History of the University of California, Riverside

This university is located at Riverside, California, zip code is 92521.

The University of California Citrus Experiment Station

The Rubidoux Laboratory

The Southern California "citrus belt" first emerged in the 1870s, and within two decades stretched eastward from Pasadena to Redlands beneath the foothills of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains. It originated from experimental navel orange plantings first conducted in Riverside, from cuttings introduced from Brazil. John Henry Reed, a retired school superintendent and dry goods merchant from Ohio turned citrus grower, is credited with first proposing the establishment of a scientific experiment station specifically for citrus research in Southern California, and organized a vigorous lobbying effort of the local citrus industry towards that end. As founding member and chair of the Riverside Horticultural Club's experimental committee, he also pioneered a collaborative approach to conducting experimental plantings, and published more than 150 semitechnical and popular papers on citrus and other subjects between 1895 and 1915.

Riverside California State Assembly member Miguel Estudillo worked with Reed and a committee of the Riverside Chamber of Commerce to draft Assembly Bill 552, which provided for a pathological laboratory and branch experiment station in Southern California. On March 18, 1905, a legislative board of commissioners was appropriated $30,000 to select the site and implement the measure. On February 14, 1907, the University of California Board of Regents established the UC Citrus Experiment Station on 93078 square meters (23 acres) of land on the east slope of Mt. Rubidoux in Riverside. However, the University's decision to concentrate on the development of the University Farm in Davis lead to only two initial staff being assigned to the CES, only one of whom, Ralph E. Smith, a plant pathologist from Berkeley, was a scientist. Dubbed the Rubidoux Laboratory, the initial purpose of the station was to concentrate on various soil management problems such as fertilization, irrigation, improvement of crops.

Expansion and Relocation to Box Springs

In 1913, a record killing freeze in Southern California caused a panic throughout the 175 million citrus industry, which demanded more state-funded agricultural research. Three acts of the California Legislature in 1913 provided 185,000 to fund an enlarged CES to be located in one of the eight southern counties. Developers of the San Fernando valley, recently opened for settlement by the 1914 completion of the Owens Valley aqueduct, lobbied intensively for the CES to be relocated there. Herbert John Webber, a professor of plant breeding from Cornell University and newly appointed director of the Citrus Experiment Station, considered various site proposals but ultimately worked with the Riverside Chamber of Commerce, city officials, and local growers to assist in drafting and endorsing a proposal for the CES to be relocated to its current site on 475 acres of land 2.5 miles from downtown Riverside, adjacent to the Box Springs Mountains. On December 14th, 1914 the UC Regents approved the selection, news of which caused jubilation in downtown Riverside: "The entire city turned into the streets, the steam whistle on the electrical plant blew for 15 minutes, and the Mission Inn bells were rung in celebration." It was, according to Reed as quoted in the Riverside Daily Press: "...the most important day that has occurred in all the history of Riverside."

The new station was to be governed autonomously under Webber's direction. He spent the next few years personally recruiting the founding research team, eleven scientists organized into six divisions of agricultural chemistry, plant physiology, plant pathology, entomology, plant breeding, and orchard management. Webber also initiated the development of the Citrus Variety Collection on 5 acres planted with approximately 500 species of citrus from around the world, which grew to become the greatest such variety collection internationally. He also planted hundreds of other subtropical crops, including 70 varieties of avocado, imported from Mexico, that produced more than 45,000 hybrids through controlled pollination. (He also helped found the California Avocado Association in 1914 and served as its president for two years, and organized the annual citrus institute of the National Orange Show in San Bernardino and the Date Growers Institute of Coachella Valley.)

The original laboratory, farm, and residence buildings on the Box Springs site were designed by Lester H. Hibbard of Los Angeles, a graduate of the University of California School of Architecture, in association with a colleague, H.B. Cody. Built at a cost of $165,000, the architecture followed the Mission style suggesting the Spanish colonial heritage of Southern California. The site, which became the early nucleus of the UCR campus, eventually opened in 1917, although the Division of Agricultural Chemistry continued to occupy lab space at the Rubidoux site.

Research achievements during the Webber Administration

Webber's tenure as director of the CES lasted, with a few interruptions, from 1913 until his retirement in 1929. A few important achievements of the CES during his directorship were: Walter P. Kelly's development of drainage techniques for reclaiming thousands of acres of California land made unproductive by salt accumulation; the development of chemical fertilizers; the discovery of boron poisoning, methods for its control, and an understanding of the necessity of minute amounts of boron in citrus growth. Howard B. Frost's pioneering genetic research lead to the first accurate reports of the normal number of chromosomes for some citrus, the first discovery of polyploidy in citrus, and the first descriptions of citrus tetraploids. Frost also developed tools for guiding artificial hybridization for production of new citrus cultivars, which resulted in widespread propagation of nuclear lines and contributed to the improvement of citrus plantings throughout the world. By working out the etymology of various types of diseases, particularly gummosis, Howard S. Faucet contributed significantly to improved methods for disease control and made possible the discovery of the viral nature of some diseases which were responsible for causing quick decline among 3 million orange trees in a 25 year period. H.J. Quale's etymological research on citrus insects, mites, and walnut insects lead to the first recognition of the problem of insect resistance to fumigation, and of means of overcoming it. Harry H. Smith and Harold Compere's discovery of natural parasites of the citrophilus mealybug in Australia effected almost complete control of this parasite in California, which saved growers in Orange Country almost $1 million in crop losses annually. Although its major emphasis was on citrus, the CES also made research contributions to every major crop grown in Southern California.

Successive Administrations

After Webber retired, Leon D. Batchelor became the second director of the CES. Under his direction, the land, capital facilities, and operating budget expanded significantly, and the station moved into several new areas of agricultural research, including statistics and experimental plot design, herbicides to reduce weeds, and the first studies of the effects of air pollution on crops. After he retired in 1951, Alfred M. Boyce became the new director, and the CES entered another period of growth as agricultural production in Southern California boomed after WWII. The old divisional structure was replaced along departmental lines, and five new departments were added, including the nation's first department of nematology. A committee on air pollution research was also developed in 1953.

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. 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. 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 and Biochemistry Departments, is named.

The Early Years of UCR

The Foundation of a Liberal Arts College

After the 1945 passage of the GI Bill, a massive influx of former servicemen began to enter college and strained the capacities of many state public university systems. The UC system was then composed only of established campuses at Berkeley and Los Angeles (Santa Barbara State had just entered the UC system in 1944). The state commissioned a search committee to scout out locations for a new UC campus, and a local group of citrus growers and civic leaders, including many Cal alumni, formed the Citizens University Committee (CUC) to lobby the Legislature for a small liberal arts college attached to the UC Citrus Experiment Station. After diligent lobbying by the CUC, which also sent gifts of oranges and grapefruit to every member of the legislature, the state committee recommended that Riverside become the location for the fourth UC undergraduate campus. Riverside State Assemblyman John Babbage drafted Senate Bill 512, which passed the legislature (but not after a little joke on the part of some assembly members that rescinded the bill the next day was cleared up) and allocated $6 million for the construction of the new college. Governor Earl Warren signed the bill approving the establishment of the College of Letters and Science in Riverside in 1949, after reducing its initial allocation for construction to $4 million..

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. The onset of the Korean war delayed construction, and the CUC continued to lobby for basic resources such as steel and concrete to build the new campus. Rather than focus on recruiting established researchers, Watkins recruited many young, new Ph.D.s into junior faculty positions. . 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.".

UCR Mascot - Highlander

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The original UCR mascot - Highlander

Main article: Mascot Highlander's history

When the university opened in February 1954, many students wanted a bear symbol in keeping with the traditional ursine mascots at UC Berkeley and UCLA. The founding editors initially named the student newspaper "The Cub," and out of a total of 67 names entered in a contest to pick the mascot "Cubs" was the most popular, however many felt that this name would permanently denigrate the campus as a "little brother" of UCLA and Berkeley. In November of 54, the men's basketball team championed freshman Donna Lewis's suggestion of "Hylanders" as a write-in candidate in a run-off between "Cubs" and "Grizzlies." The corrected name won easily, as Provost Watkins was a Welshman noted to speak with an accent, and the UCR campus was located at the highest elevation among all UC schools. Also, the Box Springs Mountains, behind the campus, were known as the Highlands.

UCR Designated as a General UC Campus

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 biologist Herman Theodore Spieth, provost after Watkins retired in 1956, with administering UCR's development towards full university status in accord with the provisions of 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 under a single academic and administrative entity, as well as 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.

The Hinderaker Administration, from 1960s and 70s

UCR’s second Chancellor, Irvin Hinderaker, 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. Hinderaker, who was photographed at his own inauguration carrying a placard borrowed from a student protester 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 Hinderaker 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, Hinderaker’s L & S dean Norm Better was noted to have served coffee and donuts to protesters camped inside the administration building.

It fell to Hinderaker 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 withtenure 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." 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 Hinderaker also established UCR’s graduate schools of education and administration and streamlined UCR’s departmental structure during this period.

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, 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. 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. Due to the enrollment gains through the 1980, Schraer was able to appoint 200 new faculty members. . 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.

From 1990s to present: 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. 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.

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.

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 . In 2006, UCR received its largest private donation ever, 15.5 million from two local couples, in trust towards building its medical school, as well as another 5 million from UnitedHealth group. The Regents are expected to make their decision regarding UCR’s medical school proposal in November, 2006.

See also

• Mascot Highlander's history