LYMAN PORTER, Former Dean Graduate School of Administration Samuel C. McCulloch Emeritus Professor of History UCI Historian July 13, 1989 INTERVIEWEE:

Transcription

1 INTERVIEWEE: INTERVIEWER: DATE: LYMAN PORTER, Former Dean Graduate School of Administration Samuel C. McCulloch Emeritus Professor of History UCI Historian July 13, 1989 SM: This is an interview with Professor Lyman Porter of the Graduate School of Management on July 13, 1989 in room 360- HOB. The first question is when did you come to Irvine? LP: Well, officially I started on the payroll on July 1, SM: I see. So, Dick Snyder was then the dean, was he? LP: Right. He was the person that recruited me during the well, starting back probably in the spring of SM: And you came from where? LP: Well, from Berkeley. I'd been on the faculty at UC Berkeley for eleven years. But the immediately preceding year I was a visiting professor at Yale, but technically I was still. SM: You were Berkeley faculty. LP: Right. SM: And what courses did you teach when you began here? LP: Well, that's not exactly an easy question to answer since this was only the second year of the then-called Graduate School of Administration, now called, of course, Graduate School of Management. So, it had started just the year before in 1966 and had five second-year masters students and about six first-

2 PORTER 2 year masters students. so small, we had. And since the number of students were. all the students were in several classes that were mostly team-taught. So, we had something that had the rather innocuous name of Sequence One and Sequence Two. Really, it was. Sequence Two that I taught in was more a coverage of the behavioral and managerial aspects. SM: Well, I understand the dream that we had. I remember when Ivan Hinderaker recruited me. He said this Graduate School of Administration will handle various kinds of administration: public administration, business administration... LP: Education. SM: Education administration. LP: And health. SM: Health administration. Did this come to pass? LP: Well, that's a good question. Ivan was certainly the godfather of that concept for this campus and, I think, had the enthusiastic support of Dan Aldrich for the concept. And, indeed, that clearly was a factor in recruiting, when they recruited Dick Snyder as the first Dean of GSA. Dick being a political science [sic], wasn't really specifically identified with any one of the specific areas of administration. Although, since he was in political science, he might have been closer to public administration but really wasn't in that field per se.

3 PORTER 3 The concept has evolved over the years in ways that we have We never really did get into educational administration, although we have from time to time had some courses in higher education administration. But I think because of the various aspects of state licensing laws and certification and the technicalities of that, and because we were so short of faculty manpower for the first twenty years or so of our existence, that we never really had the resources to put in the educational side. For the first fifteen years or so, we had a strong presence in the public administration as well as business administration. But in recent years, largely because of shifts in student interests, the public administration side has really faded. SM: What about health? LP: Well, health is something that again we didn't have any early resources to put into that, but in the last few years we've hired a senior faculty member in health care management, who is an economist in that area. And there's a fair degree of student interest in that, so, to a degree, we're in the health administration area. Basically, it's general management and business administration, business management. SM: So, then you would say that you had so much interest in business administration, ultimately, that you changed the word to management?

4 PORTER 4 LP: Right. That was a major step that the school took, I think in the year 1980, that we formally changed our name from Graduate School of Administration to Graduate School of Management, primarily because the word management was much more accepted in the business community. The associated the word administration solely with public administration, so that management was a word that was very acceptable in business and, yet, it's still also acceptable in the public side. SM: Is that right? LP: Yes. SM: Well, now, how long were you Dean, Lyman? LP: I was Dean from 1972 to 1983, eleven years. SM: Eleven years. Well, now, then under you they have made this change to the Graduate School of Management. LP: Right. And also we changed the degree. We had originally had a single degree called the Master of Science Administration, and that again proved to have great difficulties in the communications sense, with respect to the businessmen. They didn't know what a Master of Science, M.S. in Administration was and there was a great deal of confusion. We said, well, it's similar to the M.B.A. but it's called this because we're not exclusively a business school. And that was a very difficult and complicated message to get across. Also, there was great press from students for wanting an M.B.A. degree

5 PORTER 5 and, since that's pretty much the universal degree around the country, we... SM: Yes. So you changed that in 1980? LP: Right, at the same times. SM: Well, now, my daughter Ellen, I think she got one before. I think she got her degree before 1980, maybe not. LP: Right around there, I think... SM: I think she got an M.B.A. I thought she got an M.B.A. LP: Well, she may have got... SM: She had Bob Dubin in her first year and that was his last year LP: Yes. of teaching. I can remember it that way. SM: And I think he left in LP: Nine? SM: (inaudible) left in LP: Nineteen-eighty, didn't he? SM: Yes. LP: Yes. So, I think probably by the time Ellen graduated it probably was an M.B.A. But at the time she entered it probably was still a Master of Science in Administration. SM: She enjoyed her work. She enjoyed your course. She also enjoyed Bob Dubin very much. LP: She got a couple of the old-timers there in those classes.

6 PORTER 6 SM: (inaudible) Now, what about your own research? I know you're LP: Yes. the best-known person in your field. My son tells me this all the way from Houston. SM: And the guy who is head of. He's working and getting his dissertation under the head of the Department of Industrial Psychology. LP: Right. SM: And I 've forgotten his name, but he's very active in the American Psyc9919gical Association. /111 /~11 ItA I< t { LP: Oh. 11 Mfiill"ift llee1tle,!i probably. SM: Yes, that's the one. LP: Yes, yes. He's a good friend of mine. SM: He is? LP: A very close friend of mine, yes. SM: Well, I think I'm right. LP: Yes. That's the one. He's active, he's very active in APA, the American Psychological Association. SM: Well, (inaudible) yes. That's what he [my son] says. LP: Yes, and he's an industrial organizational psychologist. SM: Yes. Well, that's what my son is getting his degree in. LP: Yes, right. But you asked about my research. SM: Yes, right. LP: Well, my own area has always been organizational psychology. I mean, my doctoral training was in psychology, so I come out

7 PORTER 7 of a disciplinary background. And the area of psychology is, depending on whom I'm talking to, either organizational psychology or industrial organizational psychology. In the field of psychology. The technical name is industrial organizational. But if you're in a business school, it's just easier to say organizational psychology or organizational behavior. And my own research is focused on the various human resource issues relating to things like motivation, work attitudes, how individuals relate to the organizations of which they are a part, and sort of the individual-organization interaction. SM: And you are able to move along on your own research? LP: Well, yes, primarily because I was very fortunate to have some excellent Ph.D. students during the period that I was Dean. So, I was able to work with some very good people and... SM: Did you get some joint... LP:. keep my hand in research ~hat way. SM: Did you get some joint articles? LP: Oh, sure, sure, yes. And they have subsequently gone on to very good... SM: Where are these people? Are they teaching or are they in business? LP: Almost all are in the university as professors in the... SM: Oh, really? LP: Yes. M.I.T., Oregon, Indiana, Minnesota, various places.

8 PORTER 8 SM: Well, that's interesting. LP: No, very few of our Ph. Ds. go into business. The Ph.D. program is very academically oriented in GSM, and always has been. And as I say, selectively, we've had good placements in GSM. So, we had... in the School, we really have a practitioner-oriented M.B.A. program and a scholarshiporiented Ph.D. program. SM: Now, the main... you explained to me the administrative change and the change of the name, and I assume you agree with that since you were Dean at the time. LP: Right. I pushed it, against some opposition. SM: You had opposition but you succeeded. I asked the question six, how successful have your students been? And you said very successful. LP: Well, yes. I think it's easier to gauge how the Ph.D. students have done because you know where they are. SM: Yes, right. LP: And you know what they have done and that sort of thing. SM: Yes, right. LP: The M.B.As. it's harder to keep track of where they are and what they have done. And besides, of course, M.B.As. aren't your own personal students. They're really products of the school and not like Ph.D. students who are more associated with specific faculty members.

9 PORTER 9 SM: Yes. Now, tell me about your outside activities. I asked the question how successful were your seminars? I remember there being one for business people in the area, and you ran these course sometimes a couple of weeks and sometimes even a quarter. LP: Right, right. SM: Were they successful? LP: You're talking about the courses that the school put on for the business community? SM: That's right. LP: Yes. Well, I think that we had SM: I said seminars, but courses. LP: Yes, these were really We had a so-called UCI Executive Course that we ran for a number of years, which lasted about thirteen or fourteen weeks where they came one night a week from 3:30 to 9:30, one day a week for thirteen or fourteen weeks. And that, I think, was quite successful for some while. In recent years, the major effort has been more on the executive M.B.A. program, where it's really... they get the degree, but it's packaged, the delivery of it is packaged in such a way that suits their schedule, by doing it all on Fridays and Saturdays for two years, including the summers. SM: Including the summers? I.P: Right. So, that's been a recent program in the last four years or so, and there's quite a bit of interest in that in

10 PORTER 10 the community. The community has always wanted to come to UCI for a masters. We've never had any problem interesting people in our M.B.A. program. The real issue has been whether the courses are offered at the times they can do it, either in evenings or on weekends. SM: I see. LP: That's been a major issue of how to, as I say, to package our delivery system. Of course, we're not only. I mean, two-thirds, three-quarters of our students are regular fulltime students who go during. basically daytime students. And that's always been true of that. SM: What's the ratio, Lyman, between masters and doctors degree students? LP: Oh, in GSM? SM: Yes. LP: It's about ten to one. SM: In favor of the masters? LP: Yes, right. We have about four hundred masters and about forty Ph.D. students. SM: Very excellent. The Dean that you have now came from USC, did he? LP: Right. Dennis Aigner, who's an economist. So, he's actually SM: Yes. the fifth Dean. Richard Snyder was the first Dean. LP: George Brown was the second Dean.

11 PORTER 11 SM: That's right. LP: I was the third Dean. Newton Margulies is the fourth Dean, and our current Dean, Dennis Aigner, is the fifth Dean. SM: That's right. In Dean's meetings, I used to sit in first with Dick Snyder and then with George Brown. LP: Right, right. SM: And then I resigned as Dean in 1970 and he was still Dean at the time, wasn't he? LP: Yes. Well, I was his Associate Dean, so I occasionally sat in, you know, when he was out of town or something, I sat in for him, so I remember some of those early deans' meetings. SM: Yes. LP:. with Dan Aldrich presiding, as I remember. SM: Not always. No, we pretty... Well, Jack Peltason, when he was Vice Chancellor. LP: Well, that was before I came, yes. SM: and he saw to it that he should preside. And then when Russell came, replaced him, Russell. and then I left and it may be that Aldrich did. But it was his own committee. Oh, he had a CART, Chancellors' Advisory Round Table. LP: Yes. SM: That was his bailiwick. LP: Yes, that's right. Yes, that evolved, right. SM: Yes, but [Vice Chancellor] Russell could have presided. LP: Yes, right, right, and then after that.

12 PORTER 12 SM: And I know it continued because when I was Chair of the Academic Senate they voted to put the Academic Chair as a member of the Deans' Council, which I thought I had enough to do without that. But they thought it made--it did make sense, actually. But Jim McGaugh LP: Jim McGaugh was running it then, right. SM: And he (inaudible) and I believe you can remember, you were there at the time. LP: Yes, right. SM: Now, about your private support and money-raising activities, they have done a fair bit of that in your school, haven't they? LP: Yes. Again, it was very difficult to do in early years because we didn't have a corpus there, in terms of faculty and a set of activities, that we could go to the business community or the private community and say here's what we are, we have these resources, come and use our resources, because we really didn't have a lot of resources. So, in the first fifteen years of the school's existence, it was extremely difficult. In the last half dozen years or so, it's gotten better. SM: Yes. And didn't you raise money for the building you have now over there? r.p: That was mostly SM: Mostly state money, was it?

13 PORTER 13 LP: Well, yes, mostly campus money, wherever the campus got it from. Some of the furnishings of some of the rooms were privately funded. SM: Well, I've never been into it, Lyman, believe it or not. I used to know your former abode very well, but... LP: Well, it's far superior to our former. Of course, in the former abode we were tenants of the School of Social Sciences. Here, we're more like the building owners. SM: Yes, you are now. LP: Yes, so that makes it better. SM: That must have taken... LP: Well, we have a lot better classroom facilities, really. That's the... SM: You have a fair number of classrooms? LP: Yes, I would say the big advance is getting the kinds of classrooms we want. SM: Yes, and you've got those right in that building. LP: Right, in the bottom level. SM: In the bottom. Now, tell me, what's the largest size of classroom? LP: Oh, in that building it's only about sixty-five, I think. SM: What? LP: Sixty-five. SM: Sixty-five is your largest classroom? LP: Right.

14 PORTER 14 SM: And you notice that there are new big lecture halls up above the Chemistry Building, the new Chemistry Building. LP: Yes, yes. SM: And I think there's one room going up in this... LP: Bio Sci? SM: Yes, in the Bio Sci and in the Engineering, I think. LP: Yes. SM: The back of the Engineering looks to me like an auditorium. Lyman, what else can you tell me about the school that UCI historian needs to know? LP: Well, I think one thing that. when I think back about the SM: Yes. history of GSM, or GSA when it started, one thing just physically was the moves. We had different locations. The first two years of existence in... starting in 1966, we were in the top of what's now they call the HOB, the Humanities Office Building, in the penthouse part of the building. LP: I think History was up there at one time, wasn't it? SM: History, and I moved [as Dean] up there into where Dick was. LP: Yes. And then we moved over to the Irvine Town Center, across the street. SM: That's right. I remember that. LP: And we were there, if my memory serves me, two years in that building. That, I think, was a difficult period for us

15 PORTER 15 because we really felt isolated from the main campus. Of course, the bridge wasn't there or anything at that time, and there wasn't much else from the university over there, so we felt sort of... SM: Didn't the Math Department go over there or something? LP: They may have been in early years. I don't know. I don't think they were there. It was the Interfaith Center. SM: The Interfaith Center, oh, yes. LP: That was the other big tenant at the time we were there, other than whatever shops or stores they had in the first floor. And then we moved from there to the Computer Science Building for a year and then to the Social Science tower. So, we had a lot of. We were like nomads, sort of. SM: And you finally are now housed. LP: Right. SM: Very good. LP: So, that was something that was a prominent factor SM: And I heard something interesting, Lyman. Somebody said Jack feels this [present] administration building is wrongly placed. The faculty ought to be in closer to the library and so on, and that they're going to build an administration building and it's going to be somewhere out by your or back of your... across the street from where you are. LP: Yes. I think they're going to eventually build that building down on the corner by us, where Berkeley and Campus meet.

16 PORTER 16 SM: Yes, I think that's where they're going to put an administration building. LP: Right, yes. SM: So, you'll be right across the street. LP: Yes. We'll find it easier to get to (inaudible). I wonder what they're going to do with the current administration building. SM: Oh, Jack thinks it ought to be faculty offices, and he's got his definite ideas. LP: Really? SM: Yes. LP: Yes. SM: Well, that's what I was told. When I interview him I'll ask him. LP: Yes. SM: I've interviewed Dan twice. In fact, I interviewed him also. I've had three interviews with Dan. I got him in 1973 and now I have him twice, just in the last few weeks. But then I'm going to get Jack. And I'm going to do Mrs. Aldrich. LP: Oh, yes. You ought to get a lot of good information from Jean. SM: Oh, yes. LP: Well, if I could go back there. Your questioning about some other things about the early history of GSA, GSM, is that I think our biggest problem... I mean, the moving around of

17 PORTER 17 our different locations was more at the irritation level than anything, I think. It was not. We could cope with that. The biggest problem we had we just felt so undersized, in terms of faculty, in relation to what the mission was supposed to be of the School. It was extremely difficult to advertise to the world and prospective students and the business community that we were a school of management, particularly covering not just business but different areas, at the same time that we had a faculty in the early years of six, seven, eight and nine. And that was very difficult. And even during the almost throughout the entire decade of the seventies--in fact, most of the period I was Dean--our growth was very slight, I think. SM: Same with the History Department. LP: Yes. I think when I left we were about eighteen or so. SM: What are you now? LP: Oh, we're about thirty-two now. SM: You've really got pretty much of a... what do they call it? LP: A critical mass? SM: Yes, a critical mass. LP: Yes, I think we're getting up to it there. We have always said something around forty would be a good target. admission. sort of first-level target for critical mass. So, I would say the small-sized faculty. The seventies were difficult for our school, I think regardless of who would

18 PORTER 18 SM: Yes. have been Dean, so it's not just talking about the fact that I was Dean a large part of that period. But, of course, the reason it was difficult for us was because it was a difficult period for the campus. The resource issue really stopped us in our tracks. LP: Remember, there was a few years there in the middle seventies there were hardly any buildings going on. SM: Oh, when I was Chair of the Academic Senate--! was elected in they said, "they" meaning the legislature and Governor Jerry Brown, said to Saxon who told us, the Chairs of the nine campuses, there will be no more building going on. LP: Oh, I remember. SM: And specifically Irvine, there will be no more. The last building will the Social Ecology. After that, all students go to Riverside. Well, you know they don't go to Riverside. LP: Yes. SM: They go to Cal State Fullerton or Long Beach. LP: I remember when we had to bootleg the Social Ecology Building in because the only reason you could get that approved, Jim always said, because there was no other Social Ecology thing, so you couldn't say that some other campus already had space in there for that area.

19 PORTER 19 SM: That's right. That's right. Well, that was... I was shocked, I remember, at that. And sort of Jerry Brown's whole notion was: "small is beautiful." LP: Yes. SM: And he didn't see the increasing and we knew from our figures that we were going to go up in students. LP: Yes. SM: Well, now it's all changed. And did you know that they count the completion of your building and you go on to three years from now, they will have $400 million under construction. LP: Yes, I know. It's quite a change from the mid-seventies. SM: How much does it cost to build, say, the Physical Science building? Something like $29 million, isn't it? LP: Yes. Something like $29 or $30 million, yes. Now, I would say, Sam, just reflecting back on it, as one does after one has been around here awhile like we both have been, I would say--thinking of my own reasons from coming down here and, you know, the idea of a new campus and building a School of Management or helping to build a School of Management and the like. To me, many things have worked out very well and, generally, I have really been pleased with both how the campus has done and in terms of my own career specifically. I think the biggest disappointment was the really sort of total slowdown in the seventies. We found that very difficult in GSM, as did the rest of the campus.

20 PORTER 20 SM: Yes. with LP: Yes. enrollment. Yes, and it's amazing, Lyman, the buoyant spirits now, all the building going and building means more SM: And the whole future is very bright for Irvine. LP: I can still remember sitting... I remember exactly where it was. It was in that conference room on the fifth floor of the library, do you remember that conference room there? SM: Oh, yes. LP: I remember sitting there. I think, again, I was substituting for George Brown that particular day, and then I think it was around Maybe it was 1969 even. SM: Oh, I was there in I.P: Yes. Sitting in there and Dan had just come back from some either Regents meeting or some planning meeting, and he said, "Well," he said, "we're targeted now to level off at 12,500." SM: Yes, well, he told me that was... I asked him for high points and low points. He didn't like that thought at all. He said, "Low points?" He said, "I don't have any low points." He said, "I just sort of look at it both ways." LP: Right. SM But he said, and he admitted, this was the point, the lowest I.P. Yes. point. But he said, "We just decided to go right on."

21 PORTER 21 SM: And plan as best we could, thinking--knowing--that we would have more students. LP: Because I, you know, one of the reasons that I came was that this was going to be not just a new campus but it was going to be a developing, growing campus for the next--back then, for the next twenty-five years or so. And, so the thought that suddenly we're going to be kept around 12,000 was disappointing. SM: Well, I always felt that way, too. This is why I'm so happy with what's happened in the 1980s, particularly the last part of the 1980s. LP: Right. SM: And we can say quite emphatically we're going to go at 26,000 to 27,000 students. LP: Yes, right, right. SM: And you have to have the buildings and they're now being built to take those students. LP: Yes, yes. Well, I think Jack inherited a different situation than Dan had for many years. SM: Yes, for many years. Dan, just at the very end got this upswing, when the Irvine Company said what a fine institution we were and how much we meant to Orange County, and here's a million and a half dollars. LP: Right.

22 PORTER 22 SM: And Bren says, "And here's a million dollars for the Bren Center." LP: Right. But we didn't hear too much of that in the middle seventies. SM They never said nothing, nothing at all. LP: No. SM: Anything else you can think of during your deanship that you want to comment on? LP: No, I think the major activity during the time I was Dean was SM: Yes. really just trying to build all phases of our program. I mean, faculty recruiting was a constant.. constant and the most important activity. LP: But keeping our Ph.D. program going at the time when there wasn't a lot of growth in students was an important thing. Our Ph.D. program helped us get known around the country among our contemporaries in management business schools more than almost anything else at that time, was that we had a Ph.D. graduate school. SM: And were you satisfied in your recruiting? Do you think you got top people? LP: Yes, I think generally. You always, you know, it's like the NFL football teams, they don't. You know, you can't get 100 percent of your draft picks. But, by and large, we have a number that came in as assistant professors when I was Dean

23 PORTER 23 SM: that are now developing into good high-quality associate professor level people. Yes, I guess you've got a good name. LP: But it's a constant effort to keep working. Faculty recruiting has been certainly the biggest continual task of the school. SM: And that's the same with all of us. I always felt as Dean LP: SM: LP: SM: LP: SM: that that was the most critical thing we did, and I spent most of my time at it. Yes. You spend a lot of time at it. Right, yes. What about anything I just want to say on that that a major, major problem of faculty recruiting during particularly the last half or so of the time I was Dean was that the salary scales in business schools elsewhere rose so rapidly and, yet, because of our budgetary situations here, we had extreme difficulty in recruiting in terms of salaries. And at that time, we didn't A_ 0 f/s t llc have any faculty ~i~~~ None of the time I was Dean did we have faculty housing. So, you couple the relatively high cost of housing and the. That's the two or three great changes, as I understand it. The first is the University Club, which helped a lot for the faculty.

24 PORTER 24 LP: Right. SM And the second was our Student Center. Now, they've tripled its size. LP: Right. SM: And the third and the most important--! should have put it first--is the faculty housing. We never could have got those high... those over-scale scientists, you know. LP: Oh, yes, right. That was crucial in that. SM: We had to have them... LP: But that's only been in the last six years or so. SM, Isn't that amazing. I was up there at Keith Nelson's last Saturday night for a little party he had for his daughter who just got back from Sweden where she's an AFS student. Now she's back and then she's going to go to Vassar. Well, anyhow, a nice little party, and I'm looking around at all these new houses and everything. Just beautiful. LP: Yes, yes. Well, it was certainly something that we could have used in the seventies, but better late than never. SM: Yes, well, I.. Are there any events that happened in the GSA and GSM that are.not in the written record that you might let me know about? LP: No, I think most of our major events are on the record. As I say, some of the nuances, the difficulty in recruiting faculty. Again, it wasn't that salaries were so low

25 PORTER 25 here, they were just so high elsewhere in business schools (inaudible). SM: How are they now, Lyman? We're up a bit, aren't we? LP: Well, frankly, for various reasons, the Dean has had Whoever's been Dean the last four or five years has had a lot more flexibility and, through.. well, I think, better planning in the university, also central campus administration (inaudible) major flexibility in the way that might not... was not so well understood earlier. SM: It wasn't. I remember you could not make an offer exc~pt to the same step and so on, as to, say, San Diego or to Santa Barbara or like that. Well, that changed. I recruited a chairman and I was able to offer the next step--and this was a History person. I was then acting Chair. It was just the one year. We offered him this very fine. He got an extra stipend. LP: Yes, well, the whole university, from the office of the President, has sort of freed up a lot of these earlier sort of restrictions. SM: That's good. Any final words for the UCI Historian? LP: No. I think that it's important for the campus to have a set of professional schools, such as Engineering and Computer Science, GSM and I think it will be a significant part of the campus over the next twenty-five years, especially now that we've got a sort of, as you say, critical mass. We almost

26 PORTER 26 have a critical mass in place and we've got a lot of things on our menu, in terms of. We've got a regular M.B.A. Program, an Executive M.B.A. Program, we have an undergraduate minor, and we have a Ph.D. Program, and that, you know... SM: An undergraduate minor? LP: Yes, right. SM: Oh, so you teach undergraduate students? LP: But only... we have courses but it's not a major. We don't offer a major. But they can major in anything else if they take something like seven or eight courses. SM: You offer Business Administration, for example? Introductory? LP: Well, yes, Introduction to Business. They've got seven or eight courses they've got to take to get the minor. SM: Is that right? Very interesting. I didn't know. When did this start? LP: Oh, well, that started while I was still Dean, about 1980, I think. Nineteen-eighty-one maybe. Probably 1981, I guess, is more accurate. It's interesting, historically, Sam, that the reason we were really pushed by the campus administration to do that because they thought if enrollments really dropped or threatened to drop, then we could convert that into a major, and having an undergraduate business major would help keep enough students flowing to campus. SM: And this happened around 1980? LP: Nineteen-eighty or nineteen-eighty-one.

27 PORTER 27 SM: Oh, that's when... LP: When they were concerned about the demographic drop-off of the SM: Jarvis and all that. LP: Well, the lower graduating rate from high school and so forth. Well, they didn't realize that the yield would go up considerably and... SM: Well, the whole thing... I interviewed Jim Dunning last week, and he said that what was never figured, never considered. what happened, was that, say, X percent--i've forgotten--say, 30 percent go to the private institutions (inaudible) and all of a sudden, that percentage going to private universities went way down. LP: Yes. SM: And we picked up all those students. The Stan fords, the Harvard, the Yales, they all. The parents said it was a good bargain in education at the University of California and we'll get it for a quarter of the price than if he goes to Harvard or Yale. LP: Right, right. SM: And that's something they never figured. They never figured that would happen. And, so, all the demography went on that assumption, that these graduates would go to Harvard or Yale. LP: Yes, so those yield percentages really changed.

28 PORTER 28 SM: That was really what university around. That could turn the whole LP: So, we still have our minor but not because the university is worried about students, obviously, but simply that it's.. Well, it's popular and it doesn't cost us too much to do that. It's sort of a service, I guess. SM: Yes, yes. LP: Well, I think the other thing I'd say that's not really in the record is I think it was very difficult in the earlier years on this campus for the professional schools, professional units, to really get off the ground because, naturally, in the first decade the campus had to build the basic letters and science, liberal arts type departments and get those started. And so... SM: Yes, well, I had a similar problem, in that I thought we were LP: Yes. a university and we therefore must have graduate work, we must have a doctorate. Therefore, I've got to find faculty. And my biggest challenge, as a Dean, was to get my departments staffed so that they could give M.As. and Ph.D. degrees. SM: And that... I got them all right, but we suffered. In a certain way, we didn't have enough, say, faculty to teach interdisciplinary courses, which often two people are teamteaching the thing. LP: Right.

29 PORTER 29 SM: You know, so that was my problem. LP: Yes. SM: And, roughly, it was your problem, too. LP: Yes, because you had to do the meat and potatoes before you could do some of the other things. SM: Yes. LP: But I think that.. My view now is that the campus is pretty well-balanced. SM: And the Engineering which wasn't getting students placed. LP: I know. SM: I used to go over there and, you know, they couldn't place their students. Now, all of a sudden, they're all turned around. Now, every graduate, I understand, gets a job. LP: Yes. Well, the big problem Engineering had was they had too few faculty members and it was very difficult to hire those new ones in the early years. SM: That's right. LP: But that's changed now. SM: That's all changed, right. Anything else, Lyman? This has been a very nice interview. Any thoughts that you have there LP: It's been great for me, a fascinating twenty-two years. SM: Yes (inaudible). LP: And I have no regrets. I had a nice time here.

30 PORTER 30 SM: Yes, that's nice to hear. Well, I've heard that from a number of. I've been here twenty-five now. LP: Well, I've finished now my... This is my thirty-third. I think. I'm in my thirty-fourth year as a UC faculty member, so SM: Well, you can now retire at 80 percent of your final salary [averaged] over the last three years. LP: Yes, I'm getting up to that magic number. SM: But tell me very quickly about Berkeley. Were you at Yale. Were they interested to take you on the faculty at Yale or were you just... LP: No, I was just there as a visiting professor there. Yes, I've had various overtures from different places over the years. But, no, that really had no connection with my decision to come here. If anything, it would have made it more difficult to make the decision, since I was so far away. But I came out for a. Well, I was at Yale the year of 1966 to At that time, Dick Snyder was here and had me out for a visit in February and that was the week after the Regents' meeting that Clark Kerr had resigned. SM: Oh, yes. LP: So, I remember when Snyder was showing me.. Dick was showing me the campus and we walked by and there was a rally out at the balcony of the Library Building, I think it was, or maybe it was the Humanities Building. since I didn't know

31 PORTER 31 the campus then, I can't remember which. But Jim McGaugh was giving a talk then. SM: Oh, I was on that same one. I followed Jim. I.P: SM: LP: SM: LP: Did you? We all were demonstrating and speaking in favor of Clark Kerr. Yes, right. Telling students what a great president he was. Yes, well, I knew Clark when I was at Berkeley and SM: You know, he's going strong. He's writing his memoirs. LP: Is he? SM: Yes, he wrote me down in Australia. He said, "Gee, I'm sorry I went to Irvine and I found you were down in Australia." And he said, "I'm writing my memoirs." LP: Oh, that's great. SM: And he wanted to see me. I had a very good interview. I ran the first twenty-nine tapes of all the founders up to 1965 and I started with Clark Kerr. And Dean McHenry who was Dean of Campus Planning and then later Santa Cruz Chancellor. And I went down to Aldrich and all the people. LP: Well, I have the highest regard for Clark Kerr. I think he's a great man. SM: He is a great, great educator. LP: Yes, there is no question about it. SM: Yes. LP: So, it was interesting watching his career over the years.

32 PORTER 32 SM: Well, I would just love to know what he's going to say about Reagan and that... LP: Yes, the FSM period. SM: He did tell me a little bit about his resignation. He was LP: Yes. really He felt very bad. They really cut him out. SM: Well, anything more? LP: No, I think that's it for now. SM: Thank you very much, Lyman. LP: Sure. SM: I've enjoyed it very much. LP: Well, I enjoyed it, too. END OF INTERVIEW