dance world in New York... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/33s2k55x Mon, 2 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000 Solomon, Ruth Beal, Tandy Reti, Irene H. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/37p6h827 <p>John Wilkes served from 1981 to 2006 as the founding director of UCSC’s internationally acclaimed Graduate Program in Science Communication, passing the reins upon his retirement to program alumnus Robert Irion. Many of today’s most distinguished science reporters, writers and editors trained under Wilkes, whose literary standards and science-trained student cohort distinguish the program he created from counterparts at other institutions. UCSC’s one-year certificate program has been lauded by <em>New Scientist </em>as the country’s best academic training ground for science journalism; it was ranked by <em>Nature </em>as the best such program in all of the US, UK and western Europe.</p><p>Wilkes’ background as a faculty member is uniquely Santa Cruz-inflected. He lived in town with his family in the 1950s, attending Branciforte Junior High School while his father ran an auto-parts business, until the store’s inventory was ruined by the San Lorenzo River’s infamous flood of... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/37p6h827 Thu, 8 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000 Wilkes, John Rabkin, Sarah J. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4m01p3bz <p>Dr. J. Herman Blake arrived at UC Santa Cruz in 1966 as an acting assistant professor of sociology at Cowell College. He remained at UCSC for eighteen years, gaining renown both as a teacher and for his leading role in the formation of UCSC’s seventh college, Oakes. This oral history explores both the public biography of Blake’s career and the intimate biography of Blake’s own youth and education, addressing how he sought to make more room at the “table” of education for others and how he worked to get there himself.</p><p>Born in urban Mount Vernon, New York, in 1934, Blake relates the challenge in finding home in the context of a “slum” and its “counter-forces,” reflecting particularly on the strength of his mother as a “protector” in their living situations, which ranged from a series of houses to an abandoned storefront divided by beaverboard. He walks through his experience in the Seventh Day Adventist educational system, his military service as a conscientious objector... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4m01p3bz Wed, 3 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Blake, J. Herman Vanderscoff, Cameron https://escholarship.org/uc/item/36m6v5t4 <p>Burney Le Boeuf was born in southern Louisiana. He attended UC Berkeley, earning his PhD in experimental psychology in 1966. While at Berkeley, he also studied zoology and experimental biology. He arrived at UCSC in 1967 as a member of the psychology board and of Crown College. He already had a strong interest in evolutionary biology and participated in the biology board’s meetings as an outside member. He also began working with biology professor Richard Peterson on seal and sea lion research. After Peterson’s death, the biology board invited Le Boeuf to take Peterson’s place on the board, and he accepted.</p><p>Le Boeuf is internationally known as a pioneer of the field of marine mammal behavior. He has focused on the social and reproductive behavior of elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris), as well as their diving, foraging, and migratory behavior. Le Boeuf has conducted extensive research on the behavioral ecology and physiology of a variety of marine mammals, and also... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/36m6v5t4 Mon, 27 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Le Boeuf, Burney J Jarrell, Randall Reti, Irene H. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0881z51h Randall Jarrell conducted an oral history with Leo Laporte on August 15, 1994, as a part of the Project's interviews with retiring senior faculty. Laporte served as department chairman of Earth Sciences from 1972 to 1975, and dean as the Natural Sciences Division from 1975-1976. In 1980 he received the UC Santa Cruz Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award. In his narration, Laporte discusses the building of the earth sciences department at UC Santa Cruz, how and why certain specialties were emphasized, and how the faculty was recruited over the years. His commentary also includes this thoughts on achieving diversity in the faculty, his thoughts on diversity among the student body, and the increasing prominence of women in the geological sciences. Laporte's volume also includes his reflections on teaching, his approach to working with graduate students, and his assessment of UCSC as a "hybrid institution." https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0881z51h Wed, 15 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Laporte, Leo F. Jarrell, Randall Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/79k9m51b <p>This interview with [Andrew] Todd Newberry was conducted by Randall Jarrell, the former director of the Regional History Project, on July 18, 1994 in Newberry's office at UCSC. Todd Newberry arrived at UCSC as a founding faculty member in biology when the campus opened in 1965. He had earned a B.A. in biology from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in biology from Stanford University, where his doctoral research focused on ascidian tunicates ("sea squirts"). Other research interests included invertebrate development and reproduction and biosystematics. Professor Newberry speaks of teaching "as a form of persuasion, of launching, of getting people interested in things." Some of the other courses Newberry taught over the years included Invertebrate Zoology, The Organism in Its Environment (Biology 1A), Invertebrate Anatomy Laboratory, Morphogenesis, and California Marine Invertebrates.</p><p>In this narration Newberry provides his recollections of the early years at UCSC, particularly... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/79k9m51b Fri, 26 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Newberry, Andrew Todd Jarrell, Randall Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3nj8f076 Allan J. [Lan] Dyson was appointed University Librarian at UC Santa Cruz's University Library in August 1979, and retired in July 2003. This oral history, conducted as part of the Regional History Project's University History Series, is a singular contribution to the documentation of twenty-four years of history, not only of UCSC's University Library, but also of a period of extensive technological and cultural transformations in academic librarianship in the United States. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3nj8f076 Fri, 26 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Dyson, Allan J. Reti, Irene Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1ph610j1 Recruited by the visionary geographer Richard [Dick] Cooley to join the new environmental studies program at UCSC, Pepper arrived in Santa Cruz in 1972. This oral history is part of the Regional History Project's VERIP series with professors who retired in the early 1990s. In these two interviews conducted by former Regional History director Randall Jarrell and current director Irene Reti, Jim Pepper describes UCSC's environmental studies program as one that “had both a theoretical dimension to it and an applied dimension, a program . . . that integrated theory and practice.” Pepper brought to this nascent department his practical experience and background as a professional landscape architect and planner, as well as his probing interest in the philosophical and ethical questions at the heart of environmental issues. Between 1972 and his retirement in 1994, Jim Pepper helped to build a flagship program in environmental studies at UCSC. Outside of academia, Jim Pepper has enjoyed... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1ph610j1 Fri, 26 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Pepper, James Jarrell, Randall Reti, Irene https://escholarship.org/uc/item/21r987zw <p>The Regional History Project conducted this oral history with Murray Baumgarten, Distinguished Professor of English &amp; Comparative Literature, as part of its University History Series. Baumgarten arrived at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1966 as a professor in the literature board and affiliated with Stevenson College. In 2014, as this oral history goes to press, he still teaches full time at UC Santa Cruz, which makes him the longest-serving full-time faculty member on campus.&nbsp;</p><p>Baumgarten’s contributions to the development of UCSC are substantial and eclectic. They begin with the initiation of the Strouse Carlyle Collection at the University Library. In 1966, Baumgarten’s keen interest in the nineteenth century writer Thomas Carlyle, on whom he had written his dissertation, persuaded book collector Norman Strouse to gift the UCSC Library with his personal collection of rare and unusual materials by and about Carlyle. While collaborating with other... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/21r987zw Tue, 16 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Baumgarten, Murray Reti, Irene H. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6sq7h3w0 <p>Lou Fackler, founding campus engineer at UC Santa Cruz, was interviewed and hired by Founding Chancellor Dean McHenry. He was the campus’s eleventh employee and began work in January of 1963. This oral history chronicles Fackler’s twenty-eight years at UCSC. He began as campus engineer, became director of Campus Facilities in August of 1975, and finally retired in October of 1990. At the time of his retirement he had been promoted to associate vice chancellor, facilities/services with multiple responsibilities including: campus physical planning and construction for projects under construction or in the planning stage; operation and maintenance of the campus physical plant; campus transportation and parking; the campus fire department; environmental health and safety; and purchasing and receiving. In his interview, Fackler details the efforts it took to design and construct the infrastructure and buildings for a new and rather unusual UC campus, and then develop and maintain... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6sq7h3w0 Mon, 8 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Fackler, Louis F. Reti, Irene UCSC Library, Regional History Project, UC Santa Cruz https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5rq98388 <p>A fifth-generation Santa Cruz County resident, Hyde has been in on the creation of organizations and institutions ranging from UCSC and Cabrillo College to the Community Foundation and the Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County. His contributions to California and Santa Cruz are documented in his oral history.</p><p>Following infantry combat service with the U.S. Army in Europe during World War II and graduate studies in business at Harvard, Hyde returned to Santa Cruz County and a career at Ford's Department Store. By the late 1950s he was chairing a committee to promote a local bond issue for higher education, had been elected to Cabrillo College's first board of trustees, and was also on a local committee helping the University of California select a Central Coast location for a new campus. All this was in addition to his position as merchandising manager of Ford's.</p><p>After the UC Regents selected the Cowell property for their next campus and named Dean McHenry founding... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5rq98388 Fri, 5 Sep 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Hyde, Harold A. Jarrell, Randall Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4xp901f2 On campus and in the Santa Cruz community, Michael [Mike] Rotkin has for several decades been a widely recognized public figure. He has served as a community organizer, a multi-term mayor and city councilmember, a board member for the Santa Cruz County chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a local and statewide leader in the UC-AFT (the union representing lecturers and librarians in the UC system), and a teacher and field study coordinator in UCSC’s Department of Community Studies.&nbsp; This oral history focuses on Rotkin’s experiences in community studies and his reflections on the evolution of that undergraduate major from its inception in 1969 to its suspension in 2010. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4xp901f2 Fri, 29 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Rotkin, Mike Rabkin, Sarah Juniper Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0mz917dq <p>his oral history, conducted and edited by book arts scholar and UCSC alumnus Gregory Graalfs, focuses on the history and impact of the Cowell Press at UCSC's Cowell College. It features interviews with fine printers Jack Stauffacher and George Kane, who taught at the Press, as well as with former students Aaron Johnson, Peggy Gotthold, Felicia Rice, and Tom Killion, who have gone on to have illustrious careers in the book arts. The Cowell Press shaped the careers and creative lives of many UCSC students in its thirty-year history.</p><p>Far more than a letterpress print shop where students could make pretty books, the Press was a laboratory to explore the history of tangible words — whether printed, cut in stone, or calligraphed — and to address the interrelationship of word and image. In addition, the influence of twentieth-century literature and visual art on typography was considered, as well as how typography was concerned with design principles that can be applied to film,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0mz917dq Thu, 28 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Graalfs, Gregory Reti, Irene https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7fc7q3z8 <p>Helene Moglen was hired for the position of dean of humanities and professor of literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the fall of 1978. She became the first female dean in the University of California system. A natural leader with confidence and stamina, Helene Moglen dedicated herself to multiple arenas of institution building at UC Santa Cruz. She served as provost of Kresge College from 1978 to 1983, transforming and revitalizing that college into a vibrant intellectual community, which became a home for several notable academic departments, including the dynamic and expanding American studies program and the prestigious history of consciousness program. She led the division of humanities during a period of reorganization and several controversial tenure battles, and reorganized and built what was then a fledgling student-run women’s studies program into what is now a thriving and nationally prominent feminist studies department, serving as chair from... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7fc7q3z8 Wed, 27 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Moglen, Helene Reti, Irene Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3rn6001j <p>Glenn Willson addresses campus developments from January 1965, when he joined the early faculty, until his resignation in 1975, when he returned home to England. During this period he held a number of campus appointments, including the provostship at Stevenson College from 1967 to 1975, and service as the chair of the Academic Senate; as Vice-Chancellor, College and Student Affairs; and as acting chair of the Theater Arts Committee.</p><p>Willson focuses on three aspects of UCSC history in this volume. First, he provides his recollections of the complexities in building a public, residential, college-based university campus. A second major focus is the establishment and evolution of Stevenson College. Thirdly, he frames the development of UC Santa Cruz in the cultural and political context of the 1960s.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3rn6001j Tue, 26 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Willson, F.M. Glenn Jarrell, Randall Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3j5438d7 <p>Michael Cowan arrived at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the fall of 1969 as an associate professor of community studies and literature and a fellow of Merrill College. By his retirement in 2004, Cowan had achieved a reputation as an outstanding campus leader who filled a variety of positions during his four decades at UCSC. These include two years as provost of Merrill College from 1978-1979; six years as dean of the Division of Humanities from 1983-1989; and multiple terms as chair of the departments of literature and American studies. Cowan is the only professor in UCSC’s history to serve two (widely separated) terms as chair of the Santa Cruz Division of the Academic Senate, from 1979 to 1980 and again from 1994 to 1996. In 1997, he received the first Dean McHenry Award for Distinguished Leadership, given by the UCSC Academic Senate to acknowledge outstanding service.</p><p>Cowan was also the founding chair of the American studies department and a national leader... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3j5438d7 Tue, 26 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Cowan, Michael Reti, Irene https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2n20r98m Donald T. Clark was the first of founding Chancellor Dean E. McHenry's academic appointments at UCSC. Clark arrived in September 1962 as the founder of UC Santa Cruz's University Library. Clark described his early years in Oregon and California, his undergraduate education at Willamette University, UC Berkeley, and Columbia University, and his more than twenty years at the country's largest business library, Baker Library at Harvard University. He focused much of his oral history on his tenure at UCSC from 1962-1973. He discussed the details of architectural planning for McHenry Library, and development of the book collection. Clark was a pioneer in the area of library automation, working tirelessly to create a computerized book catalog at UC Santa Cruz in the 1960s, the first such effort in the UC system. Clark describes the University Library's special collecting areas such as Santa Cruz local history and fine printing, as well as the acquisition of the Lick astronomical library,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2n20r98m Tue, 26 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Clark, Donald T. Jarrell, Randall Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7pn93507 <p>Pister's recollections of his tenure as the campus's sixth chancellor include his perspectives on a number of issues his administration faced: the recession-caused budget cuts UCSC absorbed, the UC Regents' controversial decision regarding affirmative action, the state of town-gown relations upon his arrival at UCSC in 1991, and controversies surrounding construction projects on campus.</p><p>The oral history, entitled Karl S. Pister, UCSC Chancellorship, 1991- 1996, was transcribed and edited from interviews conducted by UCSC Regional Historian Randall Jarrell.</p><p>Born in Stockton, California, Pister received his B.S. (1945) and M.S. degrees (1948) in civil engineering at UC Berkeley. In 1952 he received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in theoretical and applied mechanics.</p><p>Prior to his tenure at UCSC, Pister had spent 30 years at UC Berkeley as a faculty member and 15 years there as an academic administrator. He began his career at Berkeley as a lecturer... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7pn93507 Mon, 25 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Pister, Karl Jarrell, Randall Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/34r6t4d5 <p>Dean E. McHenry was appointed chancellor of UCSC in 1961, more than four years before the campus opened its doors to the first class of 650 students. He served for 13 years before retiring in 1974, but remained an active member of the UCSC community until his death in 1998. His vision, integrity, and deep commitment to higher education played an essential role in the successful development of the campus.</p><p>This is the volume one of a three-volume oral history.</p> https://escholarship.org/uc/item/34r6t4d5 Fri, 22 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000 McHenry, Dean E Regional History Project, UC Santa Cruz Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7zs703vf <p>The late scientist's oral history memoir is published posthumously. Thimann died at his home in Haverford, Pennsylvania, on January 15, 1997. Founding Chancellor Dean E. McHenry made an inspired and imaginative appointment when he invited Thimann in 1965 to head what would become Crown College and to build the science faculty at UCSC. Prior to coming to Santa Cruz, Thimann was an internationally renowned plant physiologist and held the Higgins Chair in Biology at Harvard University. He was the first UCSC faculty member who was a member of the National Academy of Sciences. During his tenure at UCSC his illustrious reputation and intellectual distinction enabled him to attract to the fledgling campus top-notch scientists who would perhaps not have come here were it not for his presence. The scientists he recruited created what has become in only three decades one of the country's most distinguished group of science departments at a public university.</p><p>Thimann's narration... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7zs703vf Thu, 21 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Thimann, Kenneth V. Jarrell, Randall Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9hr6t6b3 <p>This oral history chronicles the late Page Smith's experiences as founding provost of the campus's first college and his major contributions in shaping the college system here. His narration includes chapters on student culture in the 1960s and 1970s, the pass/fail grading system, his educational philosophy, town/gown relations, campus architecture, the History of Consciousness Program, his relationship with founding Chancellor Dean E. McHenry, arts on the campus and the role of his wife, Eloise Pickard Smith, in the founding of the art gallery at Cowell College which now bears her name. The volume is a candid narration which conveys Smith's contrarian perspective on higher education and the flavor of the campus in its early pioneering years.</p><p>Smith joined the faculty in 1964 and embarked on the adventure of creating a new UC campus. The formative concepts shaping UCSC were an emphasis on undergraduate teaching and the creation of small human-scale colleges around which... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9hr6t6b3 Tue, 19 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Smith, Page Jarrell, Randall Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9bw645n9 <p>As President of the University of California during the period 1958-67, Kerr initiated, lobbied for, and oversaw UC's greatest era of expansion. In this volume of memoirs, Kerr discusses UCSC's origins in the context of the UC system's overall growth and evolution. He addresses three aspects of the campus's history. First, he reviews the thinking and planning which led up to the establishing of three new UC campuses (UCSC, UC Irvine, and UC San Diego) and their integration into the system as equal and autonomous campuses. He explains the demographics which gave the impetus to UC's growth; the role of the UC Regents; and his own lobbying efforts within both UC and the state legislature to gain political support for this major undertaking. Second, Kerr outlines in considerable detail his own contributions to the shaping of UCSC.</p><p>Two important influences were his own undergraduate experience at Swarthmore College, and his tenure as Chancellor of UC Berkeley from 1952-58,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9bw645n9 Tue, 19 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Kerr, Clark Jarrell, Randall Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9891v4hv <p>Pedro Castillo was hired by UC Santa Cruz’s history board in 1976, and affiliated with Merrill College. At UCSC, Castillo collaborated with professors in other disciplines in interdisciplinary team-teaching small seminars such asStudies in the American City, which in 1977 focused on Chicago and Los Angeles, and an oral history course documenting social, cultural, political organizations in the nearby working-class and primarily Latino city of Watsonville. These courses exemplified the intimate and creative learning atmosphere of UC Santa Cruz in the 1970s. Castillo was also an early affiliate of UCSC’s American studies program and served as its chair in 1984.</p><p>Castillo provides a detailed narration of the history of UCSC over the past four decades, particularly the development of the history and American studies departments and Merrill and Oakes College. He was one of the first Chicano/a professors hired at UC Santa Cruz and is now the one with the longest tenure and memory... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9891v4hv Tue, 19 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Castillo, Pedro Reti, Irene https://escholarship.org/uc/item/42j3c98r <p>The Regional History Project conducted three interviews with former Chancellor Angus E. Taylor on January 28-30, 1997. Taylor was appointed the campus's third chancellor in February, 1976, by UC President David S. Saxon during a difficult period in UCSC's history, when the campus's second chancellor, Mark N. Christensen, resigned amidst controversy after a tenure of barely 18 months. Saxon asked Taylor to assume the chancellorship and to stabilize the young campus while a permanent chancellor was selected.</p><p>Prior to his appointment, Taylor was a professor of mathematics at UCLA from 1938 to 1966; and served in the UC systemwide administration as vice president for academic affairs from 1965 to 1970, and as University Provost from 1970 to 1975. He was a seasoned veteran of the University and its unique system of shared governance; he knew the workings of the academic senate and University policies inside out and was well acquainted with the key figures in the University's... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/42j3c98r Tue, 19 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Taylor, Angus Jarrell, Randall Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/24z7r5bh John Dizikes first saw UC Santa Cruz when it was still rolling hills and the buildings were only artist’s renderings.&nbsp; He agreed to stake his career on this new, untried campus because he understood the vision of UCSC as a place where higher education would be reformed and teaching would be a priority—and he followed through on the gamble, coming here as one of UCSC’s founding faculty in 1965. In his ensuing thirty-five-year career at UC Santa Cruz, he was a professor of history, a professor and co-founder of the American Studies Department, a provost of Cowell College and chair of the Council of Provosts, and throughout and above it all a dedicated educator and an ongoing student. This oral history was conducted in 2011 by Cowell alum Cameron Vanderscoff for the Regional History Project. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/24z7r5bh Tue, 19 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Dizikes, John Vanderscoff, Cameron Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9cf8w0f1 <p>Project Director Irene Reti conducted fourteen hours of interviews with Rita Bottoms, Head of Special Collections at the University Library, UC Santa Cruz, shortly before her retirement in March 2003. This oral history provides a vivid and intimate look at thirty-seven years behind the scenes in the library's Special Collections.</p><p>For thirty-seven years Bottoms dedicated herself to collecting work by some of the most eminent writers and photographers of the twentieth century, including the science fiction writer Robert Heinlein, photographer Edward Weston, composer John Cage, visual poet Kenneth Patchen, poet and letterpress book printer William Everson, poet and visual artist Lawrence Ferlinghetti, composer and poet Lou Harrison, singer and photographer Graham Nash, and philosopher Norman O. Brown. But her role as a curator and librarian extended far beyond acquiring collections; she developed intense and profound intellectual and emotional relationships with each of... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9cf8w0f1 Thu, 14 Aug 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Bottoms, Rita Reti, Irene Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0mp6n2rx <p>Randall Jarrell, documentary historian and head of the Regional History Project, conducted seven hours of taped interviews with Sinsheimer, UCSCs fourth chancellor during 1990-91, as part of the Project's University History series.</p><p>Sinsheimer was appointed chancellor by UC President David Saxon in June, 1977. Formerly chairman of the division of biology at the California Institute of Technology where his work as a molecular biologist had earned him a distinguished international reputation. When approached with an invitation to consider heading UCSC he had come to the end of a long period of research and was receptive to a new challenge. His pre-eminent knowledge of the social implications and potential hazards of recombinant DNA technology and cloning methods in biology had deepened his concern about the necessity of promoting scientific literacy among non-scientists. Thus the UCSC chancellorship appealed to him since as a public institution it would give him a forum... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0mp6n2rx Wed, 9 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Sinsheimer, Robert Jarrell, Randall Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/95h8k9w0 <p>The Regional History Project conducted six interviews with UCSC Chancellor Robert B. Stevens during June and July, 1991. Stevens was appointed the campus's fifth chancellor by UC President David P. Gardner in July 1987, and served until July 1991. He was the second UCSC chancellor (following Chancellor Emeritus Robert L. Sinsheimer) recruited from a private institution.</p><p>Stevens was born in England in 1933 and first came to the United States when he was 23. He was educated at Oxford University (B.A., M.A., B.C.L., and D.C.L.) and at Yale University (L.L.M.) and became an American citizen in 1971. An English barrister, Stevens has strong research interests in legal history and education in the United States and England. He served as chairman of the Research Advisory Committee of the American Bar Foundation, has written a half dozen books on legal history and social legislation, and numerous papers on American legal scholarship and comparative Anglo-American legal history.</p><p>Prior... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/95h8k9w0 Mon, 12 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Stevens, Robert Jarrell, Randall Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9hv2j5t9 <p>The Regional History Project conducted this oral history with UCSC Chancellor M.R.C. (Mary Rita Cooke) Greenwood as part of its University History series. Greenwood was appointed as chancellor of UC Santa Cruz in July of 1996 and served until April of 2004. While at UCSC, she also held an appointment as a professor of biology.</p><p>M.R.C. Greenwood was born in 1943 in Gainesville, Florida. She graduated summa cum laude in biology from Vassar College in 1968, and earned her PhD in physiology, developmental biology, and neurosciences from Rockefeller University in 1973. After graduation, she joined the faculty in human nutrition at Columbia University’s Medical School, where she taught until 1978, when she moved to Vassar College. At Vassar she was the John Guy Vassar Professor of Natural Sciences, chaired the department of biology, and directed the Undergraduate Research Summer Institute. In 1989, Greenwood was hired by the University of California at Davis, where she was professor... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9hv2j5t9 Fri, 4 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Greenwood, M.R.C. Reti, Irene H. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6s80c9v4 G. William Domhoff: The Adventures and Regrets of a Professor of Dreams and Power https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6s80c9v4 Wed, 19 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Domhoff, G. William https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7hn0655w <p>Professor Isebill “Ronnie” Gruhn arrived at UC Santa Cruz in 1969 as a member of the politics department and an affiliate of Stevenson College. Before coming to UC Santa Cruz she had been teaching at Oberlin College.</p><p>Born in Leipzig, Germany, Gruhn is the daughter of a partially Jewish (mixed heritage and religion) mother; her non-Jewish father joined the resistance and helped Jews escape from Germany. He spent much of World War II imprisoned in Nazi labor camps. Gruhn’s early life was one of upheaval and dislocation; a background uncannily congruent with the interviewer’s own family heritage.</p><p>Gruhn immigrated to New York City with her parents when she was nearly twelve years old. Her experiences during the war led to an interest in “knowing how the world worked.” She attended Dickinson College for her BA in politics; earned her MA in international studies from Johns Hopkins University, and her PhD in political science from UC Berkeley. Gruhn became an expert and... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7hn0655w Thu, 13 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000 Gruhn, Isebill V. Reti, Irene H. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3t26956c <p>In her thirty-four years of service to the University of California, Santa Cruz, Carol Freeman earned the affection and admiration of students, faculty, staff and administrators for her exceptional teaching skill, administrative acumen and visionary devotion to undergraduate education. She was awarded the UCSC Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1996 and the Dean McHenry Award for Distinguished Leadership in the Academic Senate in 2012. In nominating Freeman for the McHenry honor, the Senate’s Committee on Committees noted that “Senior Lecturer with Security of Employment Emerita Carol Freeman … personifies the ideals of collegial, creative, principled service these awards recognize,” and praised the “persistence, dedication, commitment, and above all, excellence” that characterized every aspect of her multifaceted and “powerfully influential” work for the university.</p><p>As the founding coordinator and eventually chair of the Campus Writing Program, Freeman shaped... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3t26956c Thu, 15 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000 Freeman, Carol Rabkin, Sarah https://escholarship.org/uc/item/20b91099 <p>Hayden White was born in Martin, Tennessee in 1928. During the Depression he moved with his family to Detroit in search of work, where his father became a union organizer in the automotive world. This urban scene of workers’ struggles to organize in the face of sometimes-violent corporate opposition was a watershed moment in informing White’s political consciousness.</p><p>After a stint in the military, he used the GI Bill to go to Wayne State University. White went on to graduate school at the University of Michigan. Dr. White spent a full twenty-three years teaching at other institutions before 1978, when he found a fertile space for his interdisciplinary conception of scholarly work as the chair of the University of California Santa Cruz’s History of Consciousness program.</p><p>In this oral history, White relates that history of consciousness gradually came to occupy a shifting territory that ranged from deep in the artistic side of the humanities well into the social sciences,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/20b91099 Mon, 10 Jun 2013 00:00:00 +0000 White, Hayden Vanderscoff, Cameron UCSC Library, Regional History Project https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4j9397s9 <p> <em><em>Not everyone seems to realize there is another vicious world war already underway--the war against the planet. It is an ecological war, and the weapons being used are more powerful everyday . . . When this war is finally won, the consequences will be as severe and irreversible as though we had fought a nuclear war." </em> --Raymond F. Dasmann</em> </p><p><em>Ray Dasmann innovated the lucid, non-political, and universally applicable idea [of] ecodevelopment . . . His impact on conservation thinking has been fundamental . . . So many eminent persons are credited with inventing new wheels, only to find that their predecessors were the originals. Ray is surely one of those, way ahead, even sometimes too far ahead, of his time. He has thought deeply, but written clearly, about the fundamentals of our relationships with, and dependency on nature." </em> -G. Carleton Ray</p><p>Raymond F. Dasmann's life as a conservation biologist during a half-century embraced both groundbreaking... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4j9397s9 Mon, 29 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000 Dasmann, Raymond F. Jarrell, Randall Regional History Project, UCSC Library https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5kf1t3wg <p>The Regional History Project conducted a series of interviews with Kenneth S. Norris, UCSC Professor of Natural History Emeritus, in the spring and summer of 1998. Halfway through the interviews, Norris, who had been in poor health, was hospitalized unexpectedly and died on August 16, 1998. Rather than publish an incomplete set of his edited interviews, the project was reconceived. We interviewed a group of his colleagues and former students who could discuss many of the topics the interviewer had not had an opportunity to discuss with him. These additional interviews include recollections of Norris’s myriad research interests (desert biology, herpetology, marine mammalogy) and his scientific legacy; his teaching philosophy and how it was so creatively manifested for almost two decades in the celebrated Natural History Field Quarter class; and his founding role in the creation in 1965 of UC’s Natural Reserve System.</p><p>On October 24, 1998, at the Norris Memorial, held at... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5kf1t3wg Fri, 3 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000 Norris, Kenneth S. Reti, Irene H.