To commemorate the CSUEB's milestone birthday, the University Libraries have produced an extensive walk-through display which traces the physical and political history of the University through photos, artifacts, and mural-sized layouts.
If you can't make the Emeriti Reception and opening festivities, please stop by sometime before next June to take in the history of your university. We think you'll be surprised at some of the information and images from the University Archives that we employed to construct this display.
All are welcome!
As part of a campus-wide effort to celebrate the university's 50th anniversary in 2007, the CSUEB Libraries committed to producing a series of large, free-standing exhibit panels on the subject.
Designed as the centerpiece to other materials in display cabinets and on the library walls, the entire exhibit also acted as a backdrop to a formal CSUEB faculty reception hosted by the Library (see related story in this Guide) held on September 27, 2007.
Among the guests invited by University Librarian Myoung-ja Lee Kwon, was the library's Founding Director, Floyd Erickson.
- DA
Producers: Myoung-ja Lee Kwon, Richard Apple
Text and Content: Richard Apple
Posters and Graphic Design: Richard Apple
Copyright 2007 by California State University, East Bay Libraries
Fast forward from the 2007 Celebrating 50 Years production to 2015, and we find the recently formed Library Exhibits Committee wanting to create a new exhibit that calls attention to both (1) the little-known aspects of the campus and its history, and (2) the types of holdings we have in our archives that might allow others to undertake fresh research in these areas.
The Committee chose to completely re-edit and re-frame an older campus history exhibit, the 2011 Hidden Gems of the CSUEB Campus. It also elected to create an ancillary display which would present CSUEB campus history in a timeline format - so we also adapted many of the graphics and textual elements from the Celebrating 50 Years Exhibit and created a new, 35-foot long Campus Timeline to complete the new exhibit package.
Thus, the 2007 CSUEB: Celebrating 50 Years and the 2011 Hidden Gems of the CSUEB Campus Exhibit exhibits have both become part of an evolving exhibit-creation and improvement process that may portend even more interesting exhibit topics in the future! Stay tuned.
- DA
Banner 1A: Title Poster
Archives and Special Collections, University Libraries, present:
Celebrating the First Fifty Years, 1957 – 2007:
An Historical Overview of California State University, East Bay
Exhibit in the University Library
September 27, 2007, through June 16, 2008
[Image of original seal of California State College at Hayward]
[Image of current seal of California State University, East Bay]
Banner 1B: Production Credits
Celebrating the First Fifty Years, 1957 – 2007:
Introduction:
The State College for Alameda County – as it was originally named in 1957 – has been no stranger to change in its brief 50-year history. We tend to forget that even in its earliest days, its mission was regional, and its focus was always ahead, ready to embrace change. In its first five decades, the university has confronted the social upheavals born of the civil rights and women’s movements in the 1960’s and 1970’s, responded to the changing cultural demographics of the region, and adjusted to the explosive growth and proliferation of new technologies. CSUEB continues to adapt and to pioneer in serving the educational needs of the larger East Bay community.
The University Libraries are proud to have the opportunity to offer this exhibit showcasing CSUEB history, entitled Celebrating the First Fifty Years. This is also an opportunity for us to share many of our archival holdings that illustrate the university’s rich history of growth and change.
This exhibit does not attempt to present a comprehensive history of CSUEB, but rather to show some of the major events and themes that have shaped our institution between 1957 and 2007. We also wish to invite you to share additional information you may have by donating your artifacts or remembrances to Library Archives and Special Collections. Contact and other information can be found on the web at: http://www.library.csueastbay.edu/archives/
Funded by a grant from the Cal State East Bay 50th Anniversary Committee
Special Thanks to the Department of University Communications
California State University, East Bay
Production Credits:
Produced by the University Libraries:
Myoung-ja Lee Kwon, University Librarian
Richard Apple, Coordinator: Archives, Special Collections, & Multimedia
Visual Production, Layout and Design:
Richard Apple
Noah Apple
Printing by CSUEB Media & Academic Technology Services (MATS):
Terry Smith
Glenn Brewster
Image Sources:
Library Archives and Special Collections
Media & Academic Technology Services
Facilities Management
Hayward Area Historical Society & Museum
Hayward Daily Review
Oakland Tribune
Archival Research & Content:
Richard Apple
Lucille Klovdahl
Dr. Hal Gin
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Celebrating the First Fifty years
Building the College – Year-by-Year Chronology of the First 10 Years:
1957 - As the first postwar baby boomers approach high school, Assemblyman Carlos Bee, of Hayward, pushes a bill through the State Assembly to create a 4-year college in Southern Alameda County. Assembly Bill 4 establishes a “State College for Alameda County.”
1958 - Many cities promote locations for the new Alameda County State College (ACSC) campus to the State Board of Education. Hayward is prominent, with two possible sites, and has the backing of Carlos Bee. Other communities hoping to house the new college include: San Leandro, Union City, Pleasanton, Livermore, Newark, and Fremont. After several false starts, in late 1959, the board finally chooses the Hauschildt Ranch site in the Hayward Hills as the new home for the ACSC.
1959 - 1960 - In January 1959, Dr. Fred Harcleroad is appointed as the first president of the new college. From January through June 1959, he and other administrators make their home in offices on West Winton Avenue, then move to the old Hayward Union High School on Foothill Boulevard.
Meanwhile, classes for the first academic year (1959-60) are held in the new Cherryland (later, Sunset) High School in Hayward. Bachelors’ degrees are offered in elementary education and business administration. The college boasts 25 faculty members, and the student population is 293.
1960 - 1961 - Classes are moved to the Hayward Union High School. The second year of instruction begins, with a faculty of 75 and a student body of 891. Five new bachelors degrees are offered: biological sciences, language arts, physical science, social science, and mathematics. On February 22, 1961, formal groundbreaking ceremonies take place at the new Hayward Hills campus site. In June, 24 graduates take part in the first commencement exercises in the old Hayward High auditorium.
The Donohoe Act of 1960 establishes the Trustees of the California State Colleges. Starting in the next academic year, the ACSC and other state colleges begin to report to the trustees, rather than to the State Board of Education.
1961 - 1962 - Alameda County State College (ACSC) begins its third year of instruction with 92 faculty and 1,445 students. Seven new B.A. degrees are offered: art, business education, economics, English, history, music, and recreation.
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Celebrating the First Fifty years
Building the College – Year-by-Year Chronology of the First 10 Years:
1962 - 1963 - The third and final year at the condemned Hayward Union High School begins with 118 faculty and 1,800 students. A 15th major is added: physical education. The new college gets a prestigious boost when famed author and philosopher Aldous Huxley speaks at the ACSC fall 1962 faculty convocation.
1963 - 1964 - Freshmen and Sophomores are admitted for the first time, as the Alameda County State College occupies the just-completed Fine Arts and Science Buildings on the new hilltop site. Six more degrees are offered: political science, psychology, Spanish, chemistry, physics, and speech-drama. Faculty now number 136 and enrollment is just shy of 2,500 students.
Dedication ceremonies are held on May 2, 1964, and are attended by Governor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown, UC President Clark Kerr, and Assemblyman Carlos Bee.
1964 - 1965 - Now officially a four-year institution, the newly named California State College at Hayward (CSCH) has 3,995 students and 218 full and part-time faculty. Masters degrees are offered in mathematics and English. One new undergraduate major is added: French. June 1965 marks the start of the first summer quarter in the new quarter-system.
All administrative offices, non-science academic department offices, the bookstore, and a temporary cafeteria (in the Art Gallery) are closely packed in the Fine Arts Building. The Science Buildings house science-related departments, as well as the Library, on the first floor of North Science. A new library and administration building complex is envisioned in the next 4 to 5 years.
1965 - 1966 - The next new structure—the Music Building—opens in Fall Quarter 1965, and quickly absorbs many of the academic departments that are causing the Fine Arts Building to burst at the seams. The campus is growing rapidly, with 4,800 students, two new masters programs—in education and music, and three new undergraduate degrees, which include anthropology, sociology, and geography. The faculty roster tops 300. Landscaping of the recently bulldozed hilltop site begins in earnest.
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Celebrating the First Fifty years
1967 - 1976
A New President for the College - As Cal State begins its second decade, president Harcleroad is reassigned to the Chancellor’s Office. Dr. Ellis McCune, who has served as Dean of Academic Planning for California State Colleges, is appointed president of the college. He immediately addresses problems of curriculum and administrative structure that are seen to have resulted from hurried initial planning in the college’s early years. Noting the campus does not mesh with the state’s Master Plan for Higher Education, and does not reflect Alameda County’s population structure, the new president creates a campus master plan for minority education, actively recruits minority students, and establishes one of the first affirmative hiring programs in higher education.
New Construction on Campus Continues Unabated - Meiklejohn Hall opens in 1968. In addition to classrooms, Meiklejohn is intended to house many departments from the School of Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences that migrated initially from Fine Arts, to the Music Building. Elsewhere on campus, the young college site gets a new cafeteria (1967), a Student Union-Bookstore complex (1969-70), the Speech-Drama and Theatre complex (1971), and a Student Health Center (1973).
Groundbreaking for the Library and Administration Building complex takes place in 1969. The 9-story Administration Building is considered seismically advanced for its day, and the adjacent 240,000 square foot Library is large enough to finally accept the print collection and library services that are bursting the seams of its home on the first floor of the North Science Building.
The Library Becomes the Heart of the Campus - As one of the first appointees of President Harcleroad in 1959, Founding Librarian Floyd Erickson is recognized for crafting a superior academic print collection. With the opening of the new Library Building in 1971, the library becomes the geographic, as well as the academic, center of the campus.
The Campus Reflects the Social Concerns of the Day - During a period of violent campus unrest nationwide due to the Vietnam War, Civil Rights, and other issues, CSCH remains relatively calm, with only a handful of small demonstrations. President McCune’s low-key, non-reactive style is credited with guiding the campus peacefully through these years.
There is an influx of Vietnam veterans enrolling during this period. Students are selecting majors in Social and Behavioral Sciences, and the campus develops programs and services such as Black, Mexican-American, and Women’s Studies. The Student Disability Resource Center is also created to meet the needs of disabled students.
Third Campus Name Change - In 1972, the Trustees change the name of the college from California State College at Hayward, to the California State University, Hayward.
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Celebrating the First Fifty years
1977 - 1986
New Building Construction on Campus – On the Hayward campus, work begins on the new University Union at the site of the old cafeteria. The transformed building promises to be more attractive to students, and is intended to breathe new life into the center of campus, when it opens in 1985.
Transportation and Enrollment Woes – Campus planning, which is otherwise quite accurate in its predictions to about 1970, assumes direct freeway access to the college as a basis for projected growth to about 22,000 students by 1980. Early models and plans of the campus show the “Foothill Freeway” running from north to south along the hills immediately to the west of CSCH/CSUH, with a state-authorized interchange and a direct campus exit near the top of Harder Road.
It is assumed that this freeway extension along Route 238 will run from the I-580 / 238 interchange, along the west side of the Hayward hills, and south to at least Industrial Boulevard. County voters authorize funding the project in 1986 by approving Measure B, and Hayward residents reaffirm the project by approving Measure L in 1992. However, the plan meets some local resistance in the 1990s and is halted by environmental politics. In the perception of many, the lack of direct access to campus is seen as an impediment to the university’s enrollment – which doesn’t grow beyond its 1970 projection.
The discussion around shortfalls in numbers of students further bolsters positive efforts to reach out to a larger, more diverse student community in the East Bay. As part of this pro-active outreach, a Contra Costa Center opens at the site of the old Pleasant Hill High School in 1981, and the university also targets non-traditional students, including disabled, international, re-entry, and adult learners.
Spread of New Technologies on Campus – With the advent of the personal computer in the late 1970s, both classrooms and staff departments are changing in major ways. New technologies are incorporated into both offices and the curriculum. Throughout campus, videotape delivery systems drive down cost of classroom media, feeding increased media acquisitions, and the teaching of media literacy. Initially, the Apple computer, and then the first IBM PCs, become part of the faculty, staff, and student experience. By the mid-1980s, the beginnings of presentation and other software programs are making a big impact on the teaching methods of many faculty members.
On the administrative end, the explosive growth of computer use, and databases in general, leads to major changes for traditional campus fixtures such as the library card catalog, the printed annual media and other catalogs, as well as for the quarterly ritual of manual paper registration in the gym. In time, the library’s holdings and the media collection can be searched more quickly online, and the registration process becomes much easier for students.
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Celebrating the First Fifty years
1987 - 1996
New Construction – Groundbreaking ceremonies are to be held in the Concord hills in spring 1990, as construction begins for the Contra Costa Campus. The new hilltop site is slated to replace the temporary quarters of the Contra Costa Center, still housed at an abandoned high school in Pleasant Hill. The university’s commitment to building an entirely new satellite campus is seen as a way to service more student populations.
Meanwhile, back at the Hayward Campus, the first new student housing construction in 25 years gets underway - it is scheduled to open in 1989. The on-campus housing complex, named Pioneer Heights, is located on the south side of campus, and will house 404 student residents.
Technology Growth Continues – LCD panels and digital projection devices are adopted in the classroom, and new media delivery formats are reflected in library holdings, including CDs and VHS tapes. Computers sustain virtually every university office, and typewriters—which, a decade back, were common—cannot be found anywhere. E-mail becomes common at CSUH in the early 1990s, and most everyone is using the Internet by the end of 1996, which has major ramifications for information sharing and delivery throughout the campus.
A New President for the University – In 1990, Norma Rees becomes the third president of the university. She emphasizes the importance of communication between the campus and the community. Dr. Rees demonstrates the pioneering spirit of CSUH through the many changes she oversees during her tenure, including the development of the Concord Campus, the Oakland Professional Development and Conference Center, and fundraising for the Valley Business and Technology Center.
Diversity and Inclusion – The pro-active campus promotion of the concepts of diversity and multiculturalism as university policy is one of the major hallmarks of CSUH’s fourth decade. Faculty publications on racial bias in popular media, and the topic of multiculturalism in general, place CSUH in the national spotlight. Large public events, such as the 1991 Multicultural Awareness Conference in Oakland, further publicize the university’s commitment to the concepts of diversity and inclusion.
The Student Disability Resource Center (founded in the early 1970s) reaches new professional levels as state-of-the-art assistive technologies are implemented.
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Celebrating the First Fifty years
1997 – 2006
CSUEB Defines Its Regional Identity – Enrollment continues to be a concern at the turn of the 21st century. It is recognized that this issue has engendered numerous positive programs for students in the first 50 years that have reached out to the entire Bay Area. Now, with the start of a new century, the university decides to look at the big picture and embrace the larger potential – always implicit from the beginning – of its regional role in the East Bay Area.
The university changes its name to California State University, East Bay in 2005 to reflect its new regional orientation: the main campus site is now referred to as the Hayward Campus. At the same time, the Contra Costa Campus also changes its name – to the Concord Campus. With its new name, the Concord Campus achieves nominal parity with the Hayward Campus (and with the Oakland Center, which becomes a third site), thereby reinforcing the regional influence of the university as a whole.
New Buildings on Campus – New construction seems to be everywhere on campus for the first time since the late 1960s and early 70s. The Valley Business and Technology Center is the first new academic building in over 25 years. The VBTC opens its doors in the 2006-07 academic year. It meets a long-recognized need for a building dedicated to CSUEB’s successful business and technology programs.
The same 2006-07 academic year also sees the new University Union opening its doors. About the same time, new housing units also are being constructed at Pioneer Heights to accommodate over 400 students.
A New University President – Mohammed Qayoumi succeeds Norma Rees, becoming the University’s fourth president. Mo, as he prefers to be called, seeks to reinvent CSUEB “…as a dynamic, innovative, and truly responsive communiveristy.”
With an engineering background, and strong administrative experience, Mo brings a fresh energy to campus. He spends over six months methodically listening to ideas from faculty, students, and staff in 21 town hall meetings. Based on this input, he defines the most important perceived problems on campus, and gets to work.
Evoking the Pioneer spirit from the early 1960s on campus – days of the New Frontier – Dr. Qayoumi announces the first Learning Ideagora – an online forum that will focus on health and environmental issues, and will propose projects to solve problems.
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Celebrating the First Fifty years
2006 – Forward
The University Moves into the 21st Century with a New Pioneering Vision – In his 2007 inauguration speech, President Qayoumi looks ahead, and sees the university as interdependent with the larger community. This new communiversity promises to change the educational landscape, with CSUEB at its heart. Summarizing from his town hall meetings, he sets his agenda for transforming the university:
An efficient, well-run university with a culture of accountability
Strong growth and full enrollment with personalized learning and expanded access
A vibrant university village
An inclusive campus climate that values faculty, staff and students, and fosters multicultural learning experiences
A tradition of teaching, learning and academic quality emphasized and reinforced
A quest for distinction realized
- From Dr. Qayoumi’s 2007 Inaugural Address:
”The boundless opportunities that are created by education can only be limited by our imagination. That is why I have an incandescent passion for education as a bona fide liberating force for all humankind.
“We need to once again tap the pioneer spirit that led our visionary founders to create this great university five decades ago. This happened at a crucial time, when the Russian Sputnik challenged the U.S. to mobilize the talents and energy of its universities to regain world leadership in science and technology. Can we rise to the challenge? The answer can be found in the Latin phrase, alis grave nil – “Nothing is heavy for those who have wings.”
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Celebrating the First Fifty years
1957 – 2007
The Changing World of the Library: A View Through the Tenures of Past CSUEB Library Directors - These include four long-term administrations, with a short transition period of two years during which two faculty members serve as interim directors, for one year each.
1959-1980 (Floyd Erickson): Building the Collection and the Facility - Floyd Erickson is appointed in 1958 to create and head the library for the new Alameda County State College campus. Erickson’s first order of business is to “build the finest library [print] collections.” He purchases the Hart Collection, which includes books published as early as the fifteenth century. He is fortunate to have an abundance of resources to purchase collections all over the country - no questions asked.
Erickson also works with Facilities and the State Public Works Board to design a new library for the Hayward campus from scratch. After years of planning, the building opens in 1971, and will accommodate a projected student population of 18,000.
1980-1991 (Melissa Rose): Gearing up for the First Wave of Library Online Catalog - With Erickson’s retirement, his successor - Melissa Rose – undertakes a conversion project which creates a machine-readable catalog record for each and every item in the library’s collection. The old card catalog is retired from the public. In its place, online catalog terminals are installed.
1991-1993 (Gene Poschman and William Reuter): Holding the Fort - Two faculty members step up to manage the library at the critical juncture marked by Melissa Rose’s retirement: Gene Poschman and William Reuter. Poschman actively tries to stave off funding cuts in library materials budget. Succeeding him, Reuter begins the removal of asbestos on the Upper Mall, and sees that the online catalog system is upgraded.
1993-2000 (Noreen Alldredge): Teaching Students to Become Information Literate - Instruction in Information Literacy becomes a requirement of the new General Education Program. Every librarian is involved in teaching the new Introduction to Information Literacy course. The library becomes one of the charter members of a resource-sharing consortium of libraries (LINK+), which allows library users to borrow materials from participating institutions within 48-78 hours.
2000-2007 (Myoung-ja Lee Kwon) - Providing full-text online and “Library as Place” - With the explosion of networked scholarly communications, the CSU System Libraries provide a plethora of electronic core collections of databases through consortia. More emphasis is given to access and delivery of information online, while developing locally held print collections. The system-wide telecommunication infrastructure build is completed, providing wider, faster access to the Internet, both wireless and wired.
The Learning Commons – which opens in January 2005 – is designed to provide a collaborative learning space for students, giving them access to both state-of-the-art computing stations, and to reference help from librarians. Responding to the requests of students, the Library extends its study hours to midnight.
As Emeritus Faculty member, and interim library director, William Reuter, states: “The Library should continue to be a learning center, a place where men and women come to find information … an intellectual haven and a resource center for the university community and the public.”
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