:: Sources
|
|
 print-friendly
format
History
Home Economics
Horticulture and Agronomy
Human and Community Development
Human Physiology
Hydrology
History
From modest beginnings in 1951 as part of
combined History and Political Science in the new College of Letters
and Science, the Department of History, independent by 1960, over
the next four decades fulfilled the vision of the California Master
Plan and became a strong voice of the liberal arts. Two history
courses had first been offered in 1936 as part of general education
for students in the College of Agriculture. The new department of
1960 numbered eight faculty, guided by two Berkeley doctorates who
arrived to teach service courses after World War II. Undergraduate
enrollments in history courses, in pace with the dramatic expansion
of the college, numbered 359 in 1952 and 2,282 in 1965. This golden
era of American higher education likewise saw the number of faculty
historians more than quadruple by 1970 as scholars and teachers
of variety, distinction, and exceptional congeniality were recruited
not only from nearby Berkeley and Stanford but also from Chicago,
Columbia, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Princeton. All were devoted
to effective classroom teaching, and nine of them over three decades
garnered campus teaching awards.
By the 1980s curricular offerings had been widened
and deepened to encompass all of the traditional chronological,
geographical, and topical historical themes together with new courses
in women's, ethnic, and world history. In keeping with new perspectives,
between 1971 and 2000 the department added 19 women to its professorial
ranks in all fields and installed professors in African-American
and Mexican-American (or borderlands) history, and privately endowed
chairs in the history of the American West and the history of the
Holocaust.
Davis historians earned professional recognition
over the decades, publishing through major university presses and
the outstanding historical journals. Two of them won the Pulitzer
Prize in History (1965 and 1996), while others were honored by leading
historical organizations (in which some held offices), by other
universities, and by overseas awards in Taiwan and Siena, Italy.
Together with campus physicists using protein milliprobing, one
faculty member became an expert in determining the authenticity
of early books, including Gutenberg bibles. Several faculty authored
nationally used textbooks and anthologies. The journal Agricultural
History found a suitable home and an excellent editor in the
department from 1965 to 1984. Historians strengthened university
governance by serving long hours in key committees and offices of
the Davis and statewide Academic Senate; one also served a term
as faculty representative to the Board of Regents. The collegiality
of the department was underscored over the years by the guidance
of six able chairs.
The department established its doctoral program
in 1962. Intensive, critical seminars and close mentoring, including
introductions to quantitative and comparative methods of historical
inquiry, became the hallmarks of this training, which resulted in
the publication of many dissertations, among them several prize
winners. UC Davis doctoral graduates in history, most of whom had
served as teaching assistants in the department, went on to academic
positions across the nation and abroad. source
to
top
Home Economics
Instruction in home economics began on the
Davis campus in the fall of 1936. A non-degree two-year program
was taught by a faculty of five under the chairmanship of Professor
Agnes Fay Morgan (Berkeley), with Mrs. Louise C. Struve Crowder
as the local director. In 1942 the department was authorized to
offer a complete undergraduate program and the bachelor of science
degree was conferred upon the first two graduates in 1946.
In 1953, the department became an independent
unit, with Professor Gladys Everson as its first chairman. Also
in 1953, the present home economics building was completed, the
culmination of joint efforts of the department staff and the California
Farm Bureau Federation. After that date, there was major growth
in number of staff and students and undergraduate majors in child
development, dietetics, foods, nutrition, design, and textile science
were added. Graduate study in nutrition, foods, and consumer economics
were available after 1957, followed by child development and textile
science.
Both students and faculty of the department received
recognition for outstanding achievements. Of 436 majors who had
bachelor's degrees from 1953 to 1965, 91 were elected to Omicron
Nu, 16 to Phi Beta Kappa, and 31 to Phi Kappa Phi. Accomplishments
of the faculty were recognized by the granting of Guggenheim Foundation
and MacDowell Colony fellowships; by election to national office
in professional societies; and by consultative or committee assignments
for the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council,
U. S. Department of Agriculture, and U. S. Department of Health,
Education and Welfare. Three members of the faculty were recipients
of the Borden Award for fundamental research in nutrition. In addition,
the research and creative activities of the faculty received financial
support from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science
Foundation, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
By the mid-1960s the teaching and research programs
of the department increasingly emphasized the basic biological,
physical, and social sciences--training students for careers relating
to the problems and interests of consumers as individuals and families
and seeking new knowledge in nutrition, food properties, child development,
consumer economics, housing, and textile science. A further step
in the evolution of these programs took place in 1965 with the decision
to reorganize the administrative structure of the department, anticipating
the long range objective of establishing a professional school of
consumer and family sciences. In the reorganization, the name of
the curriculum was changed to Family and Consumer Sciences; the
faculty of home economics was assigned to various discipline-oriented
departments; and the teaching program was directed and coordinated
by an associate dean. source
The Department of Home Economics was disbanded
in a 1965-66 reorganization, with faculty going to Consumer Sciences
(which later became part of the Division of Textiles and Clothing),
to Nutrition, and to Applied Behavioral Sciences (now Human and
Community Development); see also Division
of Textiles and Clothing, Nutrition,
and Human and Community
Development.
to
top
to
top
Human and Community Development
The Department of Human and Community Development
is an outgrowth of the Department of Applied Behavioral Sciences,
which was created in the mid-1960s. This department developed out
of the Division of Education that was started in the early 1920s
to train teachers in agriculture, followed by a teacher education
program in home economics established in 1950. In 1959 the unit
was split in two. Teacher preparation in agriculture and home economics
moved to the new Department of Agricultural Education while the
Department of Education in the College of Letters and Sciences was
given responsibility for preparing teachers for grades 1-12.
In the 1964-66 period, when the College of Agriculture
was undergoing extensive reorganization, the Department of Home
Economics was dissolved. Departmental faculty in the sciences went
to their respective discipline departments while those in the social
sciences were assigned to the Department of Agricultural Education.
This unit then became the home department for child development,
design, agricultural and home economics education, and the beginnings
of community development.
In 1969 the Department of Agricultural Education
was renamed the Department of Applied Behavioral Sciences (ABS).
In 1970 the Native American and Asian American Studies programs
were added to the new department. During the period of student unrest
in higher education, the ABS department became known for responding
to student requests for more relevant curricula and better university
management. The department grew rapidly to 29 faculty and more than
500 majors in its first five years. Within ten years the faculty
numbered over 40, and there were 700 undergraduate majors.
In 1983 design faculty members left ABS to form
the Department of Environmental Design, and in 1989, Native American
Studies and Asian American Studies moved to the College of Letters
and Science. About this time the program in agricultural education
was transferred to the Department of Agronomy. In 1996 the former
Department of Applied Behavioral Sciences became the Department
of Human and Community Development, with eight faculty members in
each of the remaining two programs in human development and community
and regional development. Human development currently has about
500 undergraduate majors, plus 53 students in the master's and 25
in the doctoral programs. Community and regional development has
about 100 undergraduate and 73 master's degree students.
The human development major explores "the
developmental process in humans throughout the life cycle"
with special emphasis on cognitive and personal social development.
The community and regional development major addresses social, political,
and economic issues in a changing state and society, and their global
connections. Research topics are approached by applying social science
theory and methods to the study of community processes and problems.
source
to
top
Human Physiology
There is no history currently available
for this department. See School
of Medicine.
to
top
to
top
|
