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Berkeley: Departments and Programs

Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning
In 1913, Thomas Forsyth Hunt, then dean of the College of Agriculture, took the first positive step in the establishment of what became the Department of Landscape Architecture. Hunt was a ruralist in every sense of the word--interested in the social as well as the economic life of people. As one factor in his broad and farsighted program, Hunt recognized the desirability of developing in the minds of young people an appreciation of aesthetics as they might be applied to improve the rural home and community. He therefore requested that a division be established in the Department of Agriculture with a program of teaching and of public service directed toward this end. He chose the name, Division of Landscape Gardening and Floriculture, and brought John William Gregg from the faculty of Pennsylvania State College to head the division and direct the program. Facilities consisted of rooms in Agriculture Hall and two small greenhouses in the area east of Giannini Hall. This provided reasonably good space for drafting, instruction in plant propagation and culture, and the study of plant materials.

While the emphasis in this early period was upon problems of the rural home and community, the problems of the expanding urban population were clearly seen, and at an early date instruction in landscape architecture in the broadest sense was developed. The Announcement of Courses for 1915-1916 listed some 12 courses, two of which were graduate courses related to civic art and town planning. Instruction in floriculture and other purely agricultural studies eventually was shifted to other departments, and the curriculum was expanded to include courses in descriptive geometry, art, engineering, and architecture, as well as botany, genetics, and other agricultural sciences. The name of the department changed from Division of Landscape Gardening and Floriculture, to Division of Landscape Design (Department of Agriculture), to Department of Landscape Architecture (College of Environmental Design).

Over the years there was more and more emphasis on the study of the city and suburban areas, the open spaces of the city, and the outdoor recreational needs of all people. There was also considerable attention focused on national and state parks, national forest, and wild lands generally. This trend toward study of urban design problems on one hand and problems of the regional landscape on the other continued to the point that by 1965 the graduate student could choose one or the other area of emphasis.

In 1955, Mrs. Beatrix Farrand gave her Reef Point Library to the department. This library was described by the University librarian as the best subject library that had ever come to the University. In 1957, Mrs. Anson Blake deeded her 11-acre property to the University for use by the Department of Landscape Architecture as a laboratory for teaching and research. This was a rapidly developing and important facility.

The department enjoyed steady growth and development. By the mid-1960s, student enrollment stood at 85 undergraduate and 25 graduate students; the faculty complement was ten, with some joint appointments in city and regional planning and in architecture. source

Latin American Studies Program
There is no history currently available for this program.

Law
See Colleges and Schools, School of Law.

Legal Studies Program
There is no history currently available for this program.

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Program
There is no history currently available for this program.

Librarianship
See Colleges and Schools, School of Librarianship.

Linguistics
From the foundation of the University at Berkeley, instruction was offered by language departments in various phases of the history and description of languages. From 1901 to 1906 a Department of Linguistics under Chairman Benjamin Ide Wheeler offered courses, and in 1904 conferred the Ph.D. on Pliny Goddard (dissertation on the Hupa language). Thereafter, through the initiative of Alfred L. Kroeber, the Department of Anthropology added work in recording and describing unwritten languages, and in tracing their genetic relations. In 1940, instruction in some of these subjects was consolidated by several appointments in linguistics. The linguistics courses were offered in the Departments of Classics and Oriental Languages. In 1947, a group in linguistics offered a Ph.D. degree in linguistics. An M.A. degree was added in 1948. The department was re-established in 1952. An undergraduate major was offered beginning in 1959-60.

After 1952, the department built up its course offerings as its enrollment and teaching staff grew. In 1964-65, undergraduate majors numbered 48 and graduate majors 57. The faculty consisted, in part, of full-time appointments, and, in part, of appointments shared with other departments; beginning in 1965-66, appointments of the latter type became the exception. Faculty in this year numbered 12.

The curriculum at the undergraduate level inducted the student into an understanding of the diversity of languages, of their nature as instruments of communication and as structured systems, and of their history as changing systems. The graduate student learned the techniques of analyzing structures descriptively and of tracing their histories. He was trained in the history of linguistic theories. Students at all levels were required to attain a knowledge, more or less expert, of a number of languages, especially those of Western civilization, but preferably including others from outside this group. Many doctoral dissertations were descriptions or comparative accounts of native languages of the Americas, Africa, or Asia. By the 1960s there were additions to the curriculum in such subjects as mechano-linguistics (e.g., machine translation), experimental phonetics, and dialectology.

At the time the department was founded in 1952, it was entrusted with a research project entitled Survey of California Indian Languages. It was judged that the University's peculiarly local obligation to the world of knowledge lay in providing descriptions of the state's many aboriginal languages and in initiating comparative linguistic work that would lead to a reconstruction of the human prehistory of California and, by implication, of much of the American continent. The survey at the same time provided a highly valued research opportunity for graduate students in the department.

A large part of the 41 volumes (as of 1965) of the University of California Publications in Linguistics was based on survey research by faculty and graduate students. This series of publications also reflected the department's interests in South and Southeast Asia, the Pacific, romance philology, and various aspects of Indo-European studies. The University's strength in these fields of linguistics was amply recognized by the reviewers.

In 1964, the Linguistic Atlas of the Pacific Coast, established earlier in the Department of English, was transferred to linguistics. Results of this survey of English dialects in California and Nevada were correlated with what is known about American settlement history and patterns of westward migration. source

Logic and the Methodology of Science Program
There is no history currently available for this program.

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Last updated 06/18/04.