UC Santa Cruz Other Recent Work Title Karl S. Pister: UCSC Chancellorship, 1991-1996 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7pn93507 Authors Pister, Karl Jarrell, Randall Regional History Project, UCSC Library Publication Date 2000 Supplemental Material https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7pn93507#supplemental eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Introduction The Regional History Project conducted eight interviews with UCSC Chancellor Karl S. Pister just prior to his retirement on June 30, 1996, as part of its University History series. Pister was originally named as the campus’s sixth chancellor for an interim two-year appointment by UC President David P. Gardner in August, 1991, after the resignation of UCSC Chancellor Robert B. Stevens. In March, 1992, the UC Regents approved President Gardner’s recommendation for Pister’s regular appointment as chancellor. Prior to his appointment, Pister had spent his entire academic life at UC Berkeley—thirty years as a faculty member and fifteen years as an academic administrator—and as a seasoned veteran of the UC system and its bureaucracy, he knew the workings of the Academic Senate, the key figures in the University administration, and the institution’s policies and culture, all of which stood him in good stead at UC Santa Cruz. Born in Stockton, California, Pister received his B.S. (1945) and M.S. degrees (1948) in civil engineering at UC Berkeley. In 1952 he received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois in theoretical and applied mechanics. He began his career at UC as a lecturer in 1947, and in 1952 joined the faculty of the College of Engineering where he had a distinguished career as a professor of engineering. He served as dean of the college from 1980 until 1990. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and in 1993 was appointed chair of the section on engineering of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Mechanics, of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and in 1995 was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Pister begins his narration by describing the circumstances which led to his interim appointment at Santa Cruz, and the difficult situation he found upon his arrival. As he explained, “the campus was in such disarray that [President Gardner said he] couldn’t go out and recruit for a permanent chancellor.” Before accepting the offer, Pister consulted with former UCSC Chancellors Robert L. Sinsheimer and Angus Taylor, and with former UC President Clark Kerr, all of whom encouraged him to take the job and considered him the ideal candidate who could stabilize the campus. When he arrived at UCSC he encountered a number of institutional conflicts. He found this campus to be very different from its sister institutions iv and worked to reconcile its unique college system and emphasis on undergraduate education with the University’s research mission. He faced controversy over campus building projects—the founding of Colleges Nine and Ten and a music/performing arts complex—and became aware of how sensitive an issue campus development had become. Pister’s approach to building in a campus area known as Elf Land and the proposed extension of Meyer Drive and its impact on the Great Meadow led him to develop a long overdue update of the campus’s long range development plan and the protection of the meadow. Severe, unprecedented budget cuts at UC from 1991 on, brought on by California’s recession, had a huge impact at Santa Cruz. Pister’s approach to reduced funding was a rational retrenchment process which included the entire campus in budget deliberations, which maintained morale and imparted a sense of equity and fairness among faculty and staff during this difficult period. Another significant topic Pister addresses is the difficult state of town/gown relations when he arrived. The major issue he faced was the controversy over the rate of the campus’s growth (capped at 15,000 students by his predecessor) and its implications for the surrounding community’s housing, traffic, and water resources. Pister’s achievements in toning down the rhetoric and establishing cordial relations with the city and county of Santa Cruz have promoted a new spirit of cooperation. Pister discusses his devotion to and advocacy for improved K-12 education in the region and the role of UCSC in the Monterey Bay Educational Consortium, which has fostered collaboration among UCSC and public schools. Another area he worked to develop is his outreach to the regions’ thirteen community colleges and the Leadership Opportunity Awards program he instituted for assisting community college students transferring to UCSC. Pister discusses UCSC’s role in the Fort Ord base conversion project; the new state university at Ford Ord, CSU Monterey Bay, and UCSC, have become partners in the Monterey Bay Education, Science, and Technology Center, along with local governments and agencies. The narrative also includes Pister’s detailed commentary on UCSC admissions strategies subsequent to the outlawing of affirmative action in admissions at UC by the UC Regents, and the role he played in joining with other UC chancellors in a unanimous public statement opposing this decision. Pister said of the regents’ decision, “In all my years at UC this is the worst day of my life, ”because he believes it is the mission of the University to reach out to all the v people of the state; that affirmative action “is not just for the people that it helps but for the society as a whole.” These tape-recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim, edited for continuity and clarity, organized into chapters and the transcript returned to Pister for his editing. He carefully went over the manuscript line-by-line and provided many written amendments and clarifications which have been incorporated into the manuscript. My thanks to him for his great care in assuring the accuracy of his narration. Copies of this volume are on deposit in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley; and in Special Collections, McHenry Library, University of California, Santa Cruz. The Regional History Project is supported administratively by Christine Bunting, head of Collection Planning, and University Librarian Allan J. Dyson. Randall Jarrell December 12, 2000 McHenry Library University of California, Santa Cruz 1 Table of Contents Introduction viii Becoming Interim Chancellor of UC Santa Cruz 1 A People-Centered Research University 8 Arrival at UC Santa Cruz 13 R. Michael Tanner 15 Billie L. Greene 18 Non-Academic Staff: The Glue of the Campus 20 Key Appointments 21 Campus Advisory Council 23 Student Activism 24 Campus Advisory Board 28 Meyer Drive Extension and the Music Facility 32 Campus Physical Planning Advisory Committee 36 Colleges Nine and Ten 38 An Era of Retrenchment: UC Budget Cuts 41 The College System 50 Affirmative Action 57 Mathematics, Engineering, Science, Achievement [MESA] Program 58 New Admissions Strategies 69 2 Council of Chancellors 80 Relations with Other UC Campuses 84 Graduate Education at UC Santa Cruz 87 Enrollment Problems 88 University Development 91 Leadership Opportunity Awards Program 100 Endowed Chairs 102 Academic Planning 105 Monterey Bay Regional Studies Program 109 Fort Ord Base-Conversion and the Monterey Bay Education, Science and Technology Center 111 Monterey Bay Educational Consortium 115 University Extension 117 Town-Gown Relations 120 Relations with Elected Officials 122 UCSC Foundation 124 Rita Olsen Pister 125 Life at University House 127 The University Staff 130 Index 134 1 Becoming Interim Chancellor of UC Santa Cruz Jarrell: Please tell me, to start, about the circumstances surrounding your appointment here as interim or acting chancellor by President [David P.] Gardner. Pister: I’m happy to do that. In June 1990, I had completed ten years as dean of the College of Engineering at [UC] Berkeley. During the summer of 1990 I started a sabbatical leave at Berkeley. That sabbatical leave was subsequently interrupted by a couple of things that are pertinent to your question. The first, I think was in June or July of 1990, when Vice President Bill [William R.] Frazer called and asked if I would be chair of a task force to study the faculty reward system for the University of California. I accepted that appointment and as a result of that I spent a good deal of my sabbatical leave preparing what ultimately was a report of the task force on the faculty reward system, but was shortened to the so-called Pister Report. This was published and distributed to the [academic] senate and engendered a year of discussion about the faculty reward system. So that was the first thing that shifted me from my plan to return to teaching and research at Berkeley after being dean for a decade. The second thing that happened then brings us to a discussion of my becoming interim chancellor in December, 1990. But let me back up now. There are three things that happened. In the fall of 1990, as I was working on this task force, President Gardner asked me to consider taking over the responsibility of planning the tenth campus. At that time, of course, in 1990, there was no indication of where it would be located, except that it would be in the Central Valley. The committee hadn’t identified a site yet. But he said we ought to get started on an academic planning mission for the tenth campus. I accepted and said that would be something I would be interested in. Two things happened then. Robert [B.] Stevens resigned in December, 1990, as chancellor at [UC] Santa Cruz. Then the tenth campus planning began to slow down because of impending budget problems.