How UCSB Came To Be What It Is
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How UCSB Came To Be What It Is
Some places never change, but UCSB is not one of those places. In 1909, a new institution
of higher education was created on the Riviera: The Santa Barbara State Normal School
of the Manual Arts and Home Economics, to train teachers in how to instruct public
school children in these skills. By 1935 it had evolved into Santa Barbara State
College, a school of about 1,700 students that trained public school teachers, but
also offered Bachelor of Arts degrees in the humanities and natural and social sciences.
In 1944, "S.B. State" underwent a great transformation-it was transferred to UC
and re-born as the Santa Barbara College of the University of California. Now its
purpose was to provide a small liberal-arts college of high degree, on the model
of the finest eastern schools, within the massive UC system. As such, it offered
both the Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees. Over the next 14 years, UCSBC
moved to a former World War II Marine air base west of town and began building a
new campus. California learned that its population was growing so rapidly that it
would need a much bigger UC system. Thus, Santa Barbara, Davis, and Riverside were
designated as "general campuses." That is, like Berkeley and UCLA, they were to
offer not simply an undergraduate college but professional schools and the full
range of graduate-level degrees, including the doctorate. Three new campuses were
also established (Irvine, San Diego, and Santa Cruz) on the same pattern.
Thus in
1958, UCSBC was renamed and the University of California, Santa Barbara was born.
Now its task was to become a distinguished international center of learning. By
the 1990s, national ranking placed UCSB high among the nation's leading universities.
UCSB's commitment to the ideal of the "research university," that is a place where
knowledge is not only consumed but created, was in part responsible for these national
rankings.
Today, UCSB brings in hundreds of faculty from all over the world. They
gathered in a cloud of honors and distinctions, ranging from prized fellowships
granted by the leading research foundations, elections to the great world academies
of science, and medals and awards for major achievements in learning. With this
enlarged faculty UCSB could create nearly 100 Bachelors programs, 50 at the Master's
level, and over 30 Ph.D. fields of study. UCSB continues its commitment to create
knowledge through world-class distinguished institutes, among them the NSF-supported
Institute for Theoretical Physics; the Marine Science Institute; and the National
Center for Geographical Information and Analysis.
Now, UCSB's graduates, numbering
perhaps 125,000, head not only into public school teaching (UCSB still has an outstanding
national reputation in this field) but enroll in the nation's leading graduate and
professional schools, afterwards entering careers in medicine, law, architecture,
public and private administration, and many other such fields. They have also become
outstanding figures in the business, banking, and other private sector arenas; emerging
as nationally and internationally-noted artists and musicians, or as major scholars,
scientists, and engineers in universities and research laboratories, and in small
and large corporations, all over the country and the world. They have risen to important
roles in public life, from being print and broadcast journalists and public-cause
activists to mayors of cities, county supervisors, legislators in state capitols,
diplomats abroad, leading figures in Congress, and widely-noted staff members in
the White House who are confidants to governors, senators, and presidents.
At the
same time, UCSB has been busy building that special kind of place for students,
a traditional residential university. The 800+ acre campus and Isla Vista together
form a community in itself-a place where young people can live and study and grow
in mind and character by meeting the many challenges, personal and academic, that
life at such an institution offers. UCSB is not a commuter campus; its paths, buildings,
wide-spread playing fields and athletic facilities are not empty by late afternoon
nor on weekends. They are alive all week and until late at night with classes, with
students studying in the crowded Library, and with a busy schedule of talks by visiting
lecturers, plays, concerts, and student meetings. Intramural sports (which are unusually
popular at UCSB; 80% of our students participate, as opposed to 25% on campuses
nationally) also run on into the evening hours, and intercollegiate athletics booms.
The "Thunderdome," jammed with students, faculty, and townspeople, rocks during
often-televised basketball games. With upwards of one thousand faculty members and
19,000 students, UCSB has come a long way from that small provincial college of
long ago, on the Riviera. It remains a place of change, for students as well as
for the University.
--Robert Kelley, Professor, History 1962-1993
fyi...
OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS The office responsible for telling the UCSB story.
It does so through the campus web site, university publications, and press releases,
and by working with the local and national news media to develop coverage of the
campus, its people, programs, activities, and achievements. Cheadle Hall 1124; 893-2191.
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