JAMES DUNNING Director of Administration Samuel c. McCulloch Emeritus Professor of History UCI Historian June 27, 1989

Transcription

1 INTERVIEWEE: INTERVIEWER: DATE: JAMES DUNNING Director of Administration Samuel c. McCulloch Emeritus Professor of History UCI Historian June 27, 1989 SM: This interview is with Dr. Jim Dunning who is Director of Admissions and the interview is on June 27, 1989 in HOB 360. And Jim, you first came when I did--i think, after I did, but you came when we opened--to UCI in 1965, and you were Director of Relations with Schools? JD: Well, no. That's not accurate. I came in SM: Oh, did you? JD: I came late in the summer of A whole academic year had lapsed. SM: That's interesting, for one reason: you took on a teaching responsibility in Education. JD: But not immediately. SM: Not immediately. JD: No. I came. I'd sort of like to recap my coming here because it's a classic of the pre-affirmative action days, (laughter) unencumbered by any procedures whatsoever. The way I ended up here was I had been promised a job at Pomona College, where I was doing my graduate work at Claremont, and, through a couple of snafus, that job didn't materialize. And the man who had made the commitment to me said, "Let me put you in touch with somebody at UC Irvine." And I said, "I'm not interested in UC Irvine. It s just

2 DUNNING 2 going to be a big, undifferentiated glob, like every other state university campus." He said, "No, there are good people there. Let me give you a name." So, he gave me the name of Spence Olin. SM: Oh, good. JD: And I knew Spence, who was... SM: A former graduate of Pomona College. JD: Yes. Not only that, Spence had been in the position that had been committed to me at Pomona College just before he came here. So, I wrote to Spence, who was Acting Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, and I said I'd like to come down and talk and he said, "Great, but I'm only acting. Why don't you wait until the new Vice Chancellor comes on board." That was Donald Walker. And, so, Spence put my letter on file. And I figured that's the end of it, I'll never hear anything. I get a letter from Don Walker a couple months later, please come down and get acquainted, very nice. So, I did. We had a very nice talk. But, he said, "Nothing is imminent, but it's nice to know you." So, I figured that's the end of it. (laughter) And this is all going on in the space of about three months in the spring of It happens that I had been doing some singing with SM: Mam:- ice Allard, who was the first choral music man at UCI. Yes, I know Maurice very well. He's a good friend of mine.

3 DUNNING 3 JD: And Maurice had been in Claremont. He was teaching at Pomona College during the time I was a graduate student up there. And I'd been doing some choir conducting up in that area and we knew each other through music. And Maurice knew I was interested in a job and he was just finishing his first year here, and it happened that he and Don Walker were talking during the summer of 1966, and something had popped: this Director of Relations with Schools position was materializing. And Don was thinking out loud, I guess, to Maurice, and Maurice said, "Well, how about this guy I know?" And Don said, "That's right. I talked to him in the spring." He said, "That's our man!" (laughter) So, I was at that time working at the University of Denver and I was in Denver at the time. And they called me and said something like, "We have a position that we think you're ideal for. Come on out and let's talk." And that's the way things were done in those days, of course. SM: Oh, they sure were. We got good people. JD: (laughter) Why waste any time? So the position I came to was Assistant Director of Relations with Schools, but that was in a system-wide hierarchy. It was not a campus position. It was an Office of the President position. So, there was one director and then a series of associates and assistants who were domiciled around the system. So, I didn't report to the campus. It was half-time at that time. The position, that kind of function, had been carried on by

4 DUNNING 4 a couple of faculty members during the previous year: Bob Cohen in Drama and Danny Rogers who was the first basketball coach SM: Basketball coach, yes. JD:... were doing some of that stuff the first year. So, then we had to find another half for me, when I took the half-time Relations with Schools position. So, I ended up half-time Assistant to the Chancellor for awhile, Assistant to the Vice Chancellor for awhile. And it wasn't until and I'll have to tell you this story, too. I was on an airplane coming back from someplace with Jim March, the first Dean of Social Sciences at UCI, and Jim was saying, "Well, how long are we going to be able to keep you at Irvine?" And I said, "Pr-obably quite awhile." And he said, "What do you really want to do?" I said, "I want to get in some teaching." He said, "Oh, great." He said, "What would you like to teach?" I said, "Well, I don't really know. I hadn't thought much about it." And he said, "Well, how about Educational Psychology?" Now, my Ph.D. was in Education and in Psychology. I said, "I've never had a course in Educational Psychology." And Jim said, "Perfect!" (laughter) He didn't want anybody encumbered by expertise. So, I took that teaching and started that in SM: In 1968? JD: I think I started teaching... I believe it was. SM: That's great.

5 DUNNING 5 JD: SM: JD: SM: JD: SM: JD: Probably the winter of Now, tell me, what were your achievements or how did you get along as Director of Relations with Schools, or Assistant Director? And then when did you move over into the Admissions Off ice? Okay. I guess I can't think of what major problems there were. I mean, Orange County was very, sort of virgin territory at that time. There was a great, sort of. there's always been sort of a provincial attitude on the part of high school students. They are very hesitant--more so than a lot of other places--to leave the region. Yes, that's true. So, we always had that. It was sort of frustrating, in a sense. You had people who are good and you say, well, okay, they'll come to UCI because they live in proximity. But on the other hand, you say, these are people with great minds who should be thinking a little bit bigger than they are. So, it was sort of a paradox. A strength was in that, I believe, in that old organization of Relations with Off ice of the President function Kidner headed that. Schools. I think that that Frank Kidner, as Vice President of Educational Relations. And then the Director reported to him. Being free of the campus meant you weren't serving any You were domiciled in the campus and, naturally, you had a little

6 DUNNING 6 more expertise on the campus, but your allegiance was to the best interest of the university. And when you went to schools in those days, it was not student specific. You weren't recruiting students like they have been in subsequent years. You were dealing with the relationship between the university and the schools. And you were treated with a great deal of respect. I mean, you were like... SM: That's true, and I'll tell you how I know that, Jim. I was Dean of the college, which meant sort of an Academic Vice Chancellor position, at San Francisco State. JD: Right. SM: And I went to the meetings, which were called JD: The Articulation Conference? SM: Articulation Conference. Now, the representative for UC was Frank Kidner, and he was far away. The way he was treated, the way he spoke to people, the way he articulated the UC, that made you feel kind of sorry. I did some speaking and so on, and I was a little embarrassed at the state colleges and the junior colleges and the high school, that is, the segments. And, boy, Frank did well for UC. JD: Yes. Well, I was astonished in those first years that I was with the university because my background was all in private institutions. SM: Where's your A.B. from?

7 DUNNING 7 JD: My bachelor's degree is the University of Redlands, of all places. SM: Oh, yes. JD: And both my masters and Ph.D. were from Claremont. SM: Yes. JD: And I had worked for the University of Denver, so this was my first public institution experience. And I was absolutely astonished at how facile the communications were and the relationships. I have never known so comfortable a home as I did in the University of California, for about the first ten years I was here. It was people like Frank, and so forth, who just had the big picture. The common good was on everybody's mind. So, there was a great deal of strength in that kind of organization. What happened, then, was that the Let me tell you about the Director of Admissions background. The first Director of Admissions position was combined with Registrar, and that was Lyle Gainsley. SM: Lyle Gainsley. JD: And he was here for just two years before he became a system-wide Director of Admissions. And it was not uncommon for Admissions and Registrar to be combined. They still are on several UC campuses. Lyle was replaced by John Brown, who had been at UC San Diego, then went to the University of Hawaii rather briefly, for less than a year, as Registrar there. Then he came back when this position was vacant.

8 DUNNING 8 And about that point, about 1969 or and all that machinery, incidentally, reported to Student Affairs, not Academic Aff airs--there seemed some desirability to separate Admissions and Registrar. So, John became sort of Acting Director of Admissions, or Admissions Officer, it was called then, and full-time Registrar, while they decided to look for the first Director of Admissions. SM: That was in 1969? JD: That was in So, it just sort of was in limbo there for about a year. I was recruited by somebody on the campus, somebody on the search committee, actually, to be a candidate for it. I liked my Relations with Schools and teaching combination so much I didn't want to tamper with it. But people convinced me I should go for this and I did. So, in October of 1971, I think, I assumed the Admissions position. Well, then what happened, I had to resign the Relations with Schools thing. And since that was a system-wide function and a lot of questions were being asked around the system about how that function should be organized... The campuses were starting, the Chancellors were starting to get directly in it as a campus tool. SM: Yes. JD: So, my position was not filled in Relations with Schools. It was left vacant for about a year where there was a study of what should happen to ORS. So, I sort of precipitated I

9 DUNNING 9 that crisis by leaving. And then what happen was it was decided to decentralize it, to abolish it as position and give the money to the campuses. a system-wide SM: Yes. I felt very sorry when that happened: A, to Frank JD: Kidner, who retired earlier than he wanted to, but also for the fellow who was at Santa Cruz. Howard Sho~z? SM: Howard Shoontz. He came to Berkeley to be sort of Frank's JD: SM: position, and all of a sudden, you were wiped out for (inaudible). Yes. I felt that was pretty bad. JD: Yes. But I think the university lost a lot in the level of its credibility with the educational community by switching from these really, very professional and academically proficient Relations with Schools officers to the recruitment-oriented thing. The pendulum swung very far the other way. It's actually come back closer to center in recent years. SM: Well, has it swung in a way. JD: SM: ethnic minorities at the time? Was it not because of That all came into focus about the same time, right. And then it's beginning to come back a little bit. JD: Well, it was campus recruitment, campus interests, on the one hand. Minority recruitment--we are talking about the early seventies, now, and how things had to change very

10 DUNNING 10 radically. So, those dictated that it should be a campus, standard campus-oriented function. SM: Yes. JD: But what happened, then, was that people who came into that were a very different kind of people than those who had been in Relations with Schools. They tended to be a lot of entry level people, people that were not going to stay in that position for very long, people who are colorful and, you know, personable, didn't have the depth. SM: Well, we were lu have Sylvia Lenhoff. JD: Yes. See, we had. Sylvia was my Associate Director. Relations with Schools stayed with me when I became Director of Admissions and, so, I hired Sylvia to take that position. And she came out of a good strong academic (inaudible). SM: Oh, good. That's a very good (inaudible). I'm going to be interviewing her. I've interviewed Howard. You'd be interested in what I've done, just to pause a little. I've now done you'll be the twenty-seventh, I think, interview. I'm to do sixty-five of them. And I've done Howard Lenhoff. I've done Dan. I did it in 1971, I think, and now I've done it twice. I had two interviews of one and a quarter hours. JD: You should do one each time he retires. (laughter) SM: You know something, I made a mistake and I didn't really press him on what were evaluations of Riverside and Irvine and Santa Barbara, so I'm going to interview him again.

11 DUNNING 11 JD: Oh, yes. SM: I'm going to run out of tape, because that will be very interesting. JD: Oh, yes. SM: But I've got... Sylvia's on my list. Howard I did because of his Chair of the Academic Senate, Marjorie because she was a very effective Senate head, Spence Olin because he was very good. I've done all them. So, I'm moving along. I've been at it now only for roughly six months, and I've got them done. So, Sylvia is on my list and I'll be interested to hear what she has to say. Well, go ahead, now. What continued? You... JD: Changes in administration. SM: Yes. I am interested as to who you reported to and (inaudible). JD: Yes. This is really very interesting and it's very important. Admissions and Registrar, along with Financial Aid and all the usual array of services reported to the Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs. Just after I took the Admissions position, Registrar moved from Student Affairs to Academic Affairs. I've never know exactly the background of that. It was brewing before I came into the picture. I know that. my estimate is that it was the same kind of thing that prompted me to want to move, and that was the lack of resources and support for systems development under Student Affairs. The Registrar here has been You

12 DUNNING 12 know, the greatest unsung resource of this campus ever has been John Brown. SM: I'm interviewing him pretty soon. JD: That's good. Today was his retirement party, at 11:30. SM: Oh, it is? JD: Yes. SM: I've got Ralph Laue. JD: Yes. Well, John isn't... This is in the off ice, just a pot-luck. John won't have it any other way. He will not let anybody acknowledge him. SM: No wonder I couldn't get him. JD: We've tried everything in the world to get the guy to stand up and be applauded as a unique and.. SM: Well, I've got to line him up. I've tried to get him for a whole week. JD: Yes. But John's vision was always far ahead of what Student Affairs was willing to ante up for, in terms of systems development. And, of course, the campus's [systems development], for the last twenty years, has been the result of John's stubbornness and moving ahead with some things. Mostly, motion was very rapid in the seventies. In the eighties, we've sort of slowed down. SM: Well, tell me more about John. JD: Well, when John came, he came via Hawaii, as I said. SM: I remember that.

13 DUNNING 13 JD: But he had been at San Diego and he brought this enfant terrible with him, Richard Everman, who had been working in the computer facility at San Diego. Rich would be another good resource for you. SM: (inaudible) JD: Rich was just a firebrand, eccentric genius, young guy, at that time, without a college degree, who just had all kinds of... nothing was impossible. That's Rich's great strong point. And John has always let Rich act in that way. Rich has become his Associate has been his Associate Registrar, which is sort of a misnomer because Rich is just sort of a consultant-at-large. And everything can be done. Rich is just the most incredible optimist there is. And John is giving him all the leeway to act in that fashion, which is very unusual. Another thing that happened. Well, if you talk to John, you'll get much more detail, not this. SM: I will. (inaudible) JD: Well, you've got to be pretty lucky to get him, so that's what I'm saying. The important thing is that in the earliest days of the campus, you know... SM: I think he'd cooperate. This is important for the history of UCI and he can restrict the tape for ten, fifteen, twenty years. He can do anything he likes. Ralph Gerard gave me a three-hour interview and he was mad at everything

14 DUNNING 14 at the time. And he gave me some very interesting insights. But, oh, God, I restricted that for fifteen years. JD: Well, you remember how we started out with this joint venture with IBM and the campus, for the first two years. SM: Oh, yes, yes, of course. JD: And this was to be the computer support of campus administration of the future. And that just suddenly fell apart in 1968, just at the time John arrived. UCI and IBM just dis-affiliated and they left bits and pieces here and many, many man-years of work that were flushed. But some people stayed here that had been with IBM. I wish I could remember. I think Dave Sheldon might have been one of them, and so forth, but Jim was another. Jim was another teenage, practically a teenage guy. Jim is still here. He's with John and Rich. And Jim Hankey are the troika that has made Student Information Systems work on this campus. So, nothing... I doubt if many things have been accomplished so fast as bringing up the campus's own system for, I believe, it was SM: Well, now, let me review rather quickly, Jim. You said that John Brown went over to be under Academic Affairs what date? JD: I think it was just after I took Admissions. It must have been in 1971 or SM: And you were still in. JD: So, I stayed in Student Affairs. SM: Yes, okay.

15 DUNNING 15 JD: And I did not have a terrific vision about Systems Support and I needed Rich to keep jacking me up all the time, telling me what Admissions really could be doing if they were moving ahead. But we were terribly handcuffed by system-wide requirements. There was at that time--and this is something I forgot to think about--there were system-wide information systems in place in those days, and the mood of the state was that these were all centralized things. And the campuses had the most cumbersome communications with systemwide systems. We sent all of our... Application stuff came here. All kinds of incredibly tedious batching of documents and manual forms and stuff that had to be sent daily up to Berkeley and then they were sent A certain amount of the work was done at Berkeley, and then stuff went to UCLA, and [from] UCLA back to the campuses. Admissions and Registrar were next-door to each other, but we could not interface one bit of data. It had to go from here to Berkeley, to L.A., back to Irvine, and it was of virtually no use to anybody. So, we started conspiring, very shortly after I took that position, to sort of bootleg.. people had to bootleg systems on their campus and call them something else. The precursor of our Admissions system--we called it sort of a monitoring system--was a system of counting things, you know. That's how we knew what was going on.

16 DUNNING 16 But as time went on, we kept expanding the data base a little bit, and a little bit, and a little bit. Then, the second generation of Admissions systems, or the second major growth spurt, was when we started generating our correspondence, our admit letters and stuff, from local data. But we called that a correspondence system. We didn't call it an Admissions system, but we were all... Everything was in place so that, as soon as we wanted to, we could switch over to interface with the Registrar. SM: Were the (inaudible) Academic Vice Chancellor or Student Affairs Vice Chancellor or the Chancellor himself aware that this was happening? JD: Yes. Admissions reporting to Student Affairs, we had a real It was just pulling teeth, because to buy any kind of a terminal in those days was a huge.. SM: Excuse me, what was the word you used? JD: What did I say, "pulling teeth"? SM: Oh, pulling teeth. I didn't hear that well. JD: Pulling teeth. Yes, there was just no interest in Student Affairs. I mean, Jack Hoy, the Vice Chancellor at that time, came from an Ivy League, traditional, admissions kind of a background himself. SM: Wesleyan University. JD: Yes. And he viewed things in the button-down collar mode, which were not Expediency and managing gross amounts

17 DUNNING 17 of information and trying to be instantaneous in accessing things were just not priorities to him. And, so, we had to I had to sort of do end-runs around him, to keep our own system going. And then, probably about 1973, Rich and John and I started having real serious talks about our interface, and we started really sketching out what we thought should happen. But we knew nothing was going to happen as long as Admissions stayed in Student Affairs. I can't remember what year Jim McGaugh was selected. SM: Hazard Adams was roughly 1972 to 1974, and Jim McGaugh is roughly 1975 to 1982, something like that. JD: Jim was selected for the position sometime in advance of his actually taking it. SM: That's right. That's right. JD: I think he must have had six months advance. SM: Yes, that's right. JD: And Jim and I were well-acquainted at that time, and as soon as it was clear that he was going to have that position, he and I started talking about some of these things that just weren't happening under Student Affairs, which was, you know, fairly risky behavior on my part. And he understood the problems. Plus, the fact that Admissions was starting to heat up, it started to become much more of interest to the academic side of the house. In the past, it was... SM: As part of the ethnic... for recruitment.

18 DUNNING 18 JD: Yes, the thing. The high school curriculum was becoming more and more involved and the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools was more and more active. SM: Yes. JD: I mean, the relationship between the Senate and Admissions became much more in focus at that time. So, we decided that Jim wanted to get Admissions over to Academic Affairs. SM: Over to Academic Affairs. Wasn't Whitely JD: No. Well, Whitely was Dean of Students. SM: Dean of Students. JD: Yes, but Jack was still the Vice Chancellor. SM: Academic Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs. JD: So, the first two things that Jim did was move the budget off ice from Business and Finance to Academic Affairs and move Admissions. And it really caught Student Affairs by surprise and they were just blown away by this. And Jack Hoy took it particularly hard because he had come out of the admissions traditiori himself and here was his favorite thing being whisked away. SM: And that was 1978 you say? JD: No, no. It was right after Jim took office, so it must have been SM: Oh, yes, yes, about then. JD: It seems like it was earlier. But those were the brightest days in my whole career because just these vistas opened up

19 DUNNING 19 and it was clear that. I mean, we had I and R money and so much more flexibility in fiscal aid than we had under Student Affairs. So, we started immediately developing systems that were going to carry us forward and are still the precursors of what we use today. Now, what happened was, under Admissions were also Relations with Schools, and EOP was a unit under Relations with Schools. So, I had a couple of tiers under me. To my own surprise, when McGaugh made the transition, the deal with Student Affairs was to leave Relations with Schools behind in Student Affairs, and also the EOP side of it. So, that cut my operation in half, basically. But at least it left Student Affairs with, you know, an operation which was still close to Jack's heart. And he was starting to view Relations with Schools as having more of a visible role, and Jack was quite visionary in that regard. Jack did have a very good view of what the campus could be doing externally. SM: JD: Yes. And he had pushed me, you know, very positively so, into expanding the Relations with Schools function. And the things that Sylvia has been doing in the last ten, fifteen years are far beyond what anybody ever dreamed of. SM: I used to go out and talk with her. JD: But, I mean, that's only a small fraction of what that program has done.

20 DUNNING 20 SM: Oh, yes. JD: So, there's been a real good vision there. And, to Jack's credit, he was the one that sort of cranked that up. SM: Well, do you feel that Whitely carried on well? The reason I ask this is this: that the Senate and the faculty were very unhappy with Hoy. JD: Yes. SM: And the main reason, if you attended the faculty Senate Committee in, I've forgotten; 1970, whenever it was, he said Julian [Feldman] got up and he said in his very strong way, he said the Student Affairs is building an enormous empire and we want to see it reduced and we want to have some faculty control. So, they set up a Senate committee called Relations With Student Affairs, it was called. JD: Yes, right. SM: Well, did you feel that Hoy did expand too much, or you in favor of what he did? JD: Well, it was the rate and the timing, I guess, of what he did that was obviously offensive to some people. But I think Jack did the things that had to be done in a university of this stature and of this size. He was maybe ahead of his time in some of the things. Things that had to be... Jack was very good at sniffing out a vacuum. I mean, extremely astute, and if there was something that

21 DUNNING 21 could be done, he found a way to get his toehold in there. So, I think that's (inaudible). SM: Did you feel Whitely did a good job in the follow-up, because he was selected. In a very, you know, difficult search way--what shall I say--thorough research, he was made the Academic Vice Chancellor. And it was even more thorough when he quit by the way Mitchell was searched. That was the most incredible performance of search committees. Gee, I was even involved in some way. I guess I was Chair of the Academic Senate or something. JD: Well, of course, I didn't work with Whitely as Vice Chancellor. Whitely and I were co-equals when he was Dean of Students and we were under Student Affairs. My appraisal is that Whitely was given that position because he would be sympathetic with the faculty desire to wind things down a little bit, and Whitely did give away some of the things that Jack had built up. It doesn't matter where they come to rest. Those functions are going to be served one way or the other, whether you call it Undergraduate Studies or you call it an Academic Student Services Off ice within the School of Bio Sciences, or wherever it is. But things have to be done. It just, of course, it doesn't stop SM: Now, how do you account, to jump ahead of what we're going to ask--the other questions. How do you account for this very recent move, whereby, under Horace Mitchell, they've moved Athletics and the Phys Ed program, which is--we've

22 DUNNING 22 always thought of it as academic. I was chair of the search committee--you were on it--the search for a new Athletic Director. But you went to Europe, so I carried on with a committee of still about eight people. And it was very much impressed upon those who sought the position that it's an academic position. Now, how do you, all of a sudden--that whole thing, Athletics, as well--has ran into a deficit. I'm sorry for them, that they did. I think they needed to. But now that's all under Horace. JD: Yes. I have no. not the slightest idea how that all transpired. I was as surprised as everyone else. SM: Well, I'm going to be interviewing John Caine pretty soon and also Ray Thornton, and I'll get a picture of that then. I thought you might know. JD: You'll get some strong opinions. (laughter) SM: Well, that's good. That's why I'm here. What were your problems in the seventies? You fairly well covered them, but you're still under Academic Affairs. JD: Academic Affairs, right. SM: And John is still under Academic Affairs. JD: Yes. SM: So, therefore, your problems in the seventies were JD: Well, they're certainly not problems I would dwell on because I'm extremely. I consider myself to be very, very fortunate. Whenever I've been recruited by another institution, I go there and I say, "Well, why in the world

23 DUNNING 23 would anybody leave Irvine," because it's the best place to work for a person in my position. The amount of autonomy you've got here is just. It's incomprehensible to most of my peers. And maybe we can come back and talk about that. But the problems were the lack of local systems development and the commitment that the university had to centralized systems. And the university took a terrible beating over ten years before it finally said, "Let's bail out of this. It's just not working." It cost a lot of money, but that's happened all around the country. So, that was a problem of the seventies. Everything that had To me, the greatest frustration has been when I took the position with McGaugh. You know, I was in the Vice Chancellor's Cabinet and I wasn't a member of the Council of Deans, but I was always at the Council of Deans and so forth. And what has gone on--this always happens when organizations become more and more complex--that line management gets subordinated to sort of liaison functions and new kinds of positions come in. So, what happened is that instead of reporting to the Vice Chancellor, (inaudible) I reported to the Associate Vice Chancellor, Carl Hartman. And Carl, as I read it, people like Carl were not in the position to manage these units under him, but simply to make sure that all these units were coordinated

24 DUNNING 24 and talking with each other. Liaison has become the That's what's the biggest change in management in the seventies and eighties. And then when Dennis Galligani came in, it was largely because. I mean, Dennis had two functions, as I read it. One was the SAA five-year plan. SM: What is SAA? JD: Student Affirmative Action five-year plan for the campus, which was a hell of an assignment to put on somebody. We want you to come up with I mean, it was a brilliant job that he did, but not anybody else... very few people would have taken that on voluntarily. Also, I have never been convinced that the Student Information System, i.e., the one that runs Admissions, Registrar, and Financial Aid--or has for the last eleven years--needed any more management than it had. Let's go back on that. The Prime 500 computer that we've been running on for the last eleven years is a really innovative kind of a project on this campus. It's a consortium. That machine was bought by five owners: Admissions, Registrar, Financial Aid--each a 30 percent shareholder--and Analytical Studies and Graduate Division were each 5 percent shareholders. And we governed ourselves just as if we were shareholders in those proportions. We financed the purchase of this machine. We did all kinds of things that were unprecedented. To actually finance a

25 DUNNING 25 purchase outside the university is very unusual. But we had a lot of support. Larry Bogard was a big supporter of us. So, we had this incredible autonomy and this ability to handle systems as we felt they needed to be handled. Oh, gosh, I forgot where I was going to lead. SM: Well, you were running the problems through the seventies. JD: Yes. SM: And you were saying why you now had to report to ( inaudible). JD: Oh, yes. Hartman seemed to feel that that consortium governance was not tight enough. I guess one could be antsy about auditors and auditors would come in and they'd scratch their heads and say, "We can't understand how this works." I mean, "We can't under stand that it works. " But. it did. We were all very collegial and altruistic about the running of that thing. But on paper and in an audit report, I suppose, it did not look good. Somebody's got to be in charge, you know. So, Carl did that and then Carl decided to give that staff to Dennis. And that sort of grew into Dennis getting line responsibility for these operational units, which is sort of the way things happen nowadays: that it seems to be a coordinating or liaison function and then grows into either normative or informal authority over something. So, I'd say my problem in that regard has simply been more isolation from the things that I felt that I was most

26 DUNNING 26 useful at, like being on the Vice Chancellor's Cabinet and the Council Deans, and so forth. SM: Yes. JD: That's been a frustration. SM: Well, I've been thinking, Jim, that there are two big problems that have faced you. One was around 1970, when you were told to shut down everything, you're only going to get to 15,000 [student population]. And the other one was gear up, you're now going to go to 26,000 students by Now, how did this affect you? Surely, you have to add more staff and look at things differently. All of a sudden you're going to go... you must be slowing it down. You've got the problem now of turning them away, and turning them away, and it's going to happen all the way up the line, I would think. We're never going to have the space to teach those students until these buildings are built. JD: Well, these target figures were very abstract and never affected year-to-year operations. So, whether we were aiming at 15,000 or 30,000, it never made a difference in the way we did our planning. We had, naturally, lots of concerns. In the early seventies, I wrote a document called "Where Are All the Flowers Going?" and it had to do with the sudden revelation of this demographic decline. The 1970 census revealed that, hey, there aren't a lot of eighteen-year-olds coming down the pipeline. SM: That's right.

27 DUNNING 27 JD: And, you see, the university was built on the 1960 census. SM: Sure. JD: And in the sixties came birth control pills. It was the primary that affected all this and changed the birthrate the population pyramid radically. So, now instead of we were turning people away in the seventies. In the early seventies, late sixties, early seventies, the campus couldn't handle it. But that was a matter of physical growth. You just can only build buildings that fast. Then in the seventies, everybody was very alarmed. Oh, my God, there's nobody out there. We've got to start grabbing. And that's. There was this feeding frenzy in the seventies about making damn sure that you had not only your enrollment but something over your enrollment, so that you had a cushion for next year when it started to plummet. And none of that really happened. SM: Not to us. It did in certain spots though, like Santa Cruz and out in Riverside. JD: Well, yes. Santa Cruz experienced sort of a turn in attitudes. I mean, Santa Cruz was built on an image and that image was very, very popular in the sixties and early seventies. And, after awhile, people became a little more conventional about where they wanted to go to a university and they wanted more conventional kinds of programs and labels and grading systems and stuff. So, Santa Cruz has

28 DUNNING 28 had to sort of struggle to maintain a balance between that conventionality and the vision that they were built on. But what really happened is that, demography notwithstanding, the demand for the University of California has not tapered off. And, so, everybody got fooled. SM: Well, no. And, in fact, Jim, as you well know, it has increased because the parents that I know and you know, too, they say, "I would like to send my son to Pomona or Harvard or Occidental, but I'll get a really good education for my kid at a UC campus," so, they'll go to a UC campus. And that's one reason. I know for a fact because I hear it all the time. JD: Well, historically, I mean, when I say historically, I mean for the great majority of my career, the percentage of California high school graduates who were going to come to the university ran something five, between four and five percent. So, the law tells us to make eligible 12 1/2 percent, but we've always counted on 4 1/2 percent coming. That percentage has almost doubled in the last six or seven years, up to close to 9 percent. So, 9 percent out of that 12 percent are actually coming. Now, that more than offset the demographic decline. SM: Oh, yes, yes. JD: Now, that is heavily affected by the Asian immigrations to California, particularly to this region, because the

29 DUNNING 29 participation rate among Asians is much higher than it is for any other ethnic. combinations of ethnic groups. SM: Well, I'll tell you one ethnic minority that won't be going to a University of California or elsewhere: Chang. Did you watch him on television? [French Open tennis champion, June, He is seventeen years old and lives in Placentia, California.] JD: Yes. (inaudible) SM: He's going to be playing professional tennis for about a million dollars a year or something. God! Then, question six, were you prepared to have UCI top off and move to the figure of well, what? JD: Well, 26,000 or 27,500, or it depends on who you talk to. And I always was very interested in that 27,500 figure. You've probably. SM: I talked to Kerr about that. JD: Well, I did, too. When Clark Kerr was here, the first year, I think. Well, I mean, my first year in 1966 or 1967, I asked him, "Where did you come up with that number 27,500?" SM: What did he say? JD: He said that was based on... I thought it had something to do with enrollment or number of bodies or students. It has to do with faculty. It has to do with 27,500, about, drives the number of faculty that's going to contribute to

30 DUNNING 30 rich departments across the board, that that's the only way we can be excellent across the board. SM: Yes. I had a superb interview with Clark and it ran about two hours back in And I asked that question and he gave roughly that same answer. JD: Yes. SM: I'd like to look at the transcript and see how he said it. I've got to get in touch with him and maybe talk with him again. He's a brilliant man. JD: Yes. SM: Well, now, the achievements of the eighties and the problems of the eighties. You have sketched some of them, but review them now, say from eighty... You see, I came in as Chair of the Academic Senate in 1978, elected in 1978, served to They were the worst times in many ways. Enrollment was going down and money. Jarvis was messing around, and I had... I remember Governor Brown saying, "You will not have any more buildings on campus at Irvine. If you want any more students, send them over to Riverside." Well, we knew they won't go to Riverside. They'd go to Cal State Fullerton and Cal State Long Beach. JD: Yes. SM: So, no more buildings. The only one you can have is your Social Ecology Building, and that's that. Well, now, look, going up is $350 million worth of construction going on JD: All at one time, yes, yes.

31 DUNNING 31 SM: Yes. So, what were you I remember those seventies and eighties and I know Marjorie Cesario, in her interview- I interviewed her--she said they were rough when she was [Chair of the Academic Senate] 1982 to And then, all of a sudden, things lifted, you know. The incredible. Irvine Company giving us a million dollars and Bren giving us a million dollars and so on. They finally decided (inaudible). JD: That we were an asset after all. SM: I'd like to hear how you faced those problems. JD: Well, this sounds rather minor, I guess, but I'd say the main achievement has been the development of Student Information Systems, that allowed us to keep pace with the other changes that the campus confronts. SM: And what is that system? JD: Well, it's a totally on-line admissions system. Now, the Irvine campus has made, as I view it, over the years, two very important commitments to systems. One, is on-line interactive systems, rather than batch things. There's a lot of campuses that are still terribly encumbered by batch modes. And the other things is autonomy of the local manager to run their own systems. I can't think of any other campus where I could go out and buy my own computer. I just bought a computer this month that will get us through the next decade. My colleagues on other campuses aren't being given $100,000 to go out and buy a computer.

32 DUNNING 32 SM: Somebody else does that for them. sink or swim. You've got. own merits or you leave. So, at Irvine, you can Either you do it on your So, that, to me, is one of the greatest things about the campus, is this autonomy. techies report to me. All my I'm not beholden to somebody in the computer facility where you're one of their clients and they put you in a queue wherever they want to. That's great. JD: But that's the way it is on campuses virtually everywhere SM: else. So, that climate has allowed us to be extremely responsive and flexible to what they say is ahead of us. So, that the result of good systems is increased staff productivity I still have about You should need more by now. the same staff I did in JD: We should. Of course, we should. But even if I had the SM: dollars for the staff that we need increased staff since multiple filing. See, we have not Our applications almost tripled since 1986, but with the same kind of people we had before "Here's another any space to put them. But, ironically, even if somebody said, $50,000 for some staffing," I wouldn't have So, what does it matter? But it's, in a decade, having gone from a small university to just about a large university--we're not large, yet... We were 16,000 last year. What will we be this coming year?

33 DUNNING 33 JD: We'll still be under 17,000. SM: About 16,800, won't we? JD: Yes, 16,800, yes, in the mid-sixteens. So, I view that as the upper end of a medium-sized university. SM: So, Dennis is still your. You report to Dennis, do you? JD: Yes, right. There's a big attitudinal change. Well, we know that a change of Chancellors changes everything else. People think differently. I mean, here's a Peltason coming from Illinois, which is a totally different environment. And here's an Aldrich coming from a 1300-student campus to one that reached 13,000 by the time he left. So, you have to... There's a different mind set between Director of Admissions in a place that was 3500 students, when I took the position, where it was to 16,000 now. But I believe that we have all the support that is necessary. SM: Well, I'm very interested in this, Jim. Now, question eight: Do you know of any event that has not been mentioned in the written record? I say this because Jack said to me, laughingly, "Now you've got to find something in your oral history that isn't in the written record~" JD: Well, I think most of them are probably Dan Aldrich stories. (laughter) But it's about the poor people who had the misfortune of being his tennis partner. (laughter) SM: I know. That's what happened to Bob Lawrence. JD: Yes, Bob Lawrence, I thought you probably knew that story.

34 DUNNING 34 SM: Oh, yes. JD: And there was one time We had an administrative volleyball team, intramural volleyball team. It was called the Ad-Libs because in the Library was the Administration Building. So, it was abbreviated Administration-Library, or Ad-Libs. And people just stopped playing... Dan was, obviously, the kingpin of the volleyball team. But you didn't want... The only thing worse than playing against Dan was playing with him. (laughter) SM: I played for Phys. Ed, but Social Sciences under Jim March and Daran Bell were the best. But, okay. JD: No, I would say, the thing that I would want to stress is the change in the participation rate in the state of California. That is what has fooled everybody. Obviously, the demographers drew the right conclusions in linear relationships between high school graduates and enrollment, but what nobody could have guessed was that the demand for the university would increase at a rate to more than offset the decline in seventeen-year-olds. SM: Say that again. JD: The increased demand for the university was this participation rate doubling from 4 1/2 to 9 percent. SM: Yes, I've got you, I've got you, right. Well, then, the last question, how do you see our future? Because you. this is question nine. I'm Emeritus, but it's basically a young administration and a young faculty. You'll be around

35 DUNNING 35 for all this. What do you see? Do you think we're going to make it in the really big time or it's rather hard to recruit and get the best, you know. JD: Well, I'm not really expert to comment on all of that. The thing that I have felt that we've been most remiss in is capitalizing on our--i hate to use the term--pacif ic Rim location. But there is no better located university in the world to take leadership vis a vis the Latin American (inaudible). SM: Oh, you know, San Diego jumped in on that. JD: They jumped in on that, and we still should have a leg up on them, but we don't. SM: You know, I felt very badly because I've been running Australian history now for fifteen years, I'm very concerned about New Zealand and I know more about Singapore and all that... (End of Side 1) SM: Well, now, we're going on with Jim Dunning on the reverse side, and we were asking the question as to where UCI is JD: going to be in the year Well, we are clearly in the vanguard of the ethnic changes of the state. We will, in 1989 and 1990, have a really visible change in our under-represented minority population. I'm making really strong headway there. The percentage of Asian students is going to continue to increase, as long as immigration continues to impact on this geographical region.

36 DUNNING 36 So, we are the California of the future already, in terms of representing (inaudible). SM: It's interesting, Jim, I've been going to Honors occasions now, for ten or fifteen years, and the Phi Beta Kappa, too, and I find that every year we have 22 percent Oriental. JD: Yes. Easily, maybe more. I expect it's maybe higher now. Well, what I was saying on the other side, was that I still don't think we've capitalized on our Pacific Rim opportunities, which have to do, not just with the geography that's to the west and south of us, but with our relationships with foreign industry and corporate life that's right around us. I mean, gee, the number of foreignbased corporations that are within a stone's throw of the campus should provide us with many more opportunities than we have been taking. SM: I would think Jack was well aware of this, Jack Peltason. JD: Yes. I don't really know what the strategic view is on all that. Another thing that I wish was happening, you know, the Fine Arts are one of the greatest resources of the campus, and much more unacknowledged on the campus than off, probably. The reputation of Fine Arts is probably greater in New York than it is in Orange County. SM: Well, in Orange County, yes. But, boy, I think our faculty is well aware of it. We go to all the various, you know, concerts and plays and things. Boy, UCI is And

37 DUNNING 37 they're now beginning to, with this new dean, they've got quite a group vision. JD: See, what I think the campus has not done is, again, look at the cultural or the ethnic element of the arts. I think it's... UCLA has a very good ethnic arts program. Ethno-musicology, their instrument collections, and so forth, are just wonderful. And Irvine should be, I think, in that same position, too. SM: It's rather ironic that Garfias, his specialty is ethnomusicology, had the least impact, I think. I'm not sure. JD: Yes. I just wondered where it was. And Bob is terribly interested in ethnic arts outside of the campus. SM: Well, he's quite a scholar. JD: And I just don't know why it didn't happen here. Now, here we have probably the best undergraduate Dance program in the country. I think that that's pretty consensual. But the amount of ethnic dance that's part of that is disappointing. SM: Yes, that's discouraging. JD: Well, obviously that reflects values of certain key faculty. SM: Yes, well, I'm optimistic. I'm optimistic as to where we'll go. I just think there I agree with you that more money should be given to Fine Arts. It never did. Clay used to produce plays. I don't know how he did it. Producing it out of his shoes, because they were not given enough money. Their original FTE was very small. It's really very... And how's your boy doing at UCI?

38 DUNNING 38 JD: Well, okay. My older son is a music major without a program. He's a composer and there is no composing, composition major any more. SM: That's right. JD: He does not have a conventional instrument, but he is extremely expert in electronic music. So, we have this ironic situation of a first-class facility, the Gassmann Music Laboratory in Fine Arts is just state of the art. SM: How do you spell Gassmann? JD: G-A-S-S-M-A-N, or two Ns, I'm not sure. SM: Yes, two Ns. JD: And, yet, there is a minimal instructional program to go along with the facility. So, that, I guess, my son's advantage is he has free run of everything. He can do anything he wants over there. SM: Is he likely to transfer eventually, or what? JD: He'd thought about transferring out because he wondered if he needed more instruction. My guess is that he's at such a point right now where, what he might gain in instruction somewhere else, he would give up in terms of access to the equipment. SM: Yes. JD: And I think he might as well go on educating himself. What he has to do is find a conventional label to put on this so he can graduate.

39 DUNNING 39 SM: That's quite an interesting. One of the greatest, best presidents I worked under was Mason Gross at Rutgers University, where I taught for thirteen years. But he came in towards the end and he was a provost for quite awhile, the second in command. And the most important thing I can remember him saying, "The properly educated person is a self-educated person." (laughter) And he's right, see, and your son is (inaudible). JD: He has a golden opportunity for that. SM: He's got (inaudible). Any other things you want to contribute? I think you've got a good point, Jim, on this Pacific Rim, and I get pretty unhappy, because I put in a big plug, you know, to get some kind of a program here at Irvine. JD: Yes. SM: And, boy, it didn't get anyplace. JD: It's just creeping along. SM: Oh, yes. Well, a fellow the Australian Consul General, Basil Teasey who spoke twice in my classes over the ten years he was here, was a wonderful and a very able guy, and he worked like a dog to get this Pacific Rim, and particularly Australia, recognized by UCI. And he got transferred. (The Labor government finally decided they'd move him.) He's a professional diplomat, so he's gone. I think he's become ambassador now.