Riverside: Departments

Agronomy
Through the efforts of Professor R. M. Love, chairman of agronomy, establishment of a Department of Agronomy at Riverside in August, 1961 filled a need for close research attention to wildland and agronomic problems of southern California. Three staff positions were transferred to Riverside from Davis and were filled by Cyrus M. McKell, Charles F. Walker, and Demetrios M. Yermanos. McKell was appointed as department vice-chairman. Walker subsequently resigned and was replaced by J. R. Goodin, a plant physiologist. William H. Isom joined the department in 1963 as extension agronomist for southern California. Close liaison with the U. S. Forest Service Fire Laboratory was recognized in 1964 by extending five associate appointments in the Agricultural Experiment Station to cooperating scientists of the laboratory.

The department was first housed in space made available in the already crowded Horticulture Building. Subsequent planning allowed for the inclusion of the department in the Agricultural Science Building. In the new building three staff members from UCLA would join the department to form a grasslands laboratory.

As the agronomy department's contribution to the modern curriculum in agricultural science, two courses were offered in 1965, Principles of Field and Forage Crop Production and Quantitative Genetics.

Graduate student enrollment in agronomy had the same pattern of growth as that of the other departments in the College of Agriculture. Even with limited space and facilities, agronomy accommodated five graduate students in 1962-63, eight in 1963-64, and nine in 1964-65.

Grants received by the department indicated the regard for the quality of research being conducted. Professor Yermanos received $51,606 from the National Institutes Of Health and the National Science Foundation for study in 1963-66 on fatty-acid composition of oil seeds. From 1962-66, Professor McKell received grants totaling $26,100 from the U.S. Forest Service, San Diego Farm Bureau and UC Water Resources Center to study seedling establishment, soil fertility and soil moisture relations of range. source

Anthropology
Instruction in anthropology, as a subject-field of the Division of Social Sciences, began at Riverside on opening of the College of Letters and Science in spring, 1954, with three courses taught by John F. Goins, then and for nearly five years thereafter the sole representative of the field on the faculty. As with other subjects, initial enrollments in anthropology were small and, when viewed in contrast to the situation a decade later, even historically remarkable. Of the first three undergraduate classes, one consisting of two students met in the instructor's office and one with but one student enrolled convened regularly in the original coffee shop, then in the basement of the Physical Education Building; the third class, with an enrollment of six, required a large lecture room.

Increasing enrollments during the first five years, additions of courses to the curriculum, student interest in obtaining an anthropology major, and the chance acquisition on indefinite loan of 300 Indian baskets for instructional use at length brought recognition of the fact that one small office and one lone anthropologist were insufficient for the need. In July, 1958, Alex W. Krieger, then director of the Riverside Municipal Museum, accepted half-time appointment in anthropology and taught courses through the year 1958-59. The following year, in July, 1959, Edgar V. Winans was appointed to the second permanent position in anthropology. In that year, a major in anthropology was offered for the first time. Among the first students to be graduated in the major, two took up professional careers in anthropology on completion of graduate training at other campuses of the University and in 1965 held regular teaching posts, Lydia J. Hainline at Riverside and Thomas C. Patterson at Harvard University.

On dissolution of the Division of Social Sciences in July, 1963, anthropology constituted a separate department, Coins being appointed chairman, with the staff increased to five through appointments in archaeology (Makoto Kowta, 1961), physical anthropology (Hainline, 1962), and social anthropology (Frederick O. Gearing, 1962). In July, 1964, Martin Orans was appointed to fill a sixth position, in social anthropology, and in July, 1965, a second physical anthropologist, J. D. Mavalwala, became the seventh member of the staff.

From the beginning and throughout the first decade at Riverside, undergraduate instruction in anthropology was aimed not toward discrete ethnographic analyses and descriptions or conventional surveys of world cultures, but instead toward basic inquiry on the connections between what is biological and what is social or cultural in humanity, drawing on the various field experiences of the staff in Alaska, Yap, India, Africa, Greece, Mexico, Bolivia, and Ecuador. That main emphasis was extended and intensified with inauguration in September, 1965 of a graduate studies program in anthropology, leading to the Ph.D. degree, to which six students were admitted initially. Departmental growth was otherwise betokened by physical expansion from a single office in 1954 to the planned occupancy in 1966 of most of one wing of the Social Sciences Building. source

Art
With the opening of classes in the College of Letters and Science in 1954, courses in art history were offered by Jean Sutherland Boggs (1954-62). She was joined on the art staff of the Division of Humanities by Bates Lowry (1954-57). In keeping with the original intent of the Riverside campus' liberal arts curriculum, the sole major offered in this field was art history, a unique situation within the University system. Studio courses were added, however, in 1957. Instructors were William T. Bradshaw (appointed in 1957) and James S. Strombotne (appointed in 1961).

During the period of the departmentalization of the Division of Humanities, Richard G. Carrott was appointed vice-chairman for art in 1962, and first chairman of the Department of Art in 1963. Dericksen M. Brinkerhoff was named chairman in 1965.

The faculty complement included, besides the two painters, four art historians: Brinkerhoff (appointed in 1965), Carrott (appointed in 1961), Shirley N. Hopps (appointed in 1962), and Henry Okun (appointed in 1965). While the studio program was limited to courses in painting and drawing due to inadequate facilities, the art history program was, from its inception, restricted to the Western European tradition in the belief that a solid academic training in the discipline could be provided in reasonable depth at the undergraduate level. A master's degree program was contemplated for 1966.

Upon the removal of the department to the new Humanities Building in 1963, a picture gallery was acquired. The policy was to use it as a teaching, rather than as a public facility, with occasional exhibitions, such as the exhibit and catalogue of the work of Thomas Moran in 1963, which contributed to scholarship.

In 1965, there were 250 undergraduates enrolled, including 15 majors. Twenty courses were offered by the department. source

Riverside: Departments

Art History There is no history currently available for this department.

Art History
There is no history currently available for this department.